Week 1 at K-RITH: The Introduction

         Life is different south of the equator. I’m not sure I’ll ever grow accustomed to the high walls and razor wire that surrounds every house but people here are very friendly even tho they live with an abundance of caution. For example the Taxi’s around here know to avoid a particular road on our drive home at night because they say it where people get hijacked. Thankfully not far from our bed and breakfast is Florida road, which is full of restaurants and bars. Were told this road is one of the safest in the city, with a security guard at every building watching the cars and area for trouble, but even then we’ve kept our nighttime exploring to a minimum.

        In the last few days I’ve become good friends with a guy named Yehou “David” Gnopo from the Ivory Coast. He’s the kind of guy down to explore town and grab a drink at any time you call. Last weekend was the Top Gear auto show in Durban which apparently managed to sell out every bead and breakfast/hotel in the city including our own rooms.  This conflict in booking had us move out over the weekend so K-RITH was generous enough to provide an all expense paid trip to the 4 star resort of San Lameer  which was about an hour thirty drive south of Durban in the eastern cape. We later found out this this same slight booking “accident” occurred last year as well no one was complaining which had us thinking this may have been a surprise trip all along... and I'm definitely not complaining  We caught a taxi to the bus station around 17:45 to catch our 18:45 bus. The taxi drive through downtown is always chaotic with open air markets and thousands of people everywhere. Whipping out a camera to take pictures is probable not the best idea so no pictures for now. I was definitely on edge the first week with how dangerous everyone says SA can be, but I haven't been pestered yet. So far it seems the best rules to stay safe here are the same everywhere: Don’t bring attention to yourself and dont wander into places that look unsafe. Although waiting at the bus station for an hour after dark felt a little unsafe it was completely uneventful. Its really an insightful experience to be for once an obvious minority.

        When we arrived at San Lameer it felt a little like we were entering Jurassic park.  There was a tall 12 foot electrified fence and razor wire surrounding the entire resort.  Since we arrived at night it astounding how great the view of the stars was. I once again could see milky way in all its glory and I saw for the first time, as a guy named Ted pointed out: the crux or southern cross. Its hard to miss with the brightest orange star I've ever seen. 

  At the resort we got to take several trips to the ocean, play some soccer and lounge around during the day while I read up on some papers. At night we had a braai the South African way with ted’s gourmet burgers, my grilled chicken, the girls awesome side dishes and as much beer and wine as you could drink. We didn’t have Internet for the entire weekend and yet it didn't matter.

          Back in Durban, after our eastern cape adventure (San Lameer), I was moved from my single room with an awesome balcony into a three-person unit with a girl named Venia and a roommate named Tobello. Six other girls in the program live upstairs, which has makes organizing dinner and activities simple after an exhausting lab day, and Goodness (the name of the manager at Erlesmyer lodge where I stay) takes care of us with a cleaned room and fresh towels every night. I’m surviving

           Tomorrow I have my first lab presentation on my project for these next 8 weeks. I’ve had to read quite a few papers these last few days to develop my non-existent infectious disease background into something more useful. The plan is to develop a way to detect an antioxidant level in patient lung tissue using mass spectrometry. I’ll be visiting a local hospital to learn a little about the healthcare system in SA and also working with a thoracic surgeon as they resect TB infected lung lobes so we can bring it back to the lab. Then I’ll be working in a BSL 3 lab to cut up and store it then prepare samples for the mass spectrometer. The great news is we just got IRB approval! Which makes me pretty excited about this medical/basic science project. My PI, Andries Steyn, has been really good so far about making this a learning experience and helping me to really think through the problems facing this project without giving me answers. This is partially because nothing like it has really been attempted in his lab (or any that we know of) but also because its made me learn a lot about searching through many different kinds of primary literature to get everything from background info on mycobacterial redox to metabolite digesting methods for LC-MS.

A bonus to working at K-RITH is being surrounded by the leaders in HIV and TB research, especially when your desk is at the doorway to the director. In just my short time here there has already been several great talks from people from Cal Tech, Harvard and MIT as well as a NIH meeting, which is pretty good company. In the end sheer amount of positive influence and experience that surrounds you makes for an exciting work environment full of unexpected surprises.

Arrival

   I finally made it! After the 48 hour trip I’m pretty exhausted and in need of a shower but I'm really starting to enjoy solo traveling. My only other experience with this was my recent trip to Miami where I had such an easy time chatting up strangers and making friends everywhere I went. Something about traveling alone makes you an easy/interesting person to talk to I suppose.  In this short time I had two really memorable conversations. 

   The first one happened after a long day visiting Westminster, the aquarium walking through Tate Modern, seeing the London Bridge, and sitting through Sundays sung Eucharist at St. Paul’s cathedral (chilling acoustics for all the choir and organ music) after I offered the rest of my table for a family from Moscow to sit at when I was grabbing lunch at the George. 

They had a son and daughter about my age and mom was a cardiologist. The mom had pretty good English and the son was really helpful at translating some things to her mom even though he never tried speaking English. The conversation just consisted of what they visited in London, vacation plans and what its like to be a doctor in Russia/med student in America, but it was really cool to see how excited they were about visiting the US on their next vacation. 

   After lunch I walked all the way to Paddington station, through Soho area. I was blown away at how big the entertainment area was! There were literally hundreds of blocks filled with all kinds of specialty/clothing shops, cafe's, theaters and people. You'd have to spend a ton of time just to get an idea of what is available.

   After I made it back to Heathrow, The next awesome conversation I had was with a cute girl with a dragon tattoo (lol) from London on my 10-hour flight to Johannesburg. She was traveling with her father on vacation after recently graduating from University. This girl was quite the traveler (Mexico, Chile, Colombia, lots of Euorpe, SA  etc.) and said her favorite place in the whole world to visit was Cuba! Said she'd been there 5 or 6 times and since it was been isolated by the US it a really fun/unique place - It's funny how commonplace visiting Cuba, Mexico and other places in Latin America is for Europeans where if you told an American you visited those places all we think about is how dangerous it is. Makes you realize how easily we Americans shelter ourselves from the “dangerous” outside world and miss interacting with some amazing people. - She bartends for a pub somewhere in London and gave me a lot of stories on the ups and downs of growing up in such an international city [Unfortunately for her people don’t tip the service industry people which means her high hourly wage still doesn't compare to her American counterparts especially in such an expensive city. A 5-euro tip for her is a big deal since she'll be lucky to get 1. So a little advice, to easily get on a European bartenders good side is to do the American thing and tip even something as little as 5% will make you seem like a boss].

After landing A driver from K-RITH picked me up and took me to my apartment. The drive here had some great views of all the rolling hills and beautiful beaches that make up Durban. Current temp is a little cool with high 64 low 43 but I can live with the week long forecast of mid 70’s in this mild winter vacation wonderland.

In summary: Traveling alone is a lot of fun! It makes it so you cant ignore the people around you by only conversing with your friend and it makes you super approachable for other solo travelers (you instantly have something in common).