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.