As a researcher back in the early 90s, I spent several months living and working in Berlin, Germany, doing a spot of ad-hoc science at the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. I remember buses that ran like clockwork, the intense cold and Tacheles, a huge department store that had become a squat and home to some of the most amazing art and raves.

Back at Tegel Airport, memories began fighting their way through the treacle of time as I made my way to meet Katie Paterson, the artist-in-residence at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK (who, before you ask, lives in Germany ­– hence my being here and not back home!).

Arriving at Katie’s place, she and her partner immediately welcomed me into the space in which Katie thinks and creates; a cubic, entirely white room. Like a shrine to Apple, the entire contents of this room barely amounted to more than an iMac, a table and a couple of plants. This was the first clue as to how cerebral an artist Katie is.

Despite the studio being right beside a main road, we were a few storeys up – far enough away from the traffic to stop noise being too much of an issue. And, thanks to large windows all across this street facing wall, I was able to place Katie looking directly into a flood of natural light, making the most of a sunny day and her unusually bright, blue eyes.

The interview itself was an opportunity to gather material for the film but also to gain a deeper insight into how Katie sees the world. As it turns out, she is interested in nothingness, the absence of things: space and time. Within the context of her apartment, beyond the studio, this manifests itself in meteorite fragments and rocks of varying texture, a physical map of the moon, books about space. At the Sanger Institute, her discussions with scientists led her down a path of inquiry into the genetic heritage of humanity; where did the first humans emerge, how did they spread across the planet?

In Katie’s own words, “I believe work being undertaken in genome sequencing at the Sanger Institute can allow us to penetrate questions of existence: contemplate who we are, where we have come from and how we relate to one another, and enable us to be part of a complex decision-making process about the possible direction of our species.”

After the interview, with a deeper respect for Katie and her work, there followed a filming challenge – how do you show the internal creative process of a person whom, by their own admission, spends a significant amount of time just thinking? Shots of Katie simply staring into space seemed a little hackneyed so, fortunately, Katie shared that she keeps written notes, notes she was prepared to add to. Bingo.

There are so many nuances of human behavior, even within the simplest of actions, that I now knew we’d have enough coverage of Katie ‘thinking’. Wide and mid shots, macro shots, the pencil moving across the page, the eyes as they pause and consider. Finally, Katie introduced me to their two new kittens, fragile lumps of fluff with legs. These had nothing to do with DNA and human heritage but everything to do with fun and the promise of moments of levity between those deeper thoughts.

The next morning came all too quickly. Leaving for the airport at 4am, time suddenly felt very present. I was about to travel across countries and time zones, flying beneath stars that still filled the dark sky, bathing the planet in light from millions of years in the past. This sudden, profound awareness of space and time, I have called, the Paterson Effect.

Barry J Gibb

Barry J Gibb is a Science Multimedia Producer at the Wellcome Trust.

Read Barry’s previous diary entries.

Find out more about Art in Global Health on the Wellcome Collection website.

Ladybirds: good for pest control, or pests themselves? As our Who’s the Pest? season draws to a close, Emma Rhule takes a closer look at our relationship with these tiny flying beetles.

Bright, colourful and hearty eaters of aphids (the sticky little flies that infest everything from cabbages to roses), ladybirds have long been the gardener’s friend. Gardeners and farmers will go to great lengths to encourage more ladybirds onto their patch. One way you can entice ladybirds into your garden is to plant wildflowers – they are particularly fond of marigold and nettles. And, if all else fails, the eggs and larvae can be bought online.

There is a long history of introducing exotic ladybirds to help control agricultural pests. The Vedalia ladybird, Rodolia cardinalis, which was originally from Australia, is credited with saving the Californian citrus industry in the late 1880s. It was the start of the biological control industry that controls pest species using other organisms.

Following in this tradition, the harlequin ladybird, Harmonia axyridis, was released across the USA and Europe to help combat aphid infestations. Originally from Asia, the voracious appetite of this beetle makes it an extremely successful control agent. A single adult can eat more than 200 aphids a day, and a developing larva can consume upwards of 1000 aphids. Their use allows farmers to reduce the amount of insecticides they need on their crops which should, in turn, allow other beneficial insects to flourish.

The very hungry ladybird

Unfortunately, the harlequin’s insatiable appetite is not limited to aphids: the larvae are particularly indiscriminate. They will eat almost anything they encounter – including other aphid eaters such as hoverflies and lacewings, as well as caterpillars. They will also eat the eggs and larvae of other ladybirds, and their cannibalistic tendencies even extend to their own siblings. To make matters worse, there is little that eats the harlequin. Like our native ladybirds, their bright colours advertise the toxins present in their blood. These chemicals make ladybirds taste foul and can be deadly to imprudent would-be predators.

In 2004, the first British harlequin was spotted in the car park of a country pub in Essex called The White Lion. Never intentionally introduced, researchers suspect the early arrivals that reached the UK were a combination of hardy pioneers flying across the Channel and sneaky stowaways in imported goods. Since then, they have spread across the UK and been reported as far north as the Shetland Islands.

Since arriving, the harlequin’s wide-ranging diet has had serious implications for British ladybirds. The once familiar two-spot ladybird has been particularly hard hit, losing out to the larger, hungrier competitor with which it now shares its habitat. The wider ecosystem is affected, too – particularly the predators, parasites and pathogens that rely on these native species for their own existence.

