Adventures in the ‘Warm Heart of Africa’

This week was full of social events. Workwise, there is not a lot to report—I spent a lot of time reading papers about malaria pathophysiology and epidemiology as we continue to await ethical approval from the College of Medicine Research & Ethics Committee for our research. The building where I work has a guava tree…

On Monday Linda, another Fulbrighter, and I met the Deputy Ambassador from the US Embassy in Malawi for a lemonade. She is a St. John’s alumna and as a true Johnny is a self-proclaimed generalist—she has lived all around the world and has not specialized in one particular focus area. As she and her family…

This week was super busy—we spent most of it rushing to get our project submitted through the online portal by Thursday for local ethical approval. It took a team to get the several outstanding pieces needed for the submission by the deadline. Innocent and Patricia were able to translate our updated consent forms. Innocent received…

In the lab I continue to trouble-shoot our molecular assay, working with Godfrey, Jomo, and Thoko. It is steadily improving, but we are going to continue to fine-tune next week. We are also starting our experiments to evaluate malaria rapid diagnostic tests as a source of parasite genetic material. My roommate, Maria, arrived and is…

Well, this week had some ups and downs. I spent most days in the lab learning how to do the molecular biology procedures we will need for our research. I have done some of these techniques before, but it has been a long time, and my pipetting skills are seriously rusty. Godfrey and another member…