I was back in the lab again this morning and got to do a few more things than the day before, though nothing terribly exciting, just labeling slides, filling in paperwork and handing out candies. There was another surge of kids coming in the morning and then a slowing by 11am or so. There was one identified case of malaria, which means that blood has to be drawn so DNA, RNA and parasite extraction can be done later. The little girl (she was probably 3 years old) was by herself and very scared, so I held her hand and tried to calm her down. Amazingly enough she forgot that I was a stranger and started squeezing my hand and leaning into me (I felt pretty helpful and important at that point). It seems to be sort of an odd thing here; everyone clears cares about their kids but they don’t really feel the need to comfort them (not even in the doctor’s office where most American parents would be even more attentive). After we were done with the kids I went with Negaly (I still can’t pronounce it quite right) to see how to prepare the samples for extraction later. He needed to teach Tolo because Negaly was returning to Bamako the next day (apparently he’s the head of the parasite genetics lab there and then in October he’s beginning a PhD program at University of Maryland in Baltimore).
After the extraction we returned to the house for lunch (I was pretty hungry by this point). We ate lunch and then took a short break. Liz was very tired so she didn’t go back with us to the clinic in the afternoon. There wasn’t a whole lot to do, but I kept insisting I wanted to help so they let me help sort slides from the vaccine trial; they needed to send some slides to Bamako for QC. After that I read the news online and read my book until we headed back to the house. After dinner Liz and I went out with Tolo and Negaly; we wound up at a hotel bar (which was completely empty, apparently all the tourists come in December and January) where we played Uno for an hour or so. Afterwards we walked back to the house. The stars were amazing (there’s really no light pollution at all), though I think the change in my position on the globe made it pretty difficult for me to identify constellations. I wanted to wash off the bug spray before bed, but there really wasn’t any water. So we just crashed.
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