And humans do not escape unscathed. Over the past few years, come October and November, you may have seen harlequins in your house. In the winter, our native species mostly hibernate outside in dead leaves or in the crevices of tree trunks, sheltered from the cold and rain. In their native Asia, harlequins normally use rocks and cliffs. In the relatively flat UK, houses must seem like a good alternative. Once the central heating comes on, though, the beetles warm up and start flying around. They may be hungry and take a nibble. A little nip is usually not a problem, but some people can experience an allergic reaction. If they are feeling threatened, the natural response of all ladybirds is to leak a small amount of foul-smelling yellow blood from their knees, which can stain curtains and sofas.

Fighting back

So what can we do? It would be impossible to capture and kill all the harlequin ladybirds in the country. In fact, the Harlequin Ladybird Survey, which has been monitoring the spread of the ladybird since its arrival, strongly discourages this because there is a real risk of misidentification. The harlequin was the focus of my PhD research: one of my jobs involved opening letters containing live ladybirds, sent to us by members of the public for identification. These days, photos can be uploaded with records of sightings allowing researchers to verify exactly which species has been found, saving us from climbing onto tables to recapture escapee beetles crawling across the ceiling.

When the harlequin was taken from its native environment, researchers made sure that any released into the wild were free of parasites. As such, many of the natural checks and balances that would have kept the numbers of individuals under control were removed. Nothing in the new environment would have been immediately able to fill the gap, allowing populations to flourish. One hope is that the parasites and pathogens that exploit our native ladybirds will start to adapt to the newcomer. Nearly ten years on, there is some evidence that this is starting to happen.

But how long can we wait when the problems are already apparent? My research looked at whether a sexually transmitted parasite found on European ladybirds, including the harlequin, could help. The blood-sucking parasite can be thought of as a form of ladybird birth control. When females are infected with adult parasites, they still lay eggs, but these do not hatch – the ladybird is effectively sterile. If the parasites die, within a couple of days any eggs laid will hatch. Of course, I am aware of the irony of my work – could we, and should we, introduce yet another species to help control an exotic beetle that was itself introduced to fight an insect pest? Could the parasite become the next problem in town?

After five years, I came to the conclusion that we still didn’t know enough to justify taking that risk. Increasingly aware of what can go wrong when we tinker with ecosystems, we are much more cautious than we used to be, and rightly so. From grey squirrels to cane toads, knotweed to ladybirds, there are lots of examples of the unintended side-effects of our actions. So, who is really the pest? Those species that arrive in a new place and wreak havoc, or the species that put them there?

Emma Rhule is a graduate trainee at the Wellcome Trust. Play our Who’s the Pest game online.

The distance between Vietnam and Thailand is more appropriately measured in time than kilometres. Arriving in Bangkok at night, it’s difficult to shake off images from Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. The city appears to have come from the future, reminiscent of London but bigger, brighter, shinier. Gone were the bikes and mopeds of Vietnam; here, we have cars – luxurious cars (albeit with a lack of seatbelts). The scale of everything in Bangkok was so much bigger than what I’d experienced a few hours earlier in Vietnam, including the ‘hotel’. The place was like a small city; hundreds of rooms, several bars and restaurants.

The next day I had to hit the ground running. Not only would I be meeting several of B-Floor theatre company – the artists who were working closely with the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) at Mahidol University on the Art and Global Health Project – but we would immediately be leaving by plane for Ubon Ratchathani in the far east of Thailand, home to one of MORU’s research units. Experiencing something close to travel fatigue, I was desperate not to carry all my luggage yet again and crammed the minimum luggage necessary into the camera bag.

Nana Dakin, part of the core team of B-Floor, escorted me to the airport to meet the other members who were joining us on the trip, Teerawat Mulvilai, a.k.a. Kage (pronounced a bit like kang-ye) and Jarunun Phantachat, known as Jaa. This was a feisty trio. Curious, lively and dynamic, they wanted to know everything about what I was about and why I was here. In a reversal of roles, Kage filmed most of our conversations on his new pride and joy, a DSLR camera, while we chatted over tea.

On the flight to Ubon Ratchathani, Nana gave a potted history of Thailand in fluent English (one of her many languages), explaining the origins of the Yellow Shirts, the Red Shirts and all about the recent political crisis before seamlessly moving onto melioidosis, a disease widespread in Thailand and the current interest for herself and the B-Floor team. Melioidosis is a nasty disease. Largely infecting barefoot farmers through wounds in their feet, it is caused by a soil-based bacterium and can either manifest itself within days or lie dormant in its host for decades. When it presents, the disease hits every facet of the body, from bones to internal organs and external abscesses. Even with access to good medical care, the mortality rate is around 50 per cent.

At 4pm we checked-in to our small hotel in Ubon Ratchathani and the team suggested this may be the best opportunity to grab my main interview with them. I was hesitant. The sun was going to set in 2 hours and we had no idea where we could do the interview. But we all agreed outdoors, in natural light, would be best. The hotelier said there was a river nearby and that was enough encouragement for us to dive in a taxi to the location.

