For the finale of this amazing journey to Africa, I joined a group and hiked up Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, and the highest free-standing peak in the world. It’s a 5,895m (19,341ft) high dormant volcano that springs up into three cones – Kibo, Mawenzi and Shira. Uhuru Peak is the highest summit … Continue reading 20. Trekking to the roof of Africa
My two weeks at APOPO has flown by. Today is my last day and so I'm feeling a little sad but it really has been amazing and I think I've made the most of it. I started today in Lily's office as usual but we had a coffee and actually finally got round to completing … Continue reading 19. Wrapping up my time with APOPO including a Full Cheek Friday Feast
I was tired this morning after waking up to another rainy day. I started off by documenting all of the rats in the breeding kennels (which spelled completion of my Head Office rat audit!) and then I finished up adding the information to the master spreadsheet. Then I interviewed Pendo, a wonderful character at APOPO. … Continue reading 18 APOPO training, welfare, research and data
I am not a morning person, but my 5:50am alarm signalled the start of a great day and I quickly rolled out of bed and made it to the rat dormitories for 6am to see the rats* being loaded on to the rat bus. By 6:20am we hit the trail. *They attain the status HeroRAT … Continue reading 17 Early morning minefield training with the HeroRATs-in-training
I started off this new week at APOPO in Cindy's office, catching up after my first week and also so that I could conduct her interview. It was a really nice one and I find her very down to earth and humble, so it's an honour to have such a brilliant scientist spend her time … Continue reading 16. Starting week two at APOPO making myself useful
I had a little bit of time this morning to type up some more of the interviews I did in Nairobi before heading to the main office and then getting a lift from Kobe to the Apopo Morogoro TB lab. I had a really nice time interviewing Mica over a coffee and muffin and then … Continue reading 15. TB Office and Full Cheek Friday
There was an enormous storm overnight and when I woke up, a tree had fallen over outside my room! There were more cockroaches than usual in my room and I just spotted a large spider walking away outside the room - yay! I have another early start - today I'm going to Morogoro International School … Continue reading 14. APOPO and school visits
APOPO I'm not sure how to blog about the next two weeks. I'm going to be at APOPO Headquarters and Training Facility shadowing all elements of the operation here for two weeks. Because I have the luxury of chatting to the whole team on multiple occasions so I'll see how things develop. Today was a … Continue reading 13. APOPO Life-Saving Detection Rats
The epic bus ride to Morogoro and settling in to my new home away from home.
Some amazing teamwork transcending language barriers to install the pump at Busami.
