New HIV vaccine target

About a month ago, I posted about an article that had been published from some research I worked on Bangladesh. Just last week, an article was published in Science about some exciting results from one of the vaccine studies we were doing in Rwanda. The study was sponsored by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and took place at sites around the world including the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and west, east and southern Africa. At our site, we identified and collected samples from individuals who had been infected with HIV for at least three years but who were clinically well and had never been on antiretroviral therapy (ART). Samples from all sites were sent to international laboratories, where two powerful new broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV were identified. Results also revealed a new vulnerable spot on the HIV virus that no previously-known antibodies have targeted, which is huge news for vaccine development!

After so many disappointments and so much negativity in the world of HIV vaccine research over the past couple years, it's really exciting to see some new developments. Read more here.

Detained and deported

As much as Egypt parades itself as a free democracy, sometimes reality hits. Last night a good friend was returning to the country after a three-month vacation in England and the U.S. When he arrived at the airport, he was detained, questioned and eventually deported. Although no reason was ever stated, it is most likely that this treatment resulted from his participation several months ago in a peaceful march in protest of Egypt's treatment of Gaza. Read more about his story here.

A day on the beach in Ada

We arrived in Ghana late Saturday night and, even though sleeping in the next day would have been nice, we made plans to get up early to celebrate the birthday of one of our American colleagues who’s based in Accra. She and her husband picked us up early that morning and we headed east to an area called Ada, which is about an hour away from Accra.

Our colleague is married to a Ghanaian who has a cousin who owns a little beach camp right where the Volta River meets the Atlantic Ocean, so we had planned to spend the day there. I knew having a day to relax outside Cairo would be nice, but I had no idea how beautiful and relaxing the area would be.
When we arrived in Ada, we hopped on a little boat on the shore of the Volta River and headed toward the Atlantic. When we were just a short way from the ocean, we pulled over to a little sandy strip of land (barely 100 metres wide) between the river and the ocean. This was our friend’s beach camp and it was perfect – bare bones cabins, empty hammocks and relative silence. We strolled over to the Atlantic and walked on the beach for a while. It was a beautiful day and the waves were powerful and majestic, but, as much as I wanted to, it was impossible to ignore the incredible amount of garbage on the beach. The beach was literally covered in garbage, not from tourists dropping their water bottles and candy wrappers, but from cities all along the West coast of Africa. Ghana, like so many other countries in the world, including the United States, uses the oceans of the world as a giant landfill, and Ada is one of the places where the local population is too poor to clean the beaches, so instead they are covered in garbage.
After walking along the beach, we decided to settle in and relax at the camp for a bit. A couple hours later, our colleague’s husband’s cousin took us out for a tour of the area by boat. I really had no idea how huge the Volta River actually is! Every time I thought we had reached the other side, our captain would turn the boat just so that I could realize that we were instead on the shore of another island.
After riding around for a while, admiring homes of foreign business men and sighing at the contrasting houses of the local population, we stopped on one of the islands. We had been discussing hopping off to walk through a village, so I assumed we had reached our destination, but I was very wrong.
Instead, we had reached one of the distilleries where local Ghanaians make their very own rum, with the claim that Jamaican rum is nothing compared to Ghanaian. (I might argue that “moonshine” would be a better term to describe what we saw and tasted, but “rum” is the local term.) Apparently the process goes something like this:

Step 1: Grind sugar cane through this antique contraption.
Step 2: Transfer the sugar cane juice to these giant pots to ferment.
Step 3: Pour fermented sugar cane juice into this barrel and light a fire underneath (after removing the baby goat, of course).
Step 3: Let the liquid boil and transfer through the coil from one barrel to the other.
Step 4: Let the liquid cool and drain into this glass container, being sure to release and discard the methanol first.
Then somehow the “rum” makes it from the glass container into recycled water bottles that sit for sale in this little store.
After “ooo-ing and “ahhh-ing” and asking questions at every stop during our tour, I thought we would return to the boat and continue our relaxing afternoon of cruising on the river. I was wrong. Apparently there’s no way to get off a rum maker’s island without first tasting his product.

We all sat down in the middle of the operation at a table, surrounded by curious children, baby goats and chickens, and a large bottle of “rum” appeared with a shot glass. (The rum maker thought it was hilarious that his shot glass said “Jamaica” and made several references to the fact that his rum was better than any from Jamaica but that he didn’t have a shot glass that said “Ghana”.) The rum maker began making his way around the table, serving each person a shot of rum. There was no opportunity to say no.

My colleague who had traveled with me from Cairo was up first and took her shot like a champ. I was up next. Now, I feel like I’m usually pretty good in these types of situations that involve eating or drinking something that might not necessarily be pleasant. This day I failed miserably. I swallowed down the shot in one gulp, and then I felt every organ from my tongue to my stomach burning. It was all I could do not to cough and cry. But I will say, had it not burned so badly, the flavor wasn’t bad. I’ll also say that the rum maker is some kind of salesman, because I still somehow walked away with a small water bottle as a souvenir.

After we’d all taken a couple obligatory shots of rum, we piled back into our little boat and took off into the river again. After a few minutes we spotted a fishing boat just coming in from the sea and unloading its cargo on the shore. The guys decided to buy some fish, so we stopped. It was an impressive operation. The fishermen stood on the boat unloading their fish into pans atop the heads of local women, who carried the fish to shore and unloaded them into neat stacks. Meanwhile children played in the water and climbed on the boat, and it didn’t take long to realize that they were stealing fish. Occasionally one would surface from under the water and take off running, with a huge grin across his face and a single fish in his hands.

With our load of fish, we took off on foot through the village, heading back up the Volta River toward the spot where we had left the car. We stopped for dinner and to watch the sunset and then headed back to Ghana. Not a bad day at all.