July 11: Wish I were proficient in Tshivenda

The rat was chased out of the office on Monday night after spending the day in a corner hiding from everyone. Don’t have to worry about my toes being chewed off under the desk anymore.

My roommate and I are still waiting for feedback on our data analysis, so we’d tried to spend Tuesday with one of the other UVA teams since the water filter girls are leaving this weekend and another group of students arrived last weekend. None of them were able to take us and we ended up at the office. To give us something to do other than study for my online psychology class, we went over to the microbiology lab to see what they were doing. We were told they were going to be prepping samples to run PCR (for those non-science readers, it’s a method of amplifying DNA so that you have more to work with). I expected to just sit and watch them do it, which would be good for comparing lab procedures here to those I’ve learned. When we got there, though, we were given aprons, gloves, and a procedure for extracting DNA from bacteria.

We worked with a lab assistant named Nurse, who extracts the DNA from all of the bacteria grown from the stool samples collected in the MAL-ED study. She was running about 100 samples that morning. We helped with general preparations and, for lack of enough micropipettors and nuclease-free water, watched her add reagents to microcentrifuge tubes. The method that the lab uses for extraction is the Triton boiling method. It’s basically just Triton-X as the detergent and then extreme heat for a while. After that, a quick run through a centrifuge separates the cellular debris from the DNA and one can use the supernatant directly for PCR. She had all of the cultures already and allowed us to scoop E. coli colonies off the plates for each sample.

There was so much going on in the lab, which was tiny and packed with equipment and freezers. The lady who showed us parasites was staining and viewing stools under the microscope and there were other people culturing bacteria from the stool samples, staining other samples, and doing computer analysis. MAL-ED provides constant work for a lot of people in different fields, for sure.

I’ve been surprised a few times that once I tell people I’m studying chemistry and biology they consider me immediately qualified for things like lab work and critical problem solving in those subjects. Since I’m still in school, I keep thinking of myself as just a student who is learning but doesn’t know enough to be called a scientist. In ten months I’ll be holding a BS in chemistry, though, and at that point I will be officially qualified. I’ve already taken the majority of the classes that will have taught me the skills I need to be a chemist and I’ve done a fair amount of research, so I suppose it’s not so astounding that people see me as a real scientist.

After our fun little stint in the lab, we decided to walk back to Acacia instead of waiting around the office for four more hours until the water filter team came back from the villages. We successfully crossed the major road, found Nando’s for lunch, and then made it back to the park with no problems. If we’d taken a straight route instead of winding through the market, it probably would only have taken 20 minutes. It’s good knowing that we have a way to get to and from the university if we ever end up without a ride.

I think I’ve written about peri-peri sauce before, but it’s one of the major flavourings that Nando’s uses on their veggie burgers. I’ve gotten the mild variety every time and it still makes my nose run and my eyes water so we looked at the different varieties while we were at the restaurant. The mild is actually in the middle of the spectrum. I’d be loath to try anything higher than mild for fear my tongue’d get blistered. Even though it’s so spicy, I want to put it on everything. I ate it on cauliflower that another cabin let me cook on their braai, on sweet potatoes, on green beans… I considered using it in the place of pasta sauce, but it’d probably be too much spicy for me. The sauce is apparently made from the African bird’s-eye chili, locally called peri-peri, that Nando’s pamphlets claim was discovered by some Portuguese explorers and taken back to Europe. This is probably the only food from here besides the not-so-sweet sweet potatoes that I would like to have in the States.

My roommate’s been working on a project concerning breast feeding and mental health and to supplement the numerical data, the office has been planning some focus groups with mothers to ask them specifics about their breast feeding practices, knowledge, and misconceptions. We met with two groups of mothers at the Rambuda clinic today and our advisor asked questions that my roommate and other MAL-ED people have designed over the last couple weeks. My job was to film the discussions so that they can be translated into English from Tshivenda.

