Powerful talks

We spent yesterday in Ibadan, at the university. Kristian and Eric worked with Nike, Christian's postdoc, to sort out the last details on running the ELISAs and using the sample database. Thanks to Eric and Shari's hard work we now have a wonderful , barcode based pipeline for sample processing and storage that starts right at the point of collection in Irrua. Kristian and Nike have sorted out the details of the ELISA protocol and the output is looking good, so now we can get serological data from our well-tracked samples.

Kristian and I (Elinor) each gave 30 minute talks at midday at the university. Kristian's was called "Fighting immune disorders with undercover agents" and mine was on "Finding disease genes using genome sequences". The talks went well, with one little hitch. Right near the end of Kristian's talk (he went first) the power cut out, a very common occurrence here. We took a twenty minute hiatus while Christian went and found a portable generator, set it up in an office down the hall, ran power cords through the hallways, and hooked up the projector again. And closed the door to the office with the generator so we could actually be heard. Then we continued, without lights, or fans, or microphone. Or A.C. - which the Nigerians dealt with much better than Kristian and I, who were pretty much drenched in sweat by the time we finished! (it was over 95F / 35C and 80% humidity outside.) The power came back on about 15 minutes before I finished. We were very well received and the Nigerians had lots of great questions.

We're heading to Lagos later today after saying our goodbyes, and flying home tonight - all except Eric, who is off to London, and then Sierra Leone.

Goodbye Irrua

We left Irrua yesterday for the five hour drive back to Ibadan - the west bound road is much better paved than the east bound road, so the trip is a bit quicker. Of course, this also means there aren't so many street vendors and fruit stands. On the east bound road, dozens cluster around every big crater in the road and hawk their wares to the drivers slowing down to gingerly navigate past. Kristian and I still wonder - which comes first, the pothole or the market stands?

We went for dinner the night before with the adminstrative staff from the hospital at a beautiful outdoor restaurant. Eric, Kristian and I took it upon ourselves to entertain the crowds, by diligently spraying ourselves with bug repellant - apparently, this is a novel concept! We tasted palm wine - a low alcohol, fermented beverage which must be an aquired taste. We didn't aquire it. The food - fresh cooked fish - was absolutely delicious and quite spicy - except that a mysterious mixup resulted in two fish being cooked for a crowd of about thirty, so we all left a bit hungry. We went back to the hotel afterward and feasted on pineapple and powerbars.

We said our goodbyes to the lab staff yesterday morning and got all the samples and equipment packed into our jeep. After a final, farewell photograph (see below) we hit the road!

Chasing patience

Chasing patients, actually. Shari and I went out with the clinic staff today to collect follow-up samples from Lassa fever patients and their household members. We discover that, like most things in Nigeria, that is much more complicated then it sounds! People just choose their own house numbers, so they often aren't even remotely consecutive. On one road, we found two different No. 10 houses. At another place, we found not the patient, but her daughter, who helpfully hopped in our car and directed us to her mother's house. At the next house, we discovered the patient actually lived out of town, and just stayed with his brother while he was sick.

Getting to each new place took a while, since the roads are unpaved and very bumpy, and there are no maps. We had to rely on asking passerbys for help, which usually led to lots of very animated discussions and more and more people coming over to offer assistance. And have I mentioned it is really HOT here?

At the end of the day, though, our very diligent collaborators here had managed to find two patients and sample them and their families. A very successful day here in Nigeria, given all of the roadblocks, both literal and figurative!

We're heading back to Ibadan tomorrow, having finished everything we wanted to do in Irrua - thanks to Eric's and Christian's planning, and everyone's hard work.

Our visit Mr. Adomeh's village

I'm just going to put up a short post here now, because things are crazy busy as we try to get everything done before leaving Irrua for Ibadan on Wednesday - and somehow it is already 5pm!
Yesterday was Sunday and we had big social plans. In the morning, Shari and Eric went to church with Filomena for about two hours (started at 6am!) while Kristian and I chose to sleep in and louge around and enjoy a luxurious hotel breakfast of toast. Just toast. No butter, no jam, no coffee. But we did have to wait 45 minutes for it. This morning we just ate powerbars instead.


In the afternoon we went off on a two hour drive to Mr. Adomeh's home village, where he grew up until he was 13 years old and left for secondary school. The road was unpaved, and apparently graded about 10 years ago, but since it floods every year it was hard to tell. The jeep stayed upright, though, and just a few of the bridges actually had gaping holes.

We spent several hours up in Mr. Adomeh's village. Kristian just put in his two cents - "it was awesome!" Everyone was extremely friendly, like everywhere we've been - although I think the children (the many, many children) weren't quite sure whether we were incredibly exciting or a bit scary. We had a very impressive entourage following about 30 feet behind us all the way through the village. We met the chief and ate lunch with Mr. Adomeh's brother. In the evening, we had dinner Ekpoma with Mr Adomeh, his wife and their three children. Thank you to all the Adomehs, and Filomena, for a wonderful day!

I better sign off now- I need to go and help Kristian aliquot, so I'll leave you with a photo of our new friends, all trying to look very cool for the camera ...

Elinor