Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Monday July 12, 2010 - Explosions, Gorilla Bits and Internet (not)

The bombing was the topic of conversation this morning -there was a lot of tsk tsking by a people here, a series of very gory photos of dead people in white plastic lawn chairs on the front cover of the only Ugandan newspaper I have seen, and a phone call from Rwanda to make sure the MGVP group here is all OK. If I hadn’t been out with the Americans last night I wouldn’t have even known to ask about it until I got the phone call. But at Makerere at least, it seems to be business as usual. In the evening Betty turned on the television and we watched some rather horrifying footage with Betty’s sister Sheila, a very committed and talkative pastor, who came by for a visit. I have had to be trained on turning on the tv as the on off button has nothing to do with the power switches and is very unobstrusively located. Not to mention the little sparks that come out of the outlet when you plug it that are rather worrying though rather pretty.

Gorilla Bits

This morning the gorilla necropsy samples arrived so Denis and I spent most of the day trimming them, just in time to be too late to put them in the processor overnight. But at least our part is done for a while. The post-mortem facilities are, how shall I say it, basic. It took Denis a while to gather together basic items such as latex gloves and scalpel blades, they re-use disposable tissu-tek cassettes, and we had to make little paper labels to go in each one. There is a fume cabinet to reduce formalin exposure, but I don’t think I’m going to be noticing any subtle scents for some time. After spending several days making up a powerpoint presentation on laboratory safety I can say that we have a ways to go here to come up with where USAID thinks projects should be working at.

The Intenet (not)

The internet and I are not doing well together. Just as I left on Friday I got a loaner 3G modem stick that should have given me wireless for the weekend, which I was rather looking forward to. Alas, it does not seem to work which may be why it was in a drawer as a spare. And there is apparently a broken cable in the middle of the ocean which isn’t bringing internet to Africa the way it is supposed to, so Makerere appears to be an internet-free zone at the moment. I think there is sporadic access but not when I tried, and it will take “several weeks” to be sorted out. That could likely mean almost anything

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