Even though I couldn’t understand anything that was happening, I quote enjoyed it. We were all squashed into a room in the birthing ward of the clinic and most of the mothers brought their babies. The discussions were peppered with baby squeals and fits of crying, the most vocal being a child by the name of Jessica, and one little boy who could walk kept going to the door and banging on it. I particularly enjoyed a little two-year-old girl who was clapping her hands and dancing the whole time when she wasn’t trying to pull the shoes off of a sleeping child. The youngest child there was a handsome little boy who couldn’t have been more than three or four months. He stared at me for a while, looked at his mother, then back at me, and started wailing until his mother quieted him by putting him on her breast. I’m not sure the reason he was so upset, but I’ve heard that many of the younger children get scared the first time they see a white person.

Nearly every mother with a child who was still being breast-fed had no problem pulling out a breast in the middle of the group while a camera was going to keep the baby happy or to nurse him to sleep. I don’t have a problem with breastfeeding mothers since my mom breast-fed all three of my younger siblings, but I know that it’s a big issue in the U.S. that was recently a popular topic after the TIME cover featuring a woman feeding her son. Whereas mothers who breastfeed in public in the U.S. try to be discreet and cover up, nobody gets upset if a woman feeds her baby right in the open here (or at least I haven’t witnessed it. All of my assertions are based on observation of a limited population).

Though I’d never walk out of the park with shorts shorter than my knee or a tank top, this area seems to be very accepting of naked bodies and natural body functions. Many of the traditional dances involve women who are naked aside from a belt around their hips and I’ve seen a number of men dropping trau to urinate on the side of the road. In conversation, I’ve been caught off guard by someone I barely know mentioning generally taboo topics in the U.S. like menstruation or erectile dysfunction. Condoms are available all over the place with illustrated guides on how to use them and sex is just a natural thing that people talk about, though safe sex is heavily stressed by billboards, commercials, and soap operas because of the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, other STDs, and unwanted pregnancy. I was actually fairly embarrassed to read a graphic anecdote about a husband and wife in bed on the office wall of a lecturer at the University my first day here.

When we left the clinic, three mothers needed a ride home in the bakkie we’d taken there. I gave up my seat in the cab to a mother with a six-month-old and got to ride in the bed with two other mothers, an advisor, and a two-year-old. People regularly squeeze upwards of ten or fifteen people standing in the back of bakkies to go down the road, particularly on Sunday when large crowds are trying to get home from church. I’d wondered how people could deal with the dust coming up from the road constantly, but even on the dirt road we were going fast enough that we left all the dust billowing around people behind us. Even after we’d dropped off the mothers, I opted to stay in the back for the whole ride back to Acacia. It was great having an unimpeded view of the afternoon landscape. I also enjoyed the various reactions of people seeing makuah in a bakkie. A few guys whistled and one blew a kiss, but mostly people would just stop what they were doing to watch. It was a relaxing ride.

The cars that the water filter team had rented have been covered in thick layers of dust for a while since they drive out to villages every day. Clean cars are valued here, evident by little car wash businesses just about every few feet. For the past week or so, people have been begging to wash the cars for free since they’re so dirty. One of the gate guards at Acacia has been telling me his schedule to try and arrange time to come wash it and gas station attendants (there is no such thing as self-serve here) reproach us for the dirt. While we were sitting at the Indian restaurant for a farewell dinner for the water filter girls, I looked out to see someone washing the cars unbidden. Two guys completely scrubbed the exterior of both cars and refused payment after since we’re students. We’re very sure that they just couldn’t bear to see a car as dirty as those and ridding the town of eyesores was payment enough.

We’re being kicked out of Acacia on Saturday for a wedding, so we’re going to be lodging at another place in town for a night. The water filter girls will be gone and the new group is going to Kruger, leaving us no means of transportation other than our feet. The other lodge is close enough to walk to and we’ll leave our luggage at Acacia, though, so it all works out.