Hellen Ndagire - CDPC Fellow from Uganda (March - May 2011)

Oh yes, it was a beautiful experience! It was on the 17^th of March 2011 (St. Patrick’s Day) that I landed into Dublin and was greeted by the sudden spring chills. The cold sunshine was news to me, not to forget the sudden changes in the clock! For the decades I have lived in East Africa, I have never witnessed an adjustment of the clock, only to wake up on one Sunday morning and it was announced that the time had shifted by one hour ahead! Despite the fact I had been taught about the long days and short nights in geography secondary school classes, I never imagined it not getting dark until 10pm as it happened in the late spring in Ireland.

At the southern campus of the university

Pope John Paul monument at the southern campus, Hellen (Uganda) & Sylvia (Tanzania)

Getting to business, work was done in the laboratory and I was placed in the Host-Pathogen Interaction laboratory. Thanks to Dr. Martina Schroeder who guided me thoroughly through my period of stay in the National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM), I got a very good experience of a series of techniques which included cloning, western blotting, mammalian tissue culture, primer design and sequence analysis. Unlike in my masters’ research where point mutations were very significant in antimicrobial (Quinolones) resistance and one would pray for no such mutations to occur, in NUIM I managed to introduce point mutations purposefully by site directed mutagenesis; it was an exciting lab experience.

I also got a very good learning experience on how to write winning grant proposals with Dr Noel Murphy and Dr Caroline Ang of the NUIM research support office, who gave me an excellent and precise talk on how to go about the writing of grant proposals. More to learn was in the global health classes with Dr. Thomas Strong. Intriguing questions came up like, “Does global health mean diseases of the poor?” Which of course meant the developing world; and in my case; Uganda. How about phrases like; ‘sex and death were now two inseparable neighbours!’, referring to  the era of HIV/ AIDS. Oh yes, several foods for thought in the global health classes.

The CDPC fellowship also included the Irish aid meeting in Limerick, in which students supported by the IrishAid/HEA Programme for Strategic Cooperation could participate. It was a nice net-working time, not to forget the hot Ugandan session addressing the issue of foreign aid, poverty, corruption and unemployment. I also participated in the Africa day celebration at Trinity College Dublin, and this was graced by a series of speakers, but memorable was Professor Maggie Kigozi, the Executive Director; Uganda Investment Authority, who challenged the audience to stop lamping Africa: ‘A problem in one African country, does not mean the whole of Africa.’

Interesting was also the outreach visit to a second level mixed school with Joseph Clowry, the CDPC education officer, where we gave a talk about HIV/AIDS. It was amazing how the students knew very little about the pandemic. This was followed by Easter Monday and the Easter egg celebrations at the Farmleigh house, thanks to Dr. Martina’s invitation. It made our Easter weekend! Finally, unforgettable was the glimpse of the ‘strongest man in the world’, the president of the USA, Obama; Yes; we can! It never came easy, since we had to queue for 5 hours before we could reach the final security check point where the man would be seen. Oh yes, I saw him; Obama! He was about 80 meters from where the Garda stopped me.

By the Garda; part of the security during the Obama’s visit to Ireland (left) and the five hour queue to see Obama (centre) in Dublin. With Ugandan CDPC colleagues; Erick and Christopher in Dublin

Sylivia Karen Rutagumirwa - CDPC Fellow from Tanzania (February-May 2011)

My arrival in Ireland

I arrived in Dublin Airport terminal 1 on 8^th February 2011. I was warmly welcomed. From the moment I exited the doors of the airport, I immediately noticed the differences between Tanzania and Ireland weather. It’s not like I didn’t expect it, but it’s not really real until you experience it.  While Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) was extremely hot and humid. Ireland was too cold. I was sure that in a few months the weather will improve, but the weather was “too moody”. One day it improves and next day aggravates. I quickly adopted the weather and enjoyed my stay.  The long days and short nights were amazing and unique experiences which reminded me of my secondary school geography subject.  

Experiences on the Education Outreach programme

Education outreach program is a wonderful experience. It is creative, unique and great Program. It was refreshing to interact and hear from young students from different culture’s way of thinking. It was equally refreshing to hear the ideas of young students on HIV/AIDS and sexuality in general. As a sociologist this was an opportunity to put the sociological aspects against the places I was able to visit.

The second day in Ireland, 10^th February Joe Clowry took us to Boyne Community College, in Trim. The school is partnering with St. Andrews senior seminary school in Uganda. The school were working on a project for the Young Social Innovators. The students were giving workshops to younger students in the school and were encouraging them to get involved in understanding the issues involving the developing world. I was so impressed with the presentation made by young students. The students were well informed, however many students find hard to understand the problems and realities of fellow students in Africa.

