Rachel - Nairobi and Nakuru National Park

The last few weeks have been busy on all counts. My project is steadily beginning to come together. I am currently working on the third of my four initial objectives. My first objective was to determine the specificity of a Plasmodium genus primer set and also species-specific primer sets for the four Plasmodium species Plasmodium falciparum, P. malariae, P. ovale and P. vivax. The second objective was to determine the sensitivity of the Plasmodium genus primer set and the species-specific primer sets. My current objective is to determine if overwhelming P. falciparum infection will alter the sensitivity of the primer sets for P. ovale, P. malariae and P. vivax. From objective two I know the lowest parasitemia at which the primers sets can detect P. ovale, P. malariae and P. vivax. I can use this information to set up the experiment for objective three. P. falciparum was chosen to be the overwhelming infection as P. falciparum is the most common and widespread of all the malaria causing Plasmodium species. In mixed infections P. ovale, P. malariae and P. vivax are most likely to be a minor species to P. falciparum. However it is still important to detect these minor species as they too cause malaria so the patient will still need treatment for these species. Hopefully the next few experiments will run smoothly and I can move onto my final objective- multiplexing. I have just over four weeks left in Kenya to finish my project, never has four weeks seemed so short!!

Every Tuesday the lab goes to Kisian for a seminar. There are Walter Reed labs and also CDC labs located here. Kisian is about a 30minute bumpy ride away from Kisumu! It is a very good opportunity to hear about research other groups are conducting. The topics vary each week from genetics to epidemiology. You never know what you will learn about every Tuesday morning! What I have noticed is how many questions are asked after every seminar! People here are very enthusiastic to learn and are asking the questions to further their own knowledge. It is quite nice to see and makes me think more questions should be asked in Ireland!

In between my project I have found time to go on a few more trips! The first of which was a trip to Nairobi with Jennifer a student from CDC. I really didn’t know what to expect of Nairobi. The people in the lab raved about it all the time but I had also read that it is nick named ‘nairobbery’-not very encouraging! However I was pleasantly surprised by what I found! The centre of town was like that of any other city with a mixture of old and modern buildings. There wasn’t the big rush of people I had been expecting either, in fact it was quite a relaxed atmosphere. Of course we were always conscious to keep safe but we never encountered any hassle. Our first stop was a shopping centre called Westlands Mall. The mall itself looked like it belonged in America, very fancy indeed! A little too fancy however for myself and Jennifer, poor students that we are we didn’t buy a single thing! Over the course of the weekend we got our ‘western fix’ by visiting another four shopping centres! It was nice to feel the familiarity of a shopping centre but it was also nice at the same time to visit the local markets. In fact we bought most of our stuff from these roadside markets! During our stay we also visited the Masai Market. This is a famous market that moves around Nairobi and sells traditional Kenyan crafts. Hectic doesn’t even cover the atmosphere at the market! It is aimed at tourists so there are a lot of people trying to get your attention as you walk around. Luckily myself and Jennifer had experienced Kisumu Masai Market a few weeks previous so we knew how to keep the sellers at bay! Some of the crafts on sale really are beautiful especially the Masai jewellery and the wooden carvings. Looking back I’m pretty sure I was had on one or two items but all in all it was a successful trip! I will try to make it back to Nairobi before I leave as we got to see only a tiny part of it, but again four weeks isn’t a lot of time!

Another big adventure we have gone on recently is to the Masai Mara on safari. When you think of Africa you think of safari, so we definitely had to find time to go! Keith came all the way down to Kisumu to come with us; it was great seeing him and hearing all about how he was getting on in Kampala! It was a CDPC reunion that week as Niamh also arrived unexpectedly in Kisumu from Kampala the same day as Keith. Niamh was here in Kisumu with the CDPC two years ago! It was great having all of us together! The safari trip began with myself, Jennifer, Richie and Keith making our way to Nakuru to be picked up by a safari company there. On the way up we came across a big truck that had crashed and over turned. It was a reminder that Kenyan roads are quite dangerous and are supposedly some of the worst in Eastern Africa.

It would take about twenty pages to describe the safari in full but the word brilliant pretty much sums it up! We spent one day in Nakuru National Park. Here we saw baboon, gazelle, impala, wildebeest, cape buffalo, giraffe and of course rhinos! Nakuru is known for its white and black rhinos. We were luck enough to see the rare black rhino. If I’m being honest I wouldn’t have even noticed a difference between the white and black rhino if our guide hadn’t pointed it out. They are not, as the name suggests and I had naively believed, white or black but rather the same greyish colour! There were also a lot of school children in the park that day. It was nice to see how excited they were to see all the animals; at some points however they seemed more interested in us and we had to pose for a number of photos with them!

The day after Nakuru we drove down to the Masai Mara. On the way we passed through a number of Masai villages; many of the people there were dressed in their traditional dress. It was a nice surprise to see so many colours in the towns!  Our first visit into the Masai Mara was an evening game drive. Luck was on our side that evening because within an hour of being there we witnessed a lion kill! Having since shown people at home my photos and heard their reaction at the poor gazelle being killed I realise how most people are shocked by it. However I think actually being there and experiencing it gives you another perspective on it and you can see that it is just the way life is in the wild.

Aside from the lion kill we saw countless other things. Again we saw giraffe, impala, gazelle but we also saw a cheetah, a leopard sleeping up a tree, crocodiles and also about 100 hippos in the Mara river. It is migration season in the Mara so there were millions of Wildebeest; they were absolutely everywhere! During migration the Wildebeest cross the Mara river in search of food etc. We didn’t get to see any crossings but it didn’t really matter as we had seen so much already! Our guide was a Masai man and it was clear that he knew a lot about the animals and the area in general and had a genuine interest in the animals. By the end of the trip we had all agreed that it was something we would never forget!

This week has been a very important one for Kenya. A referendum took place the 4^th of August to change the constitution. Unlike in Ireland when we vote on only one or two changes in the constitution the Kenyans were voting on a whole new constitution. Security was tight around Kisumu and the whole of Kenya. This was because after the last election in 2008 there was serious violence. Over 1,000 people died and thousands more were displaced. In Kisumu there are actually still buildings that were burnt down during the violence. It is very odd to think that violence like that occurred in Kisumu. Today it just seems like any other bustling town. On the day of the referendum we stayed in the guest house just as a precaution. Luckily, however, no violence occurred anywhere in Kenya and the referendum passed! We saw the celebrations in Nairobi on the news and in general everybody is happy about it passing. I don’t know the exact details of the new constitution but everyone says it will make the future brighter for Kenya, so that can only be good!

Time really is flying here! Hopefully the last few weeks slow down to give me enough time to totally finish my project and also to fit in a few more trips! There is so much to see and do in Kenya!