My first Christmas out of the USA

There have been several firsts this month, including celebrating Christmas outside of the USA.  I noticed at the international airport in Abidjan (we were picking up one of the missionary kids coming home from school break), we are actually allowed to have a nativity scene in public without someone trying to sue the government.  In a country that is better than 50% Muslim it’s amazing that no one seems offended!  Muslims and Catholics and Animists and Christians all seemed to go about their way without any trouble at all.  Okay, so that was my opinion for the night. :)

 

This is my first Harmattan season.  The dictionary describes it as “a dry, dusty easterly or northeasterly wind on the West African coast, occurring from December to February.”  What happens is that the wind blows from the north, above the Sahara dessert, blowing with it a wall of sand to the south.  One morning when I woke up, I was struck with how cool it seemed, and that is not at all normal!  I found out that the temps drop because of the wind and how the sand blocks the sun.  It's kind of like looking through the smog in one of the large cities in the States, only instead of smog it is a very fine sand.  This time of year is dangerous because the wind carries with it meningitis, an infection which is transmitted through the air.  They say if a child is brought to you seizing, having an elevated temperature during the rainy season it is most likely cerebral malaria.  Whereas, if the same child were brought during Harmattan you would treat him for meningitis.  

I also drove for the first time here in Africa.  In actually, since I left the States for language school in December 2009, I have not done a lot of driving.  Losing that independence has been a challenge for me, especially since I’ve been driving for over 30 years!  Kristine was gracious to allow me to drive her 4x4 a few times here in Bingerville.  When I was telling a friend in the States about this, she asked if we drive on the same side of the road as in the States.  I broke out in laughter!  I know she was asking if we drive on the right side of the road vs. the left side, but the reality is that we drive as much as possible where there are not potholes.  This translates that we drive on both sides of the road and even the sidewalk when necessary!  It actually reminds me a little of driving the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago.

Today we had our missionary Christmas party.  I’ve just never had a Christmas where I was sweating.  I mean, come on, I grew up in Detroit, and I’ve lived almost ten years in Colorado!  This just is too strange to be saying Merry Christmas with sweat trickling down my back.  But anyhow, there are two other independent Baptist missionary families in the general area (within an hour and a half drive), so they joined Kristine and I at the Mach’s home.  The Machs host the Christmas party for the missionaries each year.  That made for 17 folks today.  Believe it or not, I was asked to plan the games and bring cookies for the cookie exchange.  If you know me well, you know that neither of these areas are strong suites for me, but I decided to give it my best.  I was pointed to the ‘Minute to Win It’ games, and chose 8 games for the two teams to play as a relay.  It was great!  Watching grown adults trying to pick up and hang up Christmas ornaments by sucking them up with wrapping paper tubing was just too much fun!  Especially when I got to take the pictures and didn’t have to do it myself!  As for the cookies, American products are very precious commodities here, but I decided to use my graham crackers.  It is not possible to get those here so I figured I had a good shot of them going over pretty well.  I made up this mixture of butter and brown sugar with ground pecans, poured it over the graham crackers and baked them.  To add a little Christmas touch I sprinkled craisins over them.  Again, graham crackers, craisins and pecans are all precious items.  Now to look at them, they weren’t that impressive, but they tasted fantastic!  So, I happily packed them in a basket with some green tissue paper and brought them over to the party.  We had the cookie exchange after the meal, and all the ladies pulled out their cookies.  When I pulled out mine, they were swarming with ants!  Ugh!!!  Will I ever get past living with ants???  I told Becky Mach the cookies were a loss and explained the situation.  Her response?  Stick them in a hot oven for 5 minutes and the ants will run away.  Get out of town!  So, that is my fourth first – salvaging cookies from the ants by sticking them in the oven.  Would you believe that two of the men and one of the women asked who made them because they like them so much?   Wow!  It was a good day. 

Wherever you find yourself this Christmas, even if it is a long way away from anywhere you’ve ever been before, I hope you know just how loved you are.  God, our Creator, loves you with an everlasting love, and with His multitude of kindnesses to you, He wishes to draw you to Him.  Of course, the greatest demonstration of this love was when He allowed His Son to die in your place (and mine!).  His mercy endures forever.  While you have breath, if you’ll respond to His love He’ll never turn you away.  That’s a comfort and a peace, no matter where you are this Christmas!

Malaria: The beginning of the end?

As I am studying tropical medicine right now, I found this article interesting on malaria.

Steve Connor

Thursday, 10 November 2011

You wait for years for a breakthrough in the battle against malaria, and then two come along in two weeks. But the advance announced yesterday by scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge is potentially far more significant than last month's news of an experimental vaccine made by GlaxoSmithKline (and part-funded by Bill Gates), which showed partial success in early clinical trials. Scientists involved in those trials emphasised that the vaccine would only be able to contribute to the control of malaria.

The Cambridge scientists' discovery offers hope of something far more thrilling: the complete global eradication of the disease.

That tantalising goal is significantly closer, thanks to the discovery of the critical component of human red blood cells that appears to be vital for the malaria parasite to complete its lifecycle within the human body. In effect, the deadly parasite's "Achilles heel" has been identified.

