Week 2 in Kisumu

With our first week being so eventful, our second week had a lot to live up to. It did not disappoint!

In the lab the primers and probes which I had been waiting on arrived on Thursday. This meant that I could really get going on my project. My first task was to check that the DNA samples I had for the four Plasmodium species (P. falciparum, P. malariae, P. ovale and P. vivax) did in fact contain Plasmodium DNA. To do this I carried out a Real-Time PCR using Plasmodium genus-specific probe and primers. The results confirmed that they did contain Plasmodium DNA. The next step was to check if my species-specific primers were specific for just one species, i.e. did P. falciparum primers only amplify the P. falciparum DNA and not cross react with any of the other Plasmodium species. The first run of this experiment has shown some unexpected results. The reason for this is most likely due to the individual species DNA not being pure. It is quite hard to get pure samples of P. ovale, P. malariae and P. vivax. They are all usually isolated from blood samples. However blood samples may contain mixed infections that may not show up in microscopy. I have now gathered some more DNA for the four species that appear to be pure. I plan to repeat the experiment and hopefully will get some good results!

For the weekend a group of us decided to go to Lake Naivasha. The group included myself, Richie, Emily from the lab and Max and Jennifer from the CDC. We had been told that it was a straight matutu ride away so would not be too much hassle to get there. The journey in fact ended up taking around 7 hours and involved 3 different matatus!

Fish eagle on Lake Naivasha

However it ended up being worth it because along the way we got to see the Kenyan president! He was travelling through Nakuru just as we happened to be driving in. I have never seen such a convoy of cars; there must have been around 100 vehicles driving with him, not to mention two huge helicopters! The traffic on our side of the road came to a halt and everybody got out of their cars to line the street and as his car drove by he waved out the window. The journey up until then had been worth it just to experience that! When we finally reached Lake Naivasha we found a place to stay. It was right on the lake and the grounds it was set on were so peaceful.  The design of the restaurant/ bar area was so nice that it could rival any European establishment. I was surprised to see an Irish blessing in the bathroom but we later found out that one of the owners was an Irish woman! We never met her but it was nice to know there was an Irish connection to the place. On the Sunday morning we got up early and took a boat ride around the lake. It was so quiet and peaceful. Our driver pointed out all the wildlife to us including fish eagles, pelicans and of course hippos! It was the first time I had seen hippos in the wild- there were loads of them!

Hippo!

We got as close as we could before they started grunting at us in warning. It was probably for the best that I only found out after that they have been known to attack people!

Boat trip on Lake Naivasha

After our boat ride we went to the nearby Hell's Gate National Park. This national park is small in comparison to some of the others in Kenya and you are allowed to cycle through it. We hired bikes and cycled past zebra, impala, warthogs and baboons! There is a dormant volcano located nearby so the park is partly covered in ash from the last eruption. One of the main attractions of the park is the gorge.

The gorge

After some consideration we decided to get a tour guide to show us around it. It is a good thing we did because on the way down our guide began to list the ways we were in danger just by being in it. These included perishing through volcanic eruption, earthquake, rocks falling on us and drowning. Water in the gorge can reach 1 meter in just 10 minutes when it rains! It was turning out to be much more than the leisurely stroll I had anticipated. In fact it involved scaling up and down huge boulders, shimmying across rock faces and jumping into streams and small waterfalls - it was brilliant! I can see why some of the film Tomb Raider Two was filmed here! On the way back to the entrance the bikes, which had been such a good idea at the start, turned into a disaster! Half way along a deserted uphill road my gear cog decided to give up and fell off. To add to it all the blazing sun decided to make an appearance. With the ash and the sun I felt like we were stranded in the Sahara! Luckily a bus with a group from an orphanage drove by some time later and picked myself and Jennifer up along with our broken bikes. We tried to get a refund but no such luck. The journey back to Kisumu was much less of a hassle than on the way up. Getting a matutu at night seems to be the way to travel and we made it home in less than 5 hours.

It was really great to visit other parts of Kenya. We got a taste of what Kenya has to offer and I can’t wait to see what else there is to see and do!