What the hotelier didn’t mention was the fact that this river, as beautiful as it was, was right next to a main road. And a slew of karaoke bars. Diminishing light not being enough to contend with, audio was also going to be an issue. Thank goodness I wasn’t also shooting into the sun. In order to get the right composition with Nana and Kage seated on the riverbank we needed seats, which the nearest karaoke bar was kind enough to provide. Next, having travelled light, I had no tripod, so a chair joined us too, affording me some serious stability over the course of the next hour. Things were looking up…

…until I took the camera out of my bag. The sudden change in temperature caused a flood of condensation on the lens – it was literally dripping with water. Doing my best to maintain professional composure, the moisture was removed, my interviewees mic’d up and then we were, at last, ready to go. It was less than an hour until sunset. Pausing only to silence an enthusiastically early karaoke bar’s music system, we managed to capture a great interview, ending just as the sun started to dip and no amount of boosting the camera’s signal would be useful.

At last, we were able to relax and start to get to know each other over beer and real, authentic Thai food. Before ordering, Nana asked how spicy I liked my food. In the UK, I told them, I love all manner of Thai, Mexican and Indian food. Addressing the others, she noted that they’d better get me mild food. She was not wrong; Thai food is remarkably hot to a western palette, a fusion of aromatics and spices that burn and excite, raging inside the mouth.

Over dinner, Kage revealed that he often appears in movies as an actor who, despite his wide smile and gentle character, is often favoured as the ‘bad guy’. I also discovered Jaa’s incredible curiosity about proteins, resulting in my explaining how DNA is converted into proteins with a range of hand movements and small drawings.

Early next day, with the temperature still in the low 20s (degrees C), we set off for the Ubon Ratchathani research centre. This was a key opportunity for B-Floor to meet and question, first-hand, doctors, scientists and possibly even a patient about the perils of living and working in an area with melioidosis. The purpose of the day was research and over the course of an entire day they grilled a procession of people about the many facets of the condition. Like Miriam Syowia Kyambi and James Muriuki in Kenya, an integral part of B-Floor’s process is extensive research, to really get to grips with a subject, to know it so well that an artistic idea can begin to emerge.

The best moment of the day was when B-Floor were brought into a laboratory. As someone who’s spent more than a decade working in various labs, it’s easy to forget how odd they can look to a non-scientist, how alien the equipment and procedures are. The team were mesmerised. A scientist prepared a specimen of melioidosis bacteria for the group to look at down a microscope, triggering a sense of awe and the idea of representing this sense of scale in a theatrical endeavour.

With most of my ‘art’ filming achieved, it was time to get into ‘science’ mode. Arriving at Mahidol University, I immediately met MORU Director, Nick Day, and a group of his core team. The afternoon passed quickly in the company of enthusiastic scientists with fascinating stories; melioidosis and its impact on those affected, malaria and its frustrating capacity to adapt and resist… In one lab, yellow boxes sat neatly stacked from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, all full of slides coated with blood containing malaria; an uncomfortable visual reminder of the scale of the problem.

Leaving MORU, it was time to finally see B-Floor in action as they rehearsed for an upcoming show. It was exhausting just watching them – they’re a very physical theatre group, pushing their own bodies as much as artistic boundaries. After an evening of laughing, contorting and generally being taken through an emotional joy ride, it was time to switch the camera off and go home. Again, I was saying goodbye to thoroughly lovely people just as I was getting to know them. But any sense of being maudlin was rapidly ejected by the memory that I’d be going home in less than 24 hours. I had the luxury of an entire week at home to look forward to before heading off to the Berlin studio of Katie Paterson, the artist-in-residence of the UK based Sanger Institute. Prior to leaving for the airport next morning, I decided a treat was in order and did what any self-respecting tourist should do in Thailand – I had the best massage of my life.

Barry J Gibb

Barry J Gibb is a Science Multimedia Producer at the Wellcome Trust.

Read Barry’s previous diary entries.

Find out more about Art in Global Health on the Wellcome Collection website.

Artist Elaine Duigenan is working with young women at New Horizons Youth Centre. She has devised and is running a series of six workshops that explore connections with works in the current Wellcome Collection exhibition, Souzou: Outsider Art from Japan. She’ll be writing a blog each week to relay some of the ideas and outcomes in words and pictures; here’s the first.

The first workshop, titled ‘My Name Is…’, was focused on language and letters. The inspiration started with artist Mineo Ito, whose concentration on writing his name over and over results in unexpectedly exquisite landscapes. The obsessive, continually repeated letters lose their verbal intensity and become a visual treat, a new landscape.

The quick-fire ‘icebreaker’ built an instant artwork using post-it notes featuring the first letters of everyone’s name. The girls commented that the repetitive nature of writing a single letter numerous times was both strangely limited and took discipline to maintain. Ashliee commented that it was like saying or hearing any word over and over: it started to lose meaning and become strange and new-sounding.

One of the notable things about the artists’ work in ‘Souzou’ is the very accessible and ordinary materials used, and this is being reflected in the workshops. So, with coloured biros to hand, the next task was to fill a piece of squared paper with letters, symbols and made-up markings. No other directive was given, but it was fascinating what emerged. It was beautiful to see how each one was so individual. Kike commented that although she had not been instructed to make a narrative in the work, one had naturally crept in. She had names and other references hidden in her squares. Others referred to ‘labyrinths’ and puzzles, secret codes. We looked at the work of Shingo Ikeda and saw how his work is a unique, personal code recording journeys and predictions.

The final part of the exercise was to use some of the symbols and letters from the squares to create a secret alphabet. This took inspiration from the works of Takanori Herai (diaries)  and the love letters of Toshiko Yamanishi. The girls each wrote a hidden sentence on their postcards within a grid structure embellished with their own designs.