The workshop on HIV/AIDS for secondary school students was an amazing experience. The workshop was conducted in Carlow by Joe Clowry together with the team of East Africans fellows (Kenyan), (Ugandan) and I (Tanzanian). The entire workshop was excellent. I really enjoyed hearing the experiences from students in Ireland and from my fellow East Africans. From this workshop I learned that although students were involved in risk behaviours they do not see AIDS as a personal threat. One of the schools at the workshop was the Presentation College, Carlow. They are working with a school in Zambia and they are hoping to do a joint project on stigma around HIV/AIDS. They are entering their project for the Young Social Innovators competition.

From Right to Left: Myself, Sylvia Karen (Tanzania), Helen (Uganda) and Milka (Kenya) in Carlow when we attended outreach program on HIV/AIDS

Myself and Joe Clowry in our first visit to Boyne community school

Knowledge gained

I am privileged to be a recipient of the Combat Diseases of Poverty Consortium fellowship (CDPC). The fellowship has changed my life for the better.  My expectations were exceeded tremendously. The best support received from the CDPC fellowship has definitely paved my way to greater horizons.

I could probably go on for hours talking about CDPC fellowship, but I think it all comes down to three important things “knowledge, experience, and exposure.” It has been my dream that I develop my PhD proposal and enroll for PhD programme. I'm glad to say my dream came true. This dream would not have come true without the fellowship being awarded to me. There is nothing more rewarding than having achieved a long time dream in a short time. The guidance and Constructive comments I received from my immediate supervisor Dr.Tom Strong together with the availability of the latest books, journals and IT facilities made my task much easier. 

The courses I took broadened my knowledge and helped me to share my experiences with other students. This opened my mind and enabled me to make many friends. The constant interactions with experienced Lecturers, CDPC members and other people at NUIM have been a rewarding experience too.

The time spent in Ireland was the most fruitful. Being a woman academician from developing country like Tanzania is quite challenging. As a result of multiple roles and responsibilities, we are forced to limit our career aspirations.  As a woman you have to be the homemaker, the supportive wife and mother and at the same time a good academician. Time for women is a scarce resource and major source of stress and failure to achieve as women experienced daily pressure to manage all the competing demands. Time Spent on CDPC fellowship is well worth it.

Exposure and networking

During my stay in Ireland I participated in various workshops and seminars. One of the workshops I attended was on “Millennium development goals beyond 2015”. The entire seminar was excellent. I really enjoyed hearing the stories from the speakers and their life experiences. It was very easy to relate to these real life situations. These were very motivating real experiences about gender, development and millennium development goals. I liked the positive energy and motivating tone that exuded from the woman speaker from Caribbean.  

I had an opportunity to attend a seminar conference which was organised by the Department of foreign affairs Irish aid. The seminar took place in Irish Aid offices, Limerick. The aim of the event was to facilitate networking and to ensure that Irish Aid funded students have opportunities to engage with the Irish Aid programme during their stay in Ireland.  One of the greatest achievements was networking. I made some very useful contacts and some friendships that I think will last. It was a very exciting opportunity for me to talk to a Minister of State, Ms. Jan o’ Sullivan T.D. 

The seminar was informative, inclusive, well organized and well thought out. I was thoroughly impressed with the amount of information provided, especially on how Irish Aid is strongly committed to ensuring aid effectiveness, The entire program - the materials, speakers and seminars - was informative, interesting and most importantly, invaluable to me as a sociologist and development practitioner. I enjoyed listening experiences and testimonials from students funded through the Programme for Strategic Cooperation. The gender thematic group discussion facilitated by Aine Doody was also excellent. I enjoyed the flow of the seminar and the fact that we had a small group. It gave the facilitator an opportunity to relate information directly to each of the participant's interests. I also enjoyed hearing about everyone's backgrounds and interests and most of all the gender research themes.

Myself and Minister of State, Ms. Jan o’ Sullivan T.D. In Limerick after the Irish Aid Workshop

In Dublin after Millennium Development Goals workshop

Social life in Ireland

I had a very good time staying in Maynooth. I met two great colleagues from East Africa. Hellen from Uganda and Milka from Kenya, thoroughly we enjoyed our stay. Our apartment at Carton square was so lovely and quiet place. We spent some of our weekends at home and sometimes touring around Dublin. The “spire” was our landmark and meeting point. The spire is a huge, striking, and innovative monument stands in the middle of O'Connell Street. We also had excited opportunities to visit Corks and Limerick. The visit to the countryside (Carlow) with Joe Clowrly was one of exciting moments. The country side is quiet and green. We were exposed to Irish food. We had a wonderful time.

