Davavaye

Written: 2/11/11 approximately 10:30 AM Kigali Time

(It’s Kinyarwanda for “I’m sad.”) I’m sitting in the Kigali International Airport and feeling quite down about leaving Kigali and the people I’ve had the pleasure to meet and work with here. I hope that we can keep in touch, and doubly hope that I’ll be back someday – perhaps for a longer stay. It was pretty neat to see how excited the lab members that I helped train got when looking at and analyzing their own data. The lab director, who I absolutely adore and spent a lot of time training, mentioned to me last night at my going-away dinner that he was very impressed with my teaching skills, which made me happy. I had to tell him the story about how the one class in Immunology that I had to teach for our TA position was on complement (an admittedly exhausting and BORING subject in Immunology), and afterwards a student asked Jessica (I think) if I study complement because I really seemed excited and interested in it. Haha. I really don’t see myself in academia or in education anytime in the future, but it would be cool to have more experience in international training/education. We'll see! Also, as a follow-up to a comment made previously about the tiers of Rwandese greetings and goodbyes and hoping to progress to the hug-level with my co-workers and friends, I am happy to say that many hugs were had by all prior to my departure from Kigali. :)

2/11/11 approximately 4 PM Nairobi Time (Kigali + 1)

Gosh, it’s really, really hot in Nairobi right now. Currently sitting at the Nairobi International Airport. Had a peanut butter sandwich I made this morning. Attempted to use the bathroom but gave up on the idea quickly after I realized that there was no water in any of the pipes. :/ Maybe I can wait…only another 6 hours until my flight, hah. (Follow-up: ~2.5 hours later, water has returned and bathrooms are functional again, thank goodness!) Met a really interesting lady sitting in the gate waiting for the Lusaka flight who actually is Zambian but works in Tanzania. Surprisingly, she was quite familiar with the ZEHRP project in Lusaka, remarked about how well run it was, and actually had a few relatives who had previously worked as nurses with the project. Guess promotions about the project really are effective, which is good to hear!