The nature of the work at times was really focused and calm. At others, the discussion that arose was broad-ranging, open and hilarious. We noted that the Japanese language consists of four different alphabets, and some conversation revolved around language as a result. It was clear that the tasks were not threatening; the simplicity was almost contemplative. The mini-artworks produced were beautiful and totally in the spirit of Souzou –  here’s to imagination and creativity, and I can’t wait for Workshop 2!

Find out more about Elaine’s work at www.elaineduigenan.com.

Rush hour in Vietnam, a bipedal frenzy of noise and colour.

Over the course of four months, Barry Gibb visited our major overseas programmes in Africa and Asia to make a film about Wellcome Collection’s Art in Global Health project. In the fourth of his journal entries, Barry goes to Vietnam.

It’s amazing how quickly you adapt to traveling. One month after returning from Kenya and Malawi I was now off to Vietnam to start the first leg of the next filming double whammy. No butterflies, no hesitation, visas secured, bags packed, bloodstream flowing with (the antimalarial drug) Malarone. Of course, any feelings I had of being in control were completely misguided.

This sense of being out of control didn’t quite hit me immediately on arriving in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City; taxis and hotels have a wonderful way of mollycoddling you, protecting you from the very thing you’re trying to experience: culture. However, having checked-in around lunchtime, the first thing I needed was to eat, so off I went, gamely entering ‘real Vietnam’ to find a restaurant. That’s probably when the culture shock started to manifest itself.

The first thing that overwhelms you, beyond the humidity and heat, are the bikes – hundreds and hundreds of mopeds and motorbikes continuously driving on the roads… and the pavements. The streets are awash with them, a sea of colourful, noisy machines. Those not riding bikes are sitting on pavements, as if the only way the Vietnamese can move is when attached to a two-wheeled machine, a strange illusion enhanced by the many masks worn by the riders (apparently, this is not to avoid pollution but to prevent tanning…).

These bikes are used for everything. They carry newborns home from the hospital with mum and dad, transport fresh food, half a dozen crates of beer or a ridiculous number of five gallon water containers. They are the noisy, frantic locomotive lifeblood of the city.

In the first hour I was almost hit by a speeding bike twice. It would be easy to blame such carelessness on jetlag but it was really just cultural ignorance. In the UK, we tend to move quickly, or run out of the way of oncoming traffic. This is the precise opposite, I discovered, of what the Vietnamese do. Here, the appropriate way to move through traffic – no matter how dense – appears to be to glide slowly, deliberately, from one point to another. This is so counterintuitive, the only way I could do it and remain calm was by thinking of Bruce Lee’s instructions from Enter the Dragon: “Be like water”.

Noise

The next day I headed out to the Vietnam Research Programme and Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) and the jetlag had well and truly landed. Unfortunate, as I was about to meet Mary Chambers, in charge of all things public engagement, and Jeremy Farrar, OUCRU’s Director (and, little did I know at the time, soon-to-be Director of the Wellcome Trust!).These initial meetings were so vital. The most important thing I wanted to establish, in the short time we had, was a level of trust; that I was there to help, if possible, the Centre communicate its essence and ambitions. Mary and Jeremy were great in this respect and we quickly nailed the direction of the scientific interviews. Vietnam has undergone incredible change in the last 15 years, leaving behind its turbulent past to embrace a dynamic future, so we decided it would be good to use this theme of transformation for a (forthcoming) short film all about OUCRU.

I then went about the task of interviewing a steady stream of scientists in what was one of the most difficult filming days I’d had. Due to the strict laws concerning filming in Vietnam, we needed to film the interviews inside OUCRU, so was faced with what I call the filmmakers’ dilemma: visually boring, generic interior interviews with reasonably safe audio or visually interesting external (balcony) shots with noisy audio? I simply couldn’t bring myself to do the interviews inside – having come all the way to another country, I wanted to get a sense of it, so outside we went.

It rained, there was a storm, there was the ubiquitous growl of bikes (of course), the composition wasn’t right, the wind was too strong… For the sake of my sanity, a few of the interviews were done inside just, it seemed, at the moment the kitchen staff had decided they needed to do a lot of things with loud metal utensils. By the end of the day, I was physically and mentally exhausted, feeling that I’d let myself and the Centre down badly. Only when I got back to the hotel and had a chance to listen did I realise things weren’t as bad as I’d thought. An important reminder of why it’s great to work in teams – as a solo operator, trying to keep an eye on the interviewee, the camera, the sound, you can easily get distracted by any one imperfection, making for a frustrating experience.

The scientists spoke of their work with pride, the difficulties of being a scientist in Vietnam – learning English being one large additional ‘task’ they must add to their workload in order to both read and write their own scientific papers. They also spoke of the importance of family and it was at this point I started to grasp how matriarchal this society is: in Vietnam, women are strong and highly respected.

A bike into the unknown

My jetlag was even worse the next day – having to perform at a high level when exhausted is simply no fun. The plan was to film as much ‘science’ as I could, to wander throughout the labs capturing shots of these scientists at work. With hindsight, I’d been spoilt, given the kind of access other filmmakers could only dream of after passing through numerous bureaucratic hoops.

