Work... ?

   I really haven’t written much about work here, and I suppose it’s as good a time as any. Even though it doesn’t always feel like ‘work’, I suppose that’s what it is! So far I have been mostly helping with two of the projects that students are working on, and preparing lessons for the school program on the side.

    In July I will be re-starting up the Library Club, an outreach where Lipa and I will go to the Kasane Library and meet with Primary School-age children to teach them how to use the books, computers, and just to read with them. The schools have a vacation for all of July, so that is why I haven’t been working at the schools since I’ve been here (they had exams during June). But it is the perfect time to hold this ‘club’ because usually the kids are busy almost every afternoon of the week! I am looking forward to starting to interact with the kids as it will help me to plan a bit better for when the ‘Conservation Club’ starts up in August at the schools.

    In the meantime, I have helped with various things around the center. I’d say the largest project right now (one that we have the NSF grant for) is studying the water quality of the Chobe River. This is a huge project studying the effect of waste on the river and the further incidence of diarrhea outbreaks as a result of the water quality. The hospital has been helping to collect data from the diarrhea patients, so we have been attempting to resolve some issues that arose from those surveys and process that data (much more time consuming than it may seem…..) to see if the source of people’s water is correlated with incidences of diarrhea. We also go out on the river once every two weeks to collect water samples at certain transects along a large portion of the river. They do fecal counts on the banks of the river along these same transects to look at the amount of feces from animals and humans that may be flowing into the river. Megan is working on mapping the river using ArcGIS right now. I have been helping with processing the water samples to culture E.Coli, which is used as an indicator of the amount of bacteria in the water. There are hundreds of samples so it takes a lot of time to keep up with them! Rob does a great job of knowing when and what has to be done at all times.

     The other main project going on is with the Banded Mongoose. This is an ongoing study that Claire has now taken over for her Post-Doc project. They are looking at the incidence of Tuberculosis in banded mongoose and the impact of aggression on the spread of TB among the mongooses. She goes every morning to observe one of the many troops of mongoose in the area, and takes notes on their behaviors. This is something I will be helping with in the future, especially once she returns to the states around August. TB is a very mysterious disease and not much research has been done on it, especially of its prevalence among mongoose.

     One part of a different study requires us to collect kidneys from any animal possible (yes, it is acceptable to pick up roadkill) to test for Leptospirosis. We have performed several necropsy’s (dissections) to collect the organs and test them. It is really interesting to watch these and learn the anatomy of different animals. Well that’s a bit of an idea of what goes on around the center, along with lots of other things I won’t go into now! It’s been a lot of fun so far, and should only get better as I start working with the kids more.