Photo Interlude - Karen

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The UNILU School of Public Health, founded in 2005 and housed in a former convent. The big tree on the left is over 100 years old -- given that Lubumbashi was founded just over 100 years ago, that's old! The SPH is sandwiched between the Lycee Tuendelee girls' school, which is also over 100 years old, and the Clinique Universitaire, which is a teaching hospital of UNILU and where the lab we'll be working with on our planned study of the prevalence of colonization with group B streptococcus in pregnant women is located. The nuns lived here and worked in the hospital (and also the school?), going back and forth through a gate in the back courtyard that you can't see from here. During some down time between master students' defenses last week, I saw lots of types of birds, including a pair of African-Paradise Flycatchers, in that back courtyard.

The office I share with an epidemiologist colleague -- looking across from my desk to his. He has another office at the public Jason Sendwe Hospital, which is where he spends most of his time.

Vaccination poster on the door of the cold room at the provincial Ministry of Health where the vaccines for the EPI (Expanded Programme on Immunisation) are stored. My SPH colleague and I visited the MOH and met with the Minister, who was very supportive of our proposal to conduct the GBS study among women attending hospitals in the area.

A few Ebola prevention posters from medical facilities. The West African epidemic seems pretty remote here, but at the same time, as the country where Ebola was first discovered (in the north, far, far from here) and which has a lot of experience in controlling EVD outbreaks (including one just last month), the DRC is working to train groups of experts to help in West Africa. In fact, the microbiologist who will work with us on the GBS study is currently in Kinshasa for the training. We also went to an amazingly acrobatic dance performance the other night, and one of the numbers was a solemn piece that dramatized the EVD epidemic and ended with the performers holding signs that read "Let's fight against Ebola" and "Together we can save the world" -- an earnest sort of "We Are the World" echo.

 

More of those smoky purple flame trees I love.

We wanted to adopt these kittens! They were hanging around the garden of the hotel we stayed at briefly before moving to the apartment, and we had fantasies of bringing them with us to the house we planned to rent. But a) we didn't get the house, and b) they weren't strays. But we're not ruling out the possibility, with a different house and different kittens.

One of the places we ate a few times when we had to eat every meal out. The South African fast food chain Galito's and affiliated Zimbabwean Chicken Inn, Pizza Inn, and  Creamy Inn  opened in Lubumbashi less than a year ago; they serve surprisingly good fast food. By the way, the shirt Eric is wearing here is one I got him in Ghana -- we haven't seen anything like it here, where most men wear western-style shirts or else custom-tailored shirts made of colorful patterned pagnes.

The Institut Francais sponsored a program as part of the FAO's World Food Day (this year's theme is Family Farming), which included a showcase of some local projects like this one to make efficient stoves that use less fuel and generate less smoke. Jiko means stove in Swahili. We also tasted a peanut-sweet potato loaf which was like a veggie meatloaf and bought some delicious pili-pili (the ubiquitous hot red pepper sauce that makes everything taste better -- just ask Martha Stewart). 

One of the planned World Food Day activities was a visit to a farm outside town, but it was canceled on account of the first real downpour of the rainy season, which created this huge hole on the street outside  the Belgian Megastore supermarket on Chaussee Laurent-Desire Kabila (formerly known as, and often still referred to as, Chaussee Mobutu). So far, this has been the only downpour of the rainy season -- it's been dry, dry, dry.

And that's it for now!