One of the best moments occurred just outside the bacteriology lab. One minute I was filming scientists at microscopes, the next, a ceremony for the dead. A table, covered in offerings and incense had been placed in the corridor just outside the main lab. Adorned with flowers, duck, beer, chicken, I assumed this scrumptious platter was for lunch. Until a procession of people respectfully approached the table, gave what looked like a short prayer, then lit some incense.

Within moments, the air was thick with symbolic smoke. It turned out that this ceremony was to help feed the dead who may have become lost en route to wherever it is the dead go. As in Africa, it was hard not to be struck by the juxtaposition of science and cultural beliefs. Dressed in lab coats, within feet of state-of-the-art lab equipment, the dead were feasting on the love (and roast duck) of the living. This was something so uniquely personal to the location, so bewilderingly alien to my Scottish sensibilities, and one of my favourite moments from my time in Vietnam.

My second favourite moment was meeting OUCRU’s artist-in-residence, Lena Bui. Charming, enigmatic and infectiously happy, Lena absorbed science like an intellectual sponge. She clearly relished the scientists’ way of seeing the world, coming to terms with what they found interesting or perplexing. For the main interview, we’d decided to go to her studio. What I didn’t realise was the only way to complete the journey was on a bike. Lena rolled up, asking me to hop on at which point I had to make the humbling admission that motorbike riding was absent from my repertoire of skills.

Lena was amazed – how was it possible to get this far in life without riding a bike? Searching for an excuse to walk to her studio, I also pointed out that the tripod and camera bag were way too bulky and heavy. Having none of it, this waif lifted them both onto the bike like they were sticks, cast me a look over her shoulder and instructed me to get on. Suddenly I was in a movie, featuring a bike riding heroine as she drove her inept sidekick through the hot, chaotic streets of Vietnam.

Lena is deeply interested in the interrelationships between animals and humans, how we relate to, touch, use them and how, in turn, this relates to disease. A scientist would say she is interested in zoonosis but Lena had a way of making these relationships sound quite poetic and profound. After an excellent interview, she tried to take me to a special place she’d found a couple of hours drive (by car) and a ferry ride away, past all the new buildings and engineering work springing up around the city. This, I was told, is where a flock of swifts come to roost and, if you timed it right, you’d receive a spectacular display as they pulsed and swirled in harmony.  However, a storm had other ideas and we had to turn back in the midst of the darkest skies and heaviest rain I had ever seen.

My disappointment was tempered as my third favourite Vietnam moment soon arrived. Keen to capture footage that could help tell the story of Lena’s interest in our relationship with animals, Mary Chambers had offered to take me to one of the main food markets, early the next morning. My feeling was that a hefty EX1 camera would be too conspicuous in a public market, so I went instead for my SLR, the Canon 550D, a brilliant, ‘stealth cam’ allowing me to look like an average tourist.

Walking around one market, Mary treated me to a local speciality, something that felt like a collision of rice pudding and alfalfa. It was lovely to see Mary in her element, talking with locals, old friends. She’d moved out to Vietnam around 12 years ago, embracing the culture, the language and life. At one of the indoor stalls, Mary bought me a gift, a waving cat statue (it waves in the luck), which now sits in my house, mystifying my two, more organic, cats.

There followed a spectacular morning of filming. Fish being descaled and gutted, intestines and organs glistening in the morning light, fresh meat being carved, sliced and cut. Everywhere, people were immersed in the flesh of other animals; it was beautiful, relevant and incredibly visceral. From the worst day’s filming, to the best – this offered a brilliant example of the fabric of Ho Chi Minh City, chaotic and unpredictable it may be but it is also spectacularly vibrant and full of life. I was going to miss this place.

Barry Gibb

Barry Gibb is a Science Multimedia Producer at the Wellcome Trust.

Read Barry’s previous diary entries.

Find out more about Art in Global Health on the Wellcome Collection website. Find out more about the Vietnam Research Programme and Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU).

Scanning electron micrograph of a mosquito’s head

Dr Nina Stanczyk works on mosquito control at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, researching the development of new attractants and repellents. Nina and other researchers from the London School will be talking more about the insects that they work with at the Secret Insects of Bloomsbury walking tours this month, part of our Who’s the Pest? series.

Most people have been bitten by a mosquito at some point, and even if it’s just a nuisance for us in the UK, we’re very aware of the millions of people in other countries affected by the diseases that mosquitoes carry – such as malaria or West Nile virus. One of the best ways of preventing transmission of these diseases is to stop people being bitten. There are lots of possible ways to do this, including controlling the population with insecticides or preventing biting at night by using a bednet, but I look at manipulating mosquito behaviour. How? I look at what makes the mosquito respond in a certain way and see if I can use that against it.

I’m particularly interested in mosquitoes’ sense of smell. Mosquitoes use our odour to track us down from a distance and bite us. If we can isolate the chemicals in our smell that they find attractive, we may be able to make lures and traps for monitoring the population. If we isolate chemicals they find repellent, we can look at developing new repellents for people to use as personal protection.

At the moment I’m trying to find out whether mosquitoes infected with malaria react differently to people than uninfected mosquitoes do – are they more able to track you down and bite you? Do they sense different chemicals we could make a trap with?

An average day for me might be:

(1) Check on my mosquitoes, Anopheles gambiae, and collect females (only female mosquitoes bite) for experiments. Malaria-infected mosquitoes are kept safely in a maximum containment laboratory, isolated behind interlocking doors, mesh screens, incubators, doubled-sealed containers, and a healthy dose of paranoia. At the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, we have brilliant facilities for properly containing and dealing with diseases.

