Al-Azhar Park

In the middle of Cairo, right in the midst of all the brown buildings and smog and pollution and crowds, is a park called Al-Azhar Park. Even though we drive past Al-Azhar every day going to and from work, I had never actually been to the park until tonight. After work we took a couple students who are in town for the summer out to dinner at one of the restaurants in the park. There were a TON of people all over the park, but the view of the city was pretty nice, and the sunset was beautiful!

Muneeb abattoir

Well today I did something I certainly have never done before and never thought I would do.

I may have mentioned before that I've been doing a lot of work with vector-borne and zoonotic disease (viruses and bacteria that can infect people but are carried mostly by insects and animals). One of my projects in this area is to develop innovative surveillance systems to detect outbreaks of these diseases before they spread and affect a large portion of the general population. This project therefore targets populations that are at high risk of being infected with these types of diseases, populations that have close interaction with animals and are in areas with high vector density. Specific examples include employees of abattoirs (slaughterhouses), live animal markets and animal quarantine facilities.

The first project that's actually getting off the ground is going to take place in an abattoir here in Cairo. Today I had to visit the abattoir to do an assessment before we actually begin work. Definitely something I never thought I'd do. I'll spare you the details and just leave it to say that we were given a tour of the facilities by a representative from the division of the Ministry of Agriculture that oversees the abattoir and then had to watch a couple animals being slaughtered. It wasn't quite as bad as I had expected but I certainly felt a little queezy by the end of it.

I have to go back three times next week so perhaps I'll write more then...

Mmm mmm good

Now THIS is how you start a weekend off the right way - cheese grits, Jimmy Dean sausage, scrambled eggs, mango juice and Rwandan coffee!!

Paul Kagame and Peace Corps

Recent Rwandan President Paul Kagame spoke up about the meaning of the U.S. Peace Corps' return to Rwanda in November of last year. His articulate and touching (poignantly so, in a way, to me) words can be found here.

"The Culling Fields"

I have an email subscription to a publication called ProMed that sends daily emails with updates about disease outbreaks around the world. This week an article came out with an update of the H1N1 influenza situation in Egypt, specifically discussing the government's actions to cull (unnecessarily) all the pigs in the country. You can find the article here.