Broadly speaking, Irish are so friendly and nice. I will forever treasure this moment and I will never forget that once in my lifetime I came to Ireland and I’m looking forward to come again.

My visit to Cork

Myself Martina and Helen during the Easter Monday at Ashtown

My sincere appreciation and thanks to CDPC team. I thank, to what I am able to see in my work. Participating in the CDPC Fellow Program was one of the best experiences I have had in my academic and professional life. The learning environment, the facilities and expertise afforded me an unparalleled experience I will never forget. I will always utilize the knowledge and experience I gained to improve my performance.

Stephen Gikuru - Autumn 2010

My Winter CDPC Training in Ireland

I arrived in National University of Ireland, Maynooth on Monday 20^th September 2010 to the very warm welcome of Doireann Mckenzie, the CDPC administrator. Although, I had expected the weather to be too cold, it turned out to be warmer than I expected. However, this did not prepare me for what was to come in months of November and December. I met my fellow CDPC trainees Michael and Titus from Tanzania and Madina from Uganda who showed me allowed Maynooth and generously introduced me to my first Irish food of Lassagne. The following day Doireann, took Slyvia and I to the campus for registration. I was very impressed with the magnificent look of the Southern Campus, with the impressive look of St Patrick Cathedral and its serenic environment. Thereafter, she took us to the Department of Immunology and Global Health where she introduced us to Dr Noel Murphy, the Co-chairman of CDPC who together had a great discussion on our training needs as requested in our applications. He outlined my training plans in Bioinformatics, Genomics and Proteomics and he kindly offered to take us to Dr Martina Schroeder, who was our training coordinator. Martina was very kind and welcoming and she put herself in our shoes. She had a very clear plan for my training and she had made all the necessary arrangements with Department of biology where I was to train in bioinformatics, genomics, programming and proteomics and systems biology.

Part of Southern campus of NUIM just after my arrival in September, and before the onset of winter.

I started my training on Wednesday the 22^nd September 2010 where I attended my first lecture in bioinformatics. Later in the weeks to come, I attended series of lectures in immunology, Perl and UNIX programming lectures as well as practicals in the Department of Biology. In addition, Dr Martina introduced me to Dr David in the Bioinformatics unit who kindly agreed to guide me on bioinformatics aspects of my PhD research work, which I am researching on comparative genomics of signaling pathways in human Schistosomiasis. David was very kind and helpful to me as he introduced me to UNIX and Perl programming languages which indeed speeded up my bioinformatics retrieval and analysis of genomic sequences of my interest. The success of the skills I acquired in computational biology was very evident by the speed in which I was able to acquire my initial data which I used to write a paper titled, “Schistosomes encodes Short-Chain Dehydrogenases/Reductases and Glucose-Methanol-Choline Oxidoreductases with high similarity to lepidopteran ecdysteroids biosynthetic enzymes” was sent on 15^th October 2010, about 3 weeks after starting my CDPC training and accepted in 14^th December 2010 for the Joint International Society of Computational Biology (ISCB) and African Society of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (ASBCB) Conference on Bioinformatics in Cape Town, South Africa from the 9^th -11^th March 2011. I have also been awarded a pre-conference travel fellowship to attend a 2 days workshop in bioinformatics and Young Researchers Forum at the same place. Moreover, the bioinformatics unit in National University of Ireland courtesy of Dr David has kindly allowed me to use their UNIX server and their bioinformatics resources upto June 2011, six months after ending my CDPC training in Ireland. This will enable me to complete some of the research work which I had not completed during my 3 months training period in Ireland. This demonstrates that the CDPC network created while in Ireland is still very helpful to me even now when back to my country, Kenya. Through CDPC fellowship, I also got four books in bioinformatics and programming which will be a great asset for me and entire department back at home.

Dr Martina also introduced me to Professor Padraic Fallon, who agreed to host me in his laboratory at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Trinity College of Health Sciences St. James Hospital. I spent nine weeks of my CDPC training period in Professor Padraic’s laboratory where I learnt several techniques such as genotyping and helminth biology. I also interacted with PhD and Post-doctorate students working in the laboratory through which I immensely learnt a lot during this period.

