The World's Fair

Recently, I took out three of my colleagues for lunch. These were folk who were brave enough to take the plunge and participate in an opportunity to travel to Nigeria. Here, they would teach a course on molecular genetics to burgeoning Ph.D students, Faculty and the like in the vicinity of Lagos. Although, the collaboration between the institutes in Nigeria, and my own lab is informal at best, it's something that I felt a lot of responsiblity towards, particularily to these three individuals, so basically I had that breath of relief when they recently returned to Canada. It's funny, they're all adults and can make their own decisions, but I just had this parent thing going on for some reason.

This, I suppose, is because Lagos isn't really the nicest, nor the safest of places to visit. As well, there's a bit of an ethical quandry when doing such things, because (at least for me) when you're there, on the ground so to speak, and in the thick of a culture that is decidedly third world, you really do get that "drop in a bucket" feeling. i.e. What am I really doing here, and given the problems, and I mean problems, in a country like Nigeria are so overwhelming, that seriously people, what is the merit of bringing this type of training to their attention?

Which, I feel is unanswerable, or perhaps has many vaguish answers worthy of examination. At the very least, it's an experience that I feel all scientists and science teachers should get. It really does put things into context, certainly makes you feel a certain way about things as mentioned previously:

"This is going to sound cliched but the workshop, and I suppose the whole experience itself, made me reflect on my own lot in life. I would be fooling everyone if I didn't comment that during each day of our laboratory and lecturing sessions, I felt a strong sense of relief and gratitude. Relief in that at the end of it all, I actually had the option of leaving it all behind. Gratitude because through some cosmic roll of the die, I was born in a country where food, shelter, and indeed a decent way of life were readily available. We really take too much for granted." (Maisonneuve, 2004)

Anyway, like I said before, whilst Kristin, Michelle and Chad were in Lagos, I did a lot of worrying (actually had Lagos time constantly on my labtop to keep track). Turns out it sounds like they had a great experience. I hope they also had a life changing experience.

What was also interesting in the similarilties of the type of photos they took, and the type of photos I took. I guess it speaks to our culture bias for the sorts of things we find interesting. Take a look:

These last pictures are of a church or place gathering for a service on the Campus that Kristen, Chad, and Michelle were on. Once a week, apparently about a million people congregate to attend. Holy shit - that's a lot of people!