This means that it should be possible to design a vaccine that blocks the parasite's development within an infected person – which, researchers believe, should prevent both the disease and its mosquito-borne transmission.

Malaria is one of the world's biggest childhood killers. Nearly a million people a year die from it, mostly children under five living in sub-Saharan Africa. Scientists have spent decades trying to devise vaccines which protect people against infection or can control the parasite's development once it is inside the body. However, the complexity of the parasite's lifecycle has frustrated the design of effective vaccines.

But now, said Julian Rayner of the Sanger Institute, the crucial protein "lock" on the surface of human red cells that allows the mosquito to insert its "key" and gain entry has been found.

"The interaction [between malaria parasite and red blood cell] that we have found has the potential to be the basis of a vaccine that would save millions of lives," Dr Rayner told The Independent. "This is possibly the most exciting vaccine target for the past 10 years."

The work behind the breakthrough, published in the journal Nature, focuses on the second phase of the malaria lifecycle in the human body, after it leaves the liver to invade the red blood cells during its "merozoite" stage.

Scientists at the Sanger Institute were able to identify a human protein, called basigin, on the surface membrane of the human red blood cells that the parasite appears to need to unlock the membrane and invade the cell.

"The malaria parasite shuttles between mosquitoes and humans. But the stage that actually causes the symptoms of the disease is where the parasite invades human red blood cells," Dr Rayner said. "It has to get inside a red blood cell to divide, spread and multiply – it's essential for the parasite's survival. But it's also a potential target for attack."

Once the scientists had identified the key protein "receptor" on the membrane of the red cells, they devised experiments to see if it was possible to block the interaction between malaria parasite and cell. They succeeded with antibodies designed to recognise and stick to the corresponding receptor protein on the parasite – blocking the "key" used by the parasite to unlock red cells.

"We can show that if we use antibody against the receptor we can completely block all detectable invasion by the parasite," said Gavin Wright, whose laboratory at the institute devised the techniques for making pure malaria parasite proteins. "We have done experiments where we've raised antibodies against the parasite protein and again we've shown very strong inhibition of the invasion process. As a starting point for vaccine development, you couldn't hope for better."

Professor Adrian Hill of the Jenner Institute in Oxford said the breakthrough could improve future vaccines.

"Reports of positive results from ongoing trials in Africa are encouraging, but in the future more effective vaccines will be needed if malaria is to be eradicated," he said. "The discovery of a single receptor that can be targeted offers the hope of a far more effective solution."

 
 

First post from Ivory Coast

So we have finally made it to Ivory Coast – the Machs, Kristine and I are all on the same continent, and in the same country, living directly across the ‘street’ from one another.  (I’m really not sure I can call the sandbag filled ruts a street, but since people do drive through here, I’m not sure what else to call it.)

It’s amazing what happens in a house in a tropical climate when it is uninhabited for over a year.  The other day, I read some lyrics which say, “Mold me and make me”, and immediately I thought of the white mold growing on the doors in the room where I’m sleeping, the smell of mold in the bathroom, and the mushrooms literally growing from the wood in the frame of my window.  Talk about a health hazard!  I’m very grateful to the man who invented bleach.  In French, bleach is called ‘eau de Javel’ – water of Javel, the inventor.

Becky Mach (there are 4 Beckys between Ghana and Ivory Coast) asked me to go to the store with her and one of her workers, Kady, to get some groceries for the family.  [Thanks to the missionary that brought us to the house, KM and I were able to get groceries at a Lebanese store before our arrival.  This store was very much like shopping in France as far as the types of groceries available.  One of the great benefits to French colonized countries is that they tend to sell the things the French like – cheese and olives, to name some of the things that thrill my heart!]

Anyhow, I went with Becky and Kady, and we walked maybe a third to a half of a mile.  Keep in mind, it is the end of the rainy season and the temps are starting to warm up, around 85F, with very high humidity.  Becky said we would take a taxi back to the house with the groceries, so I wasn’t bothered by the amounts of water and other groceries we were buying.  (I learned in France not to buy more than I could comfortably carry home.)  Kady went to the market to get eggs and some fresh fruit, but when she met us at the grocery store a conversation ensued b/n the two that I couldn’t really follow.  They were speaking pretty fast for me to understand the words, but I understood the situation – there weren’t any taxis since the war.  So while they continued their somewhat lively conversation, I pulled my bandana out of my purse, rolled it up and put it on my head because I knew what was coming.  Somehow, the 3 of us were going to have to get those groceries home, and they were too heavy to carry the American way.  When I put the bandana on my head, Kady stopped talking and began laughing, and then helped me get the box situated on my head.  I was very impressed by her, as she carried the other box of groceries, plus the eggs and fruit!  Becky was not quite sure what to think, but she got the water and bread until Kady recruited two little boys to carry the water jugs (about 3 liters a piece).   I got more than a few stares by the Ivorians, and one man gave me two thumbs up.  When we got back to the house, Kady was quick to tell the other ladies what had happened, and later Becky said she was questioned as to why, after all the years she’s been in Côte d’Ivoire, that she hasn’t ever carried anything on her head.  Too bad I didn’t have my camera!