The mosquito cage

In order to infect a mosquito, we rear a mosquito adult to around five days old and give them a blood meal (artificially) with the infective stage of malaria in it.

(2) Culture the malaria. We can’t get malaria-infected blood from the source (i.e. humans) because they would have been treated before the malaria is transmissible to mosquitoes, so we grow it in flasks. These require a lot of care, with hours of staring down microscopes to check the parasites are still there and to see whether they are ready to infect a mosquito with.

(3) Do my experiments! I carry out behavioural experiments to compare the infected and uninfected mosquitoes. These could be flying mosquitoes down a wind tunnel to see which smell they prefer – which has to be done in the dark, as these are night feeders – or putting a sock on a cage (mosquitoes love human foot odour) to see how many mosquitoes try to bite it. I also look at the responses of the mosquito antennae to different odours, hooking the antennae up to a circuit to see if a signal is sent to the brain in response to specific chemicals. This is a brilliant way of identifying new semiochemicals (chemicals that affect the insect’s behaviour).

The wind tunnel

Once we know more about the response of infected mosquitoes to specific chemicals, we hope to develop an odour for traps that will target mosquitoes carrying the malaria parasites. This will prevent them being able to bite people and transmit the disease. Currently, around 1 million people a year die of malaria worldwide, with millions more affected, and any progress we can make towards reducing the spread of the disease is incredibly important.

Who’s the Pest? events and installation run until 16 May.

Scientists in Malawi working with ‘locals’ around 30km from the nearest hospital

Over the course of four months, Barry J Gibb visited the Wellcome Trust’s major overseas programmes in Africa and Asia to make a film about the Art in Global Health project. In the third of his journal entries Barry arrives in Malawi.

Flying to Blantyre in Malawi was a rather ramshackle affair. The flight was in a diminutive 32-seater plane (I counted them). After jamming the camera bag under the seat in front of me, I tried to relax in the dated, rather worn looking contraption that was about to exceed 20,000 feet.

It was around this time that I was also beginning to get seriously edgy about the memory cards I was carrying. Backing up the video data wasn’t something I’d considered prior to leaving, which suddenly struck me as very, very silly. For the next trip, I’d ensure there was a portable drive, constantly backed up, in with my main luggage. For now, I’d have to simply accept that every day, hours of precious, carefully collected footage were precariously far from home.

Arriving at Chileka International Airport, the driver who had been arranged to pick me up was absent. Having learnt my lesson in Kenya, there then followed an Oscar-worthy performance as I did my utmost to look like a native, ignoring the numerous attempts to become my new best friend, taxi me around, carry my bags, etc. Fortunately, the driver showed up after several minutes and was so solidly built the other drivers parted like water.

The hotel was not what I was expecting. Having been away from home for a week, I was looking forward to the company of strangers, dinner in the midst of people, if only to soak up a little human contact. Instead, I discovered myself in a gated environment, with no dining area and no bar. And so, each night, dinner would be brought to my room by Frank, a warm, friendly member of staff, who would carefully lay the table, place the array of food he had made on the table and leave. The one time the hotel did indulge in communal dining was breakfast, an experience shared not just by the diners but by the hotel’s pet deer. This beautific creature would show up and just stare at me with its huge, gorgeous eyes as I chewed through toast.

Research, washing and Scottish roots

During my first visit to the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, I met the Programme’s wonderful Public Engagement team: Tamara, Elvis and Bertha, the woman who would be my main point of contact and guide. They had formulated a great plan of whom to meet (by which they meant interview) and when. But first I had to meet my artist, Elson Kambalu.

Elson is a wondrously laid back individual, confident yet unimposing. It was clear he knew what he wanted out of my visit as much as I did and he orchestrated much of our time together which, as it turned out, was fantastic.

After a few light interviews on the hoof, including one with the Programme’s enthusiastic and generous Associate Director, Professor Moffat Nyirenda, I was escorted around the centre, camera in hand, to get a sense of how the place runs. I observed as entire teams, devoted to the statistical analysis of the scientific data being collected in the field, entered their precious numbers and personal information into computers. The question begged, where is the data coming from?

Some of it is coming from the hospital adjoining the research centre. As we wandered around the hospital grounds, the area was dotted with nurses having their lunch on the grass. The fusion of black skin, ultra white uniforms and luscious green grass made for a spectacular sight. This was heightened by the overwhelming quaintness of the place, a distinct 50s feel, revealing itself in their uniforms and hairstyles.

A little further on and we were confronted by bushes covered in clothing. This, it turns out, are how the hospital’s residents dry their clothes following a wash. It was as if nature had abandoned chlorophyll and started sprouting vividly coloured cotton finery.

As in Kenya, the hospital in Malawi had its fair share of maladies and suffering. Again, it was important to film with sensitivity; to capture these images without crossing the line into voyeurism. In a well timed moment of levity, Elson suddenly appeared at the end of a corridor with his own video camera and, for a moment, we were caught in a ‘film loop’ of documenting each others process of documenting.

Over lunch, Elson gave me a little history lesson about Blantyre, the financial capital of Malawi, as we sat in the shade of a tree in the grounds of an art gallery he frequently supplies works to. Amazed at my own ignorance, I learnt that Blantyre’s origins lay firmly in Scottish territory (as do mine). David Livingstone had left Scotland, come to this place, named it, brought Christianity and left a very considerable mark. Our lunch arrived and I watched with quiet respect and fresh understanding as Bertha said grace.

