Back in the Lab

     Walking onto the campus of the Institut de recherche pour le développement felt like teleporting out of Dakar. The concrete walls dampened the sounds of traffic and bird calls emanated from the many trees. I was nervous to start my internship here, to once again be in the middle of a whole lot of "new", but I needn't have worried.


    Turns out research labs are pretty similar the world over and that my time at the IRD has been a small preview of what I imagine my return to the US will feel like: disconcerting familiarity. My first day I was walked through the procedures used in my project. Upon showing me the protocol, the graduate student asked me if I'd ever done this technique before. I glanced at the French text and began to shake my head before I realized "Wait a minute, it's an ethanol DNA extraction! I can do that!" I similarly greeted the rtPCR thermocycler and centrifuges like old friends. I've even once again found myself in the world of parasitology, except this time instead of grinding up rabbit intestinal parasites, I'm slicing up bird ticks.
     Unsettling déja vu aside, the lab has become a respite from the traveler's mindset I've been operating in for so long. Walking around Dakar, most of my actions are educated guesses. "I think this is the right Wolof grammar." "I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to shake your hand now," etc. The lab, on the other hand, is a place where I know all the rules. Sterile procedure is much more well-defined than social rules of engagement. While I occasionally feel like an impostor wearing a traditional Senegalese pagne, a lab coat is basically a second skin. I know intuitively where to find find my reagents in the -80 freezer while I spent 20 minutes last weekend searching my house for the broom. I relax slightly in the clean room where I only have to analyze computer readouts in comparison to walking in a downtown market where I try to process all the activities of a lively street.
    I've enjoyed observing the similarities between my IRD lab and other labs I've worked in in the States. While there are certainly more languages floating around here, familiar archetypes are still present. There the primary investigator curious as to what data your last assay churned out and the grad student with just a few screws loose from long hours in the lab. It's still true that if you make friends with the lab technicians you'll learn where to find the secret stores of reagents and tubes and that no assay in the world will keep researchers from lunch. Lab gossip is the same old thing and your lab-friends will cover for you if you cut out a bit early on a sunny afternoon.
    Its been these unexpected cultural touchstones and surprise universals that have been such a joy to discover in my time here. My room is Senegal is the same mess my room at home. My Senegalese mom also worries that I don't eat well or often enough, and its still the case that an entire lab will fight over who gets to use the best Sharpie.