On the snow outside the Labs at the Institute of Molecular Medicine in St. James Hospital, Trinity College Dublin

During my training, I also presented a seminar on “Human Schistosomiasis in the department, and also presented a paper during the under diseases of poverty titled, “Schistosomiasis: Exploring new control strategies using genomic information”. In addition, I also attended various seminars within the university on various issues ranging from Intellectual Property Rights, Drug discovery and genomics. On 4^th November, I attended a microsymposium on “New Horizons for Neglected Diseases” at Trinity College Dublin which was very educative covering aspects on helminthes, protozoan parasites, tuberculosis and the Irish partnership for tackling diseases of poverty. Towards the end of my training on 6^th and 7^th December 2010, I also attended a computational biology and Innovation PhD symposium 2010 at Conway Institute, University College of Durblin. This symposium was very educative with very impressive quality papers and posters in computational biology, bioinformatics and system biology. It was great moment for me to learn the various PhD research projects going on in Ireland in Irish universities.

With Dr Noel Murphy (right) Co-chair CDPC, Titus, Michael (Tanzania), Prof Robert Thonton (South Africa), Slyvia (Uganda) and Dr Martina (Left) during the Irish Forum for Global Health Biennial Conference, 2010 at NUIM.

In addition to my involvement in learning science, I also participated in outreach education programme for second grade transition students. Thank to Joe Clowry the coordinator of CDPC Outreach programme. My first outreach workshop was in CBS, Portlaoise on Thursday 18^th November 2010 which was facilitated CDPC, Schools Across Borders and Self Help Africa.  Joe, Slyvia and Patsy and I presented three workshops to the transition high school students from four schools namely; Presentation Portlaoise, Colaiste Bhride, Carnew and CBS Portlaoise. I was very excited to meet and interact with these high school students and their teachers who were also happy to interact and learn more about Kenya and African issues especially in on HIV AIDS. In addition, this was also my great opportunity to visit and see the country side. Joe, Slyvia and I did 3 workshops of 70 minutes each on HIV AIDS. The other workshops were on fair trade and conflicts resolution. I was very impressed with this program since it exposes the student to developmental and global issues at very early age. This program exposes the student to various issues in the world such as trade, equality, cultural differences and respect for humanity. Indeed, I thought this kind of program would have a very great impact if introduced in Kenyan high schools and could accelerate national development as it promote innovativeness and developmental knowledge unlike our Kenyan education which emphasizes more on examinations. However, unlike in Kenya where students as young as primary school, majority of the high school students in Ireland we met for the workshops from these schools were not too conversant with HIV AIDS information. The students were interested in learning how Kenya has coped with issues of HIV AIDS mainly on awareness, testing and stigma. There is need therefore for support of such workshops in other schools in Ireland in future to create awareness on HIV AIDS.

With some of the workshop facilitators at CBS Portlaoise School during school outreach workshop

My second workshop was on 25^th November at Buncrana, Co. Donegal. We left Maynooth on 24^th November for a journey of about 5 hours to Co. Donegal. In Donegal, the weather was very cold and the snow had started falling on the top of the mountains. We could not resist the beautiful site of the snow and we requested Patsy to stop so that we could have a better view of the snow this being our first time to see them. However, this did not prepare me for the coming days when the snow and ice was going to be part of my live during the rest of my stay. I enjoyed the view of the country side with the sheep farming and also learnt a lot about the struggle for liberation of Irish republic, especially with the painting on buildings in Derry or LondonDerry. Joe and Patsy were very kind in explaining the history of the liberation for independence. We enjoyed the beautiful beaches and mountains and waterfall of Donegal. The workshop was facilitated by CDPC, Worldwise Schools and Self Help Africa and involved Moville Community College, Moville, Carndonagh Community College, Carndonagh Scoil Mhuire, Buncranarana College, Buncrana, Buncrana/ Glengad Youthreach– schools. I was very impressed with these programmes especially the Worldwise Schools programme where schools in Ireland and other parts of the developing countries are involved in joint innovative projects in development. Such a model, I thought could globalize education and remove the cultural barriers and spur development.

 

At Derry or LondonDerry on our way to Donegal for second-level school outreach programme where we stopped to learn the liberation history of Irish republic.

 

At the beautiful beaches of Peninsula at Co. Donegal during one of the CDPC outreach programme.

 On the street of Carndonagh during a break after the workshop at Co. Donegal, enjoying the beautiful view of the Donegal mountains.

Just a few days towards the end of my training period, I participated in my last workshop on HIV AIDS at Parish Centre, Carlow where we presented 3 workshops to Presentation Carlow, St Leo’s Carlow and CBS, Carlow. Similar issues such as HIV testing, stigma and awareness raised during previous workshops also arose.

I also visited various shopping malls, the beautiful beaches at Bray, Kilmainham Gaol and Irish museum of modern art. I sincerely enjoyed every moment of my stay and the friendliness and hospitality of the Irish people. Despite the harsh cold weather towards the end of my training, everything was fantastic and I learnt a lot during my training period. Thanks to CDPC.