Day 55

It’s getting to be our final days in Zambia, and we are really left with almost nothing to do. All of us have been wrapping up our final reports and assignments. Chris and I completely finished our case study on lead poisoning (except for further editing) today, it will really be exciting if we can actually get this paper published back in the US. One of the deans of the University of Zambia School of Medicine said that he would co-author the paper with us, so we might actually have a chance to get the paper published by a reputable source.

Jess and Mo will be presenting their data tomorrow from the project they have been working on all summer at the University of Zambia Department of Population Studies (basically reviewing an epidemiology short course given to employees of various organizations throughout Zambia).

Today we went with Hims to the Kalimba Reptile Park, about 30 minutes away from our house in Lusaka. The drive was almost completely over a dirt road…where I thought we were going to flip over several times.  Thankfully, we did arrive safely to the park where we spent the next few hours looking at several of Africa’s most dangerous reptiles. They had extremely large pythons that grow to be over 7 meters!! We saw a couple of spitting cobras that were really unfriendly. I think in particular they hated me. Everywhere I moved their heads followed and they continually spit venom at me…luckily there was a large piece of glass separating us. We saw a variety of snakes that are common throughout southern Africa. Then we discovered how large fully-grown crocodiles could actually be. They were ENORMOUS and very obese. The oldest one was over 60 years old and over 1.2 tons!! And there was only a small chain-link fence separating this beast from us…basically if it had wanted to attack us…we would now be dead.

There is not really much else to do this week, I will probably be spending most of my time reading (I just started The Lord of the Rings series…I have read SO MANY books this summer, it’s nice to be able to read for pleasure and not for school). Anyway, that’s all for now…I am so excited for the safari!!

Jenn