Being an artist in Blantyre, Elson informed me over a sandwich, is a bit of an oxymoron. There are no art schools and very few artists. It’s not even considered a profession. Those artists that exist, like him, have forged their way to prominence, forming a strong alliance of like-minded people who help each other out whenever they can.

Back at the research centre, I filmed the scientists in action, again marvelling at how similar the process of science must be across the world: pipettes, eppendorf tubes, centrifuges, PCR machines… All that changes is the skin, the bone structure, the culture and the target disease.

Malawi proper

Next up, I was delighted to get out of the centre, to get a taste of Malawi proper. When told we were going to the ‘Hit TB Hut’, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. But tucked away, near a town, by a mountain, was another man called Frank and his place of work, a tent that he erects on the loose, dusty earth wherever he needs to be.

The low-fi, yet critically important nature of what people like Frank do is stunning. Before interviewing him, I watched he and his assistant in action, speaking with visitors from the local town, collecting data about tuberculosis; trying to piece together human movement with disease. It also becomes very apparent how critical personality is. People like Frank need to gain the trust of the locals quickly, often via meeting and working with the town’s leader. After just a few seconds with Frank, it’s obvious why he’s so well matched to the task: a large, open smile and a firm handshake quickly followed up by a shoulder barge.

Then it was Elson’s turn to be interviewed. A canny man, he took me back to his scenic cottage, in a very nice part of town it turned out – but, as with many places here, the relatively rich rub uncomfortable shoulders with the relatively poor. Elson had also brought a couple of friends along, one, it turned out, a singer of local repute – Agoroso.

After clearing the set of people, we did our interview, much to the delight of the chickens on the grounds who seemed to cluck furiously every time Elson said something profound. As always, the challenge in such a situation (one of ignorance with no possibility of doing a recce), is to do the very best you can with what you have. In this case, I positioned Elson so that he had natural light on his eyes and placed a large piece of his own art behind him as a backdrop.

To compensate for the chickens’ enthusiasm, Agorosso decided to put on a spontaneous performance in Elson’s garden. There followed three, lovely acoustic tracks as we watched and listened, entranced. So entranced that I didn’t notice the tripod get knocked and the camera fall to the ground, smashing its eyepiece off. Trying to regain calm, with two more days of filming to go, I grabbed the camera and quickly noticed it couldn’t focus. My heart started a downward trajectory. Fortunately, common sense kicked in and I adopted what should always be the first course of action with any technical piece of kit: turn it off and on again. To my joy, the camera found focus – we all cheered!

On the way back to the centre, Bertha, my largely silent yet efficient companion, commented on my apparently remarkable ability to remember faces and names. This, it seems, is not a common ability or trait she has witnessed in Blantyre. The other trait she told me I exhibited was a close adherence to “English Time”, a term used to describe punctuality. This will not be a surprise to my colleagues. However, it seemed my use of time as an actual reference point to be adhered to was a largely alien notion.

Barriers

The next day, after having breakfast with the wide-eyed deer, I went with Anja, a clinician working at the Programme, and Bertha to Chikwawa. Located around 40 kilometres south of Blantyre, deep in a hot, steamy basin, Chikwawa is home to the hospital where Anja and many other scientists are fighting an ongoing battle against malaria.

On the journey, Anja explained the issues they face are not just due to mosquitoes but language and barriers to understanding. For example, there is no word in the local language to describe a small tube. This means that when people are being asked for blood samples, they can think they’re being asked to fill up a bottle the size of a soft drink receptacle. Add to this the suspicion that one’s blood may not be used for scientific purposes but to drink and the cultural waters become rather muddy.

Superstition is rife in Malawi. Christianity may have a strong foothold but local healers and witch doctors are commonplace and hold powerful sway over people. This becomes a medical issue when faced with a choice of seeing the local healer, who lives in the village or getting up around 4am in the morning and walking up to 20km to the hospital. People die because sometimes they have no medical options and it’s thanks to people like Anja that the mystery surrounding medical practice is shrinking and the likelihood of medical intervention is becoming a tangible alternative.

The conditions the scientists work in here are rudimentary, cramped and very hot. A single refrigerated room exists to maintain the medicine. Everyone else just gets used to the incredible humidity. Scientists work in rooms no bigger than large cupboards, using simple equipment to try and save lives. The juxtaposition of suffering and sickness alongside selfless people doing their level best to help others survive I found profound.

Then, in a triumph of Malawian over English Time, we were informed that a group of schoolchildren had been waiting for us to show up for around two hours at their local school. We departed quickly, Elson elaborating on why the level of education in Blantyre was relatively poor – a child must be old enough to walk to and from school. So while, in the UK, a child enters school before five years old, here, they can’t learn until they can cover large distances on foot.

Despite the wait, the children, adorned in their best blue and red uniforms, seemed in good nature. No doubt because Elson, ever the marketeer, had told them I had come over from the UK specifically to film them. Observing both Elson and the children working was fantastic. His enthusiasm fed theirs as they drew their own health-inspired art on large, bespoke canvases. Elson’s plan was to collect their art and display it in a gallery.

And then, just as my second camera battery was almost out, something magical happened. Without any warning, the children assembled into a group, and sang. Feet stamped a rhythm and voices joined in harmonic unison to create some of the best music I had ever heard. It was moving. They belted out three songs in all, Elson and Bertha joining in on the last one, singing, dancing, joyous. It was the best possible way to end the shoot.

