Chris and Kris in India 41

Well another month has flown by, suddenly it’s gone!

But what an interesting month it has been.

Comment.

Jeep progress.

Work

NGO
Sad news from the UK.

Garden

Bleu

Panawar
Comments from Kris

Comment.

For many centuries Malaria has been a killer. I know, it very nearly killed me so I have a personal interest here!

Malaria flourishes in warm, tropical climates and disproportionately impacts poor countries. Thirty-five countries (30 in sub-Saharan Africa and 5 in Asia) account for 98% of global malaria deaths. In Africa, malaria is the second leading cause of death from infectious disease, after HIV/ AIDS. 
Malaria is spread by female Anopheles mosquitoes infected with a parasite called Plasmodium, which in many parts of the world has developed resistance to malaria medicine. In humans, the parasite multiplies in the liver and infects red blood cells, which can disrupt blood flow to vital organs. Symptoms usually appear between 10 and 15 days after a mosquito bite and include fever, headache, chills and vomiting. These symptoms often get ignored or misdiagnosed; if left untreated, malaria can quickly become fatal.

Today 26/11/2015.

The Times of India carried the following on its front page.

Mutant Mosquitoes to battle Malaria

Nicholas Wade The Times of India 26^th November 2015.

“In a basement on the Irvine campus of the University of California, behind a series of five protective doors, two teams of biologists have created a novel breed of mosquito that they hope will help eradicate malaria from the world.

The mosquito has been engineered to carry two ingenious genetic modifications. One is a set of genes that spew out antibodies to the malarial parasite harboured by the mosquito. Mosquitoes with these genes are rendered resistant in the parasite and so cannot spread malaria.

The other modification is a set of genetic elements known as a gene drive that should propel the malaria-resistance genes throughout a natural mosquito population. When a malaria-resistant male mosquito mates with a wild female, the gene drive copies both itself and the resistance genes over from the mala chromosome to its female counterpart.

Because almost all the progeny carry the new genes, instead of just 50% as would be expected by Mendel’s laws of genetics, the inserted genes are expected to spread rapidly and take over a wild population in as few as 10 generations, or a single season. Malaria which kills almost 6,00,000 people a year.

The anti-malarial antibody genes were developed by a group led by Anthony A. James of the University of California, Irvine and the gene drive by Valentino M. Gantz and Ethan Bier if the University of California, San Diego.

Kevin Esvelt, an expert on the gene drive technique at Harvard, said “he was delighted with the work of the two teams, “We have a wonderful chance of knocking down malaria and dengue fever and other diseases. The teams have been so hats off to Tony James who has been developing these techniques for 15 years”, he said. The two teams came together after Dr Gantz and Dr Bier developed a gene drive for the Drosophila fruit fly, a standard laboratory organism, to help identify genetically mutant insects. Finding their gene drive was far more efficient than expected, driving its cargo genes into almost all the fruit fly progeny, the researchers realised they had created not just a handy laboratory tool but a powerful technique for spreading favoured genes through wild populations.

Now the teams Dr James, Dr Gantz and Dr Bier plan to refine the mosquito’s genetics and conduct trials in cages. They hope that eventually scientists in some country where malaria is endemic will invite them to conduct a field trial and will monitor it carefully to make sure there are no adverse effects, even though it’s hard to see any ecological downside to protecting the mosquitoes against the malarial parasite”. NYT NEWS SERVICE

This could be the beginning of the end for Malaria. I will be following this research and praying it works as well in the field as it seems to in the laboratory.

Jeep.

This project means so much to us, at last we can move to rural areas and take our work to the very isolated rural community when it is finished. This has been part of our dream since coming here to follow the path given us by God.

We are confident of the engine although we will change all oils and filters. The same can be said of the gearbox. Not so sure about the clutch yet though. Its cable and rod operated all of which I have to check, it is not hydraulic so it ‘feels’ completely different to use,

The back differential has an oil leak (at least that proves there is oil in there!) that we will cure and replace the old oil.

The electrics are still a nightmare but most systems now work.

As you can see we have also been repairing the body. I have been working on repairing the holes, removing strange extra bolted on brackets for  purposes long since lost.

The jeep has been updated to some degree and we intend to follow that principle updating as we can.

Its built like a WW11 Russian tank, there is more metal girders under that floor than you can find on some small bridges He He.

Kris has been diligently de-rusting the floors, fittings and such inside and painting it. She has done a great job it really looks better and she made a great job of the floors. We are going to buy a couple of cheap mats for the front floor.

We hope to have it finished for January 2016. We are saving a lot of money by doing the work ourselves but there are still parts to buy and on our limited budget we will buy what we can as we can.

