Africa: from rural to researcher overload

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Within two days, Treehouse (it’s the name of my accommodation, and not really in a tree or anything that resembles a treehouse) went from being a quiet lonely place to overflowing with guests and visitors. Brian and his son Dan returned from Safari and their local buddy, Joseph, stops by most nights and there were two film makers from London here for a couple nights. They were in search of a city that would reproduce 1950s Congo since the Congo is apparently a little expensive and almost impossible to get into unless you’re personally invited. They’d taken tons of photos of the city and surprisingly, Mwanza looks good on film. The buildings, with a bit of a facelift, could be really beautiful. There’s some great designs I’ve walked by most days and never seen (probably because I was too busy trying not to fall in one of the huge potholes or the open sewage/ drainage system). The film-makers have moved onto Rwanda which wouldn’t be my first choice for a vacation but they seemed keen enough and Brian and Dan re-located so now the place is full of London folk down here for the AIDS Symposium.
Everybody who works on HIV or STIs has relocated to Mwanza for a couple of days to attend this thing and I didn’t really have any idea how big a deal it was until yesterday when I was introduced to the WHO Co-ordinator of the STI department… it’s a little intimidating, especially when they ask you what you’re doing or working on. A 6 week msc project is peanuts compared to the three year, multi-million dollar intervention trials these guys are doing.
So the game plan when my supervisor arrived Sunday with the project coordinator (this woman’s in charge of organizing studies in seven countries on the implementation of rapid syphilis tests) was to head to Geita for the night and visit the district hospital and one other health center to see what was going on. But as excited as I was for another road trip with no bathrooms and no food, it wasn’t meant to be and after a brief (two hour) meeting I spent Sunday night in my own bed far away from my friends at the Goldbelt Hotel. We did spend all day Monday in Geita and almost Monday night when one of the ferries broke down but it wasn’t as bad as expected. Apparently it’s just on data collection trips that food becomes optional and bonus, the school picked up the tab for out “business” lunch.
The AIDS Prevention Symposium ran all day yesterday and today and starts up again bright and early tomorrow morning and so far, it hasn’t been the most inspiring series of talks I’ve ever attended. In fact, I think every trial result that’s been presented has been “flat” (thought I’d toss some of the science lingo in). In normal speak, nothing is working. Vaccines, microbicides, STI treatment for prevention, behavioral interventions- none of it is any good so far, except in monkeys. These things always seem to work in monkeys but the scientists can’t figure out why they don’t work in humans… maybe because we’re not monkeys? The good news is that we’re fed every two hours. A few talks, coffee and a snack, a few more talks, some questions, lunch, talk talk talk, q and a, more coffee and snacks, panel presentation, dinner. Well, I haven’t been going to the dinners, too much work to do if I want to finish up with everything here in the next couple of weeks, especially if I want to find time to see some animals and really that’s the whole reason I’m down here! OK, some of it might be for school but a big part of it is definitely the elephants, and the hippos, and maybe a giraffe or two.
Spending ten, eleven days at NIMR doesn’t leave much time for cooking or anything else and I think I’ve been living off fruit (when I’m not being fed at the Conference) except that for the SECOND time, there were maggots in my mango!!! Big time ew!!! And you can’t tell there’s anything wrong with it from the outside, it’s just when you cut into it these little white things start wriggling around and its just gross. Surprisingly, I keep buying and eating maggots so I guess it’s not that gross or there’s just not much in the way of variety down here but it turns you off mango for at least five minutes. I’m a little confused what all the farmer’s back home are doing when they add hormones or antibiotics to our food because I’ve seen some of the hugest papayas and avacados over here growing naturally without any help. The papayas are honestly as big as pumpkins (and not those tiny little squash but like the real pumpkins that you carve at Halloween) and the average avacado would have no trouble taking on a grapefruit- you only need one for a huge bowl of guacamole! It’s pretty fantastic but I guess the state of meat processing makes up for the really really good fruit. I still can’t bring myself to buy a chicken when the feathers are still floating around in the air and there’s another bird twitching headless on the tarp beside it (I’m still waiting to see one run around with its head cut off though, it hasn’t happened yet but if I spend enough time down there… on second thought that would require spending more time down there). Chicken’s are at least quiet when they’re killed. I think they were slaughtering a pig just down the road last night, or someone had their trachea slit, and it wasn’t such a quiet affair. There was this high pitch wheezing squeal coming from down the road that almost sounded like an engine that wouldn’t turn over and then some cheering and silence. Not the most promising sounds for the pigs that live up on the hill.
Since I’ve been spending most of my days (who am I kidding, all of my days) at this conference, there hasn’t been much of a chance to answer emails so I’m sorry for not responding. Treehouse is still in the process of switching internet providers and I’d be really surprised if it happened while I was still here at this rate. That’s also my excuse for not having any more pictures to put up. I’d say hopefully things will be better next week but we’re planning another field trip so it’s probably only going to get worse!

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