The bugs

Hi everyone,
So sorry, I know it has been a seriously long time since I posted anything. I think blogging is not really my strong suit but I’ll definitely try to post once a week from here on out. I had been planning to post about our trip to the coast, but then Brandon beat me to it! I think he did a great job describing everything., probably better than I could have done. However, he did forget to mention how he and Damian left Anne and me the task of killing the 20 large cockroaches in the bathroom while they went to watch a dog dig up crabs on the beach. That’s right, they left the women to take care of the nasty giant cockroaches while they went out to play. I used the only weapon available at the time (an empty beer bottle) and went for it! It was my first experience killing cockroaches and after witnessing my skills with the empty beer bottle weapon, Anne says she wouldn’t want to make me mad if there is an empty bottle close by. Apparently I was a little aggressive towards the cockroaches, but they were giant and nasty and freaked me out!

If I were naming different sections of my trip, I would label these past couple weeks the bug weeks. We had the cockroaches in our bathroom at Tiwi, bed bugs in our beds at the resort in Diani, found a giant centipede creature the size of a hand crawling around, and exterminated the 70 large ants that had made a home in our bathroom sink in Nairobi. Although they seem less harmful than other bugs, I think that ants have become my least favorite bug and the ant extermination process in our bathroom was pretty funny. I’d been finding these ants around every night since I arrived; just about 2 or 3 in the bathroom sink area each night. Then, last weekend, I went into the bathroom around 2am and found about 10 of them crawling on the sink. The winged ones had even come out, which I hadn’t seen before. They have super strong bug killer here in the stores (probably with some illegal chemicals banned in the US) and we had previously bought some to try to take care of the ants but hadn’t really used it yet. I had also been trying to figure out where they were hiding out. That night I saw them crawl into this little hole on the bottom of the sink and decided to spray into the hole. Immediately following the ants started pouring out and I was madly spraying the bug spray at them while they were starting to cover the bathroom floor. We finished the extermination around 3am and the floor was covered in at least 70 dead ants. But, the good news is I haven’t seen another ant in the bathroom since! In general, I feel that I’ve definitely had my share of bug experiences for the moment and am ready for a break!

As far as life in Kenya is concerned, I think I have finally started to settle into a routine here. I spend Mondays in the lab working on various aspects of different projects right now and will soon start generating some DNA that will be used for part of my dissertation. I spend Tuesdays and Fridays working on data analysis and will also start using that time to develop my dissertation proposal. I spend Wednesdays working on another project related to pediatric HIV medication adherence and Thursdays in the pediatric HIV clinic. I really enjoy my time in the clinic, although I’m not always sure how helpful I am. It definitely gives me a new perspective on the research process and the logistical aspects that go into international research.

I am also in the process of learning Kiswahili and have tutoring sessions twice a week. So far the sessions have been going really well and I feel that I am learning a lot. I’m hoping to become fluent by the time that I leave, although sooner rather than later would be nice. All of the women in the clinic speak Kiswahili, so the more I know, the more I am able to communicate with them and the toddlers. The clinic staff is having a great time helping me learn the language too, and they think it is really funny telling me sentences and then trying to get me to pronounce them correctly. I have learned that I am much better at learning other languages when I can see how the words are spelled and am not a very auditory learner. I can hear the word many times but it won’t stick in my head until I see it written down.

It was so great to have Brandon here for the past couple weeks and it was really hard for me to say good-bye to him on Monday when he left! It really makes me wish he had been able to come for the entire time, but I know that that wasn’t necessarily the right decision for him (or us in the long run). But, I am really going to miss him and I can’t believe that he doesn’t come back until December. That seems like such a long time away from now. Thankfully, Kiea will be here soon to visit, so I have something else to look forward to that can help keep my mind off missing Brandon.

Anyway, not much exciting going on here this week, but hopefully I’ll have more exciting stories to tell after the weekend.
Kwaheri for now!