Work

We are now well into the semester with our new first years and are enjoying immensely our teaching with them. The second year that we taught as first year students are also fun to work with as they now know us and enjoy our sessions, they have also learned that we don’t take excuses for not having put in the required work.

This it appears to have come as a surprise to some students used to the lax attendance regime of some schools. Continues extensions of the submission date being a common failing, ok, if there is a good reason then fair enough, but just not attending or working will earn a fail. This is something they have to learn Semester one, year one! If you want to succeed you have to attend and work.

One thing has marked this month as both a huge vote of confidence from our college and a massive responsibility for us. Our two students (5^th year) final dissertations that we were asked to guide them with.

Now as I sit writing this I know what a cracking good job they have both done, but it has been hard on all four of us. As we only work two days a week we decided that it would be best to set up a dissertation group on whatsapp so that they could contact us at any time with problems. My own guide at Uni did the same but in those days it was by e-mail.

To anyone out there who has done this you understand how it feels, all I can really say is you become involved with the student far more than a normal Lecturer / student relationship. Pushing, cajoling, encouraging. Those two girls have worked so hard; both have come every week to our home for review and crit, we decided to do it this way as we would not have the time to properly guide them during our normal working hours.They have even worked through one of India’s biggest festivals to finish on time. Not only did they succeed but they did it with one day to spare including binding.

Kris and I will very happily present their work to the dissertation coordinator for final checking tomorrow. Any slight corrections will then be addressed.

Final printing session

NGO

This time of year frustrates Kris and me to death. Everything stops for wedding season. With the extensive Indian families it feels to us as though everyone is going to weddings. Work for the NGO just…pauses, nobody has time it seems, part of the reason we want the jeep on the road as soon as we can.

So far we have three wedding invitations, just imagine how many an Indian with an extended family will have. Some of our friends have one (sometimes two) each week until January!

Kris keeps getting hit with ‘later, after the wedding season’ from prospective venues for Breast cancer seminars.

It strikes us as a great pity that the poor and needy aren’t (in general) thought more of at this time of so many celebrations and vast sums of money being spent.

I know we now live in a different country, a new home, and yes we have to respect our new culture but we still want to follow the path given us.

The jeep will give us that.

There is now a charity running a ‘collect food uneaten from weddings ‘and then giving it directly to the needy, isn’t that a great idea.

 Sad News from the UK.

Sadly we heard today that a young girl in the UK has because of her steadfast faith  received some very abusive and insulting comments from another Facebook ‘friend’.

So often as a teacher I hear this about, looks, weight, faith, ex boyfriends……the list goes on. Cyber bullying or writing insults to another person is not acceptable. 
In some cases children have committed suicide because of such comments. If anyone chooses to do such a thing to you, the answer is simple, don’t debate or argue just unfriend them. In the real world would you want to know people that behave to you in this way?

Your particular beliefs don’t matter, your faith doesn’t matter, by all means express your beliefs, discuss your faith if you wish, and in turn expect debate, expect people to have their own points of view, but to abuse or insult someone on a public forum is wrong in any context.

I offer this advice above to all, consider your ‘friends’ on these forums carefully. 

To Christians who are having such problems I urge them to follow Ephesians 6:15-18. This below is taken from:

Phillips New Testament

 “In conclusion be strong—not in yourselves but in the Lord, in the power of his boundless resource. Put on God’s complete armour so that you can successfully resist all the devil’s methods of attack. For our fight is not against any physical enemy: it is against organisations and powers that are spiritual. We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil. Therefore you must wear the whole armour of God that you may be able to resist evil in its day of power, and that even when you have fought to a standstill you may still stand your ground. Take your stand then with truth as your belt, righteousness your breastplate, the Gospel of peace firmly on your feet, salvation as your helmet and in your hand the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. Above all be sure you take faith as your shield, for it can quench every burning missile the enemy hurls at you. Pray at all times with every kind of spiritual prayer, keeping alert and persistent as you pray for all Christ’s men and women”.

Garden

We are beginning to reap the benefits of our hard work, crops are growing well, and the new rose plants have taken well and are growing strongly. 

Sadly we lost sooty one of our hens. She appeared to improve but then just died. On the chicken front we will be getting another six to bring our flock to eight after mid-winter as the days start to warm. We are also learning how to use local fruits that are growing in our garden.

Bleu.

She is really growing now that she has got over her initial poor start in life. Yesterday (28^th) the vet called to give her more inoculations and to weigh her….3.2Kg. At this stage she just wants to chew everything, our lawn is covered with sticks and assorted toys, some intentional some not so. She has a fascination for plastic bottles and the garden hose which now has several little tooth sized holes in it!

