New house, crazy kids and a beach party

This week went by sooo fast! And it feels like I’ve been here for much longer already. Maybe that’s because I’m not the only newbie anymore. Last week two Austrian students arrived, Luzia and Anthony, and a few days ago another German girl, Magdalena. I have also moved to one of the Cermel houses right next to the lab. I found out that is used to be called ‘the rat house’ because there were so many rats, but after the holes in the house were stuffed there were no rats anymore, until a few days ago. Hopefully that was just one. The house has 4 rooms, a dining place, kitchen and bathroom with warm water. Sadly that changed this morning, when one of the hot water pipes burst. I hope it gets fixed soon, because I really appreciated the warm showers. The room is not very big; I think about 8 m². The mattress is already super old and thin in the middle, so I try to sleep on the sides. I share the house with Andreas, Mirjam and Wiebke, but the other also regularly visit our house. One of my housemates got really creative; he built a real pizza oven. We tested it last weekend, and it worked! The pizzas were great.

My new house

The view from the house

The 'living room'

The kitchen

This is how we lock the bathroom door

My room

The pizza oven

The proud pizza oven maker with his first pizza

During the week I started with malaria slide reading. That means looking for malaria parasites in a blood smear through a microscope. If they are there, we should also calculate how many parasites per microliter are present in the blood and determine which of the 4 species is causing the malaria. Because this is a clinical setting, and not a controlled lab setting with for example mice, it is possible to find other parasites as well. I took a few pics through the microscope.

Johanna and Luzia looking for parasites

Many red blood cells, 4 of them infected with malaria parasites
and a few white blood cells on the right (purple) 

Trypanosoma

Loa loa

I have my favourite places for lunch. Favourite, I say. There are not many options. There is one place on the hospital grounds where we often buy lunch. ‘The lunch ladies’. They make sandwiches, and they can make them vegetarian; with salad, tomato, onion, avocado, beans, eggs. They also have rice and chicken, and aubergine with fish. Some days they make the aubergine without fish, for the only 2 vegetarians working here (Solveig and me). There is another ‘favourite’ place on the island in the river. It’s called ‘Madame Baye’ (don’t really know how to spell it). I believe she cooks on fireplace and she doesn’t have running water, but the food is really nice.

Madame Baye

Rice, banana, potato and veggies

The lunch ladies

I am beginning to understand what I can do here. The study I am taking part in is about a malaria vaccine. So far, the participants have received the vaccine (or the control vaccine) 3 times. They all have to come back next month for a malaria challenge; which means they will receive an injection with a number of known malaria parasites. After that they will be monitored closely, and when they start developing malaria they will of course receive the appropriate treatment. During (and also before) the monitoring phase the people in the team will take blood, urine and feces samples regularly. My task is to organise and implement the urine collection during this phase of the research. The analysis of the samples will take place in the Netherlands, so I will not learn much about that, but I will find out a lot about the organisation, logistics and ethics in clinical trials. This of course also gives me the perfect opportunity to find out more about other clinical studies at the institute, and talk to other PhD candidates about their experiences here. I have already found a few differences. Thing that make a lot of sense, but never occurred to me before. For example, I have not seen many researchers keep track of their activities in lab journals, because they deal with clinical samples here. Every sample has a separate form and those are all kept in one place. There is no trial and error regarding the methods; all the methods are fixed and written down in SOPs for the specific clinical trials. Every researcher needs to be trained to perform them, no matter what your background is or how much experience you already have. There is also an annual check-up, to see if the trained personnel is still following the protocol like they should, because all samples should be handled the same.

On Wednesday there was a goodbye party for the kids who were involved in the art projects. They have family in the hospital, either as patients or as employees. The art project was for their entertainment. I was on my way home when I saw them all enjoying ice cream and cake, and I was invited to join them. I sat down with the kids, and soon after one of them started playing with my hair. They tried talking to me, but I didn’t understand most of it. They said things about my hair and my white skin. One girl brought me a flower. I wanted to quickly take a pic of the girl behind me, who was playing with my hair, but then she yelled ‘PHOTO’ as soon as I tried to click a pic, and within seconds there were kids all around me. The pictures need no further introduction ;). 

I don’t have to be afraid to feel lonely or get bored here. Especially not in the weekends. I was invited for a housewarming/brunch this Saturday. It was actually the housewarming of Angelique, the girl who lived in my room before I moved in, and Pia. They are payed employees at the institute, so they had to move out because of that. They have a really cute house. It took some time to get it, and some effort and money to get things like a kitchen in place, but now they have a really great place to live. Something I could get used to as well.

Brunch at Angelique and Pia's new place

The view from the house

Baby cuteness

In the evening there was a beach party, organised by the IT guys. I speak to them quite often, because I have problems with the wifi. At least 3 times per week I think. Their IT office is a mess, but in the end they do fix my wifi, so Im happy. 

The party was great! It was on the sand by the river, so not really a beach. The view is great though! Earlier this week I sat there with Luzia to enjoy the view and a good conversation. There was food and drinks, a fire, football (actual football and football on tv, because the boys had to watch), table tennis and dancing. Salsa and African. The African dancing included a lot of ass shaking and humping each other. And there was a lot of talking; I managed to actually have a conversation in French. Sometimes I am so confused, because most people speak French, but many students speak German. Some of them speak Dutch too, or Afrikaans. English is also frequently used, and as if that is not enough to handle for one brain there are also people who speak Spanish. When they ask me ‘Hablas Español?’ I have to stop myself from replying in French, and I can’t even think of the Spanish word for yes. Anyway, the party was great. By the time I got home and washed all the sand out of my hair it was 6 o’clock in the morning. I managed to do laundry on Sunday (there are no washing machines here, so doing laundry takes time), talk on Skype and sleep. I'm still tired now.. I will just leave you with this weekend's pics. Byeee!

At the riverbank with Luzia

Sunset at Cermel

Sunset at Cermel

Beach party!!

The boys need to watch football

Salsa on the beach

Angelique's performance

Group picture! The kids just love cameras

Love this pic :)