South Africa

Clearly, I'm lousy at keeping a blog. My last post was a year and a half ago. Since then, I taught orphans in Peru how to solder (an important skill in the jungle), had a great Christmas with friends in the mountains of NC, took my qualifying exam, was a teaching assistant for an awesome class, went to China, and wrote a grant proposal--all things that would have each deserved several blog posts, if only I hadn't been so busy doing them.

So, I'm going to make more of an effort to blog (we'll see how long that lasts).

I'm in South Africa now, working for a month at the Center of Excellence for Biomedical Tuberculosis Research, led by Professor Paul van Helen at Stellenbosch University. Rick is developing a point-of-care device for diagnosing TB and determining the particular strain a person is infected with, which is very important for prescribing the appropriate antibiotics. The test is unique in that it looks for mutations in the genome of the TB pathogen using a new, rapid technique for DNA amplification. I'm going to help him by building a battery-powered, handheld gadget that can "read" his chip in the field. My initial research interest when I came to grad school was in point-of-care diagnostics, so I'm glad to finally be working on a project in that area, even if it is a bit of a departure from my main project. South Africa, unfortunately has one of the highest TB burdens in the world, and so there is a great deal of clinical and research experience with the disease. This, combined with SA's relative wealth compared to other TB-burdened countries, makes it one of the best places for research.

I've been here for a week and I've had a lot of fun. Rick has been here for a month already, so he's been showing me around and getting me acquainted with everyone here. We've made a lot of friends in the lab and in the building where we live. Rick found this great apartment in downtown Cape Town with an amazing view of Table Mountain. There's a roofdeck with a small gym, swimming pool, sauna, and barbecue pits (they call it "braai" here). Someone comes once a week to clean the apartment. There's a great coffee shop downstairs called "Mugged", as in, if you live in Cape Town, you'll probably get mugged once in a while. I've been going up every morning and working out. There's a punching bag in the gym and it's made me want to pick up martial arts again.

Last weekend, we had a Braai on our roofdeck and invited people over from the lab. Rick and I loaded up on meat and wine at the grocery store. I insisted that we would never go through so much wine in one night (we bought 12 bottles and had a few more back at the apartment), but turns out we almost did. I guess Rick has made a lot of friends. While we were on the roof we met another group up there and we all went out together. It was a good evening, although the ending wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. Apparently the Bronx club in Cape Town is….renowned. My ass has never seen so much grabbing.

Rick and I went down to the Cape of Good Hope and it is BEAUTIFUL. We hung out with penguins and watched whales as we ate fresh fish. Rick also treated me to a Thai massage when I first got here (I mean, he didn’t give the massage. He bought me a massage. The masseuse, by the way, was gorgeous). I think he’ll propose any day now.

After lots of planning and map reading and flight checking and consternation, we’ve decided to go nowhere this weekend. We were going to take this epic trip to Botswana, which is apparently the best place in Southern Africa to see animals. We’re ordering a bunch of things for the project which will take some time to get here, so we were thinking now would be a good time to take a long trip. But Botswana would involve a 16 hour drive (one-way). So in the end, we abandoned the idea, but we might do it this weekend instead.

There are several groups here who are interested in working with us. Rick’s device can be applied to any kind of diagnostic in which you want to rapidly genotype a person or the pathogen they’re infected with. So in addition to the people who are studying TB and it’s various drug resistance mutations, we’re also going to be working with an HIV group and another group who looks at genetic indicators of cardiomyopathy. It’s very cool to find collaborators like this who are enthusiastic about device development and bring the clinical and molecular biology expertise to the table.

Today we’re going to a rugby game. I *think* we are, anyway. We put our name down on a list, but we don’t actually know where the game is or who to contact. So hopefully they call us.

My cellphone number here is +27 (74) 623-2644. So from the US, dial 011-27-74-623-2644. I jailbroke and unlocked my iPhone so I could install a local SIM card. It was super easy. You can just visit JailbreakMe over wifi from your phone. And once it’s jailbroken, you can unlock it by downloading ultrasn0w with Cydia. There was recently a court ruling that declared that jailbreaking should be allowed by Apple, so doing so doesn’t prohibit you from getting updates anymore. I think when I get back to the US I’m going to switch cell phone carriers. AT&T is so crappy and overpriced.

I’ll post pictures soon. My camera’s not working, so Rick is taking pictures for the both of us.