Barry James Gibb

Barry is a Science Multimedia Producer at the Wellcome Trust.

Read Barry’s previous diary entries.

Find out more about Art in Global Health on the Wellcome Collection website. Find out more about the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme

Bronze Age skull from Jericho. Wellcome Images.

Why do so many surviving skulls from the stone age bear the marks of early brain surgery? Muriel Bailly digs deeper into the history of one particular skull in our collection.

While studying archaeology I had always been fascinated by the impressive scientific knowledge of our ancestors, especially in medical sciences. As there is no better place than Wellcome Collection to study the history of medicine, I was very pleased when I first started working here and discovered that there is a trepanned skull from Jericho dated from 2200 BCE on display in the Medicine Man gallery.  This trepanned skull shows that our ancestors were already capable of practicing successful craniotomy 4000 years ago, and with access to neither anaesthetic nor antiseptic!

The word ‘trepanation’, or ‘trephination’ is derived from the Greek typaron meaning to bore, and it literally means to drill a hole into the skull. It is the earliest form of surgery known to us: the first evidence of trepanation has been dated from 6500 BCE for a specimen found in the French necropolis of Ensisheim (Alsace). All around the globe, archaeologists have found specimens dated from the Neolithic period (10 000 BCE/4000–2500 BCE) presenting evidence of trepanation. The hole would have been made by scraping the bone with sharp stones such as flint or obsidian while the patient was still conscious, although they would potentially pass out from the pain.

A large number of trepanned skulls have been found in Europe, Africa and Southern America, proving that this was a common technique. But why would our ancestors want to put themselves through this much pain?

Meticulous studies have shown that trepanation was essentially carried out on young men and that most specimens presented evidence of head injury. The percentage of those who recovered from the operation (including our specimen at Wellcome Collection, who survived repeated trepanations) shows the astonishing degree of technical skill of people from the Neolithic era, but leaves the question of motive open. Researchers today still have different interpretations of this practice. Indeed, since science and magic were – at that time – of the same nature, it is difficult to differentiate the ritual or magical motives of trepanation from the therapeutic or medical ones.

Because a large number of trepanned skulls also show evidence of head injury, some researchers see a therapeutic motive to this practice. This procedure was carried out to relieve the blood pressure underneath the surface of the skull, as well as to remove bone fragments from the wound. In that case, what about the other percentage of the population who underwent trepanation and do not have evidence of head trauma? It is strongly believed that trepanation may have been used to cure various diseases that are believed to have their seat in the head, such as headache, epilepsy and even depression.

Our specimen at Wellcome Collection suffered four trepanations and managed to survive all of them. There is evidence of regrowth of the bone, indicating that the individual lived on for many years after the operations. In addition to the trepanned holes, we can see evidence of head injury on the top of the skull, supporting the idea that this person had trepanations as a medical treatment following an intracranial trauma.

During the Neolithic period, Jericho was a very important settlement. Various city-states were established on the land, and the presence of large defensive walls suggest that the city-state kings were frequently attacking each other. Between 2400 and 2000 BC, the size of the settlements diminished under the pressure of Bedouin attacks. Could our specimen – dated 2200 BCE – have gained this injury during one of these battles? It is possible, although we will never be sure.

After the Neolithic period trepanation became much less common, to such a point that during the 18th and 19th centuries surgeons would reject the procedure outright, owing to its almost one hundred per cent chance of mortality! However, you’d be mistaken if you thought the procedure had died out altogether. It’s still practiced today in its early form – as opposed to our modern craniotomy – by medicine men in Kenya and Algeria.

Muriel Bailly is a Visitor Service Assistant at Wellcome Collection.

A photograph by Miriam and James, exploring the juxtaposition of science and nature.

Over the course of four months, Barry J Gibb visited our major overseas programmes in Africa and Asia to make a film about the Art in Global Health project. In the second of his journal entries Barry arrives in Kenya.

Within minutes of arriving at Nairobi airport, en route to Mombasa, I was fleeced by two apparently well-meaning gentlemen. On arrival at the diminutive airport, I found myself needing to change planes quickly and, in the absence of clear signage, clearly looked like a confused and wandering target. This was my first important lesson when travelling alone – never look confused, never look lost. As I wandered aimlessly around, I was approached with the offer of help to carry my bags. Thinking this gentleman was staff (bright yellow jacket), I gratefully received his assistance. Thirty feet later, we had ‘arrived’, as had his friend who began badgering me for cash. Initially reluctant, their persistence veered towards light threats. From that moment on, no one carried my bags again.

Mombasa airport was an entirely different experience. Collecting my bags at this tiny airport, a charming woman asked if I worked for the Wellcome Trust. This was how I met Vicky Marsh, wife of Kevin Marsh, the Director of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme. Together, we shared a jeep ride for the hour’s journey to Kilifi, home of KEMRI, and my home for the next few days. Animals walked alongside the road, just as much as the people. And there were so many people, just walking. The drive passed quickly as Vicky explained how she and Kevin came to Kilifi, as young scientists, how the place had transformed from a quiet seaside village to a burgeoning town and holiday resort, the tremendous impact the building of a simple bridge had had for locals and the way its culture had embraced them. And, of course, the impact of building a state of the art research centre – the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) – with around 700 employees