Panawar

We had the pleasure of seeing Pastor Joseph and his family here the other day. As most of you know Joseph is connected to Panawar very closely.

We wanted to talk to him about what we could do for the boys, in particular teaching.

So to cut a long story short starting in January assuming the jeep is finished we will be spending one weekend a month at Panawar hostel teaching English on Saturday PM not only to the boys but also to anyone else who wants to come…….oh what have we done. No matter what it will be fun and they will gain another skill that may help them in life.

It is 150Km away so about three hours each way. Because of this we will stay overnight and worship with the boys on Sunday AM then return home. Of course Bleu will come with us, so heaven only knows how this will all work out, but that is what makes life interesting isn’t it.

Comments from Kris

YUK

A local spider, body size about 10mm. 

This month as you can see has been very hectic and busy.

This month we attended a friend’s wedding, as I was in pain from the change in the weather, there was one of the evenings we could not attend. The evening of music and dance was really interesting, and had Chris not hurt his foot and knee last month we would have been part of the show. Mr and Mrs Gandhi, my Raki brothers parents did a beautiful dance which they had wanted Chris and me to be part of, but alas we had to decline. We then attended another evening reception which was the final evening. Chris wore his Kurta pyjamas and jacket and looked amazing.

Some of the riders we had met at Bangalore were on a long ride and stayed overnight in Udaipur so we met up with them and partied the night before they set off to ride to Mumbai, then onto Goa and then ride back to their homes in Bangalore.  It was great to spend time with them.

It is also a sad time as our maid now has a full time job at the local resort which means she gets a better income, so we are losing her. We have engaged our friend’s maid to come Monday to Saturday afternoons; this will be interesting as she only speaks Hindi. I am going to have to have my dictionary and translator app on my phone handy to help me. She is an older lady but very nice we have known her since moving to the Colony. We will still keep in touch with Amber Bai and keep up to date about how her children are doing.

As I said above I have been in a little pain with my joints due to the change in the climate, it is now getting colder especially in the evenings. So out of the cupboard comes the jumpers and duvets for the bed, previously it was so warm we just used sheets. However even though its colder it is still much warmer than UK winters, we are just becoming acclimatized, our first year here we wore t shirts in the winter, now we need jumpers and coats.

Diwali is the festival of lights, the struggle of good over evil, and is celebrated widely in India, it is one of my favourite festivals, but Holi, the festival of colours remains my favourite. We had a quiet Diwali, but did light some fire crackers and they certainly make a load bang. It reminds me of Fireworks Night in the UK, but without the bonfires, guys and baked potatoes.

We plan to have a barbeque in our garden which will not only keep us warm in winter but be great to cook on. I feel a barbeque party coming on soon, when time and money allow that is.

It is really encouraging to see students working hard and achieving their goals. We currently teach first and second years and as Chris said we were guides for two of the final year’s dissertation. I don’t think they realised when we were assigned to them how hard we would make them work. They have done us proud, they worked hard, did their own research as well as gathering data from other sources. One of the students surveyed 600 women in respect of Breast Cancer Awareness and Self Breast Examination, what an achievement. Although she was very apprehensive before the first survey of 300 women, she really enjoyed it and came back buzzing, ready for the next 300 women to survey. The other student surveyed the slum areas of Udaipur and went on a research trip to Ahmedabad to see a project the government were involved in to improve the slums in that region, great work experience for her.

I am learning so much from Chris about teaching, I have a slightly different style to him but I find myself incorporating a lot of what he does and it really works. I know the teachers among you will recognise this but I get so emotionally drained and physically tired after a day’s teaching, and yes we do a lot of preparation work before and after classes.

I am still learning new Indian recipes, and so far I have not poisoned Chris or any of our friends. My roti’s are improving, and I have learnt how to make Paratha, and they are pretty yummy. (It is a roti with filling; I use potatoes, onion, tomato, capsicum and other vegetables that are available) Even Bleu likes my paratha’s which is amazing as she doesn’t like everything I cook, although there isn’t much she won’t eat being a street dog. I plan to extend my local Indian recipes further, but I am looking forward to a traditional English Christmas Dinner with Chicken as Turkey is difficult to get here.

I don’t often ask you do anything but please at Christmas do something for all those people who have less than you, most don’t choose to be poor, please help if you can.

Well that is all from me for now until the next blog.

Wishing you all throughout the world a lovely Christmas,

God Bless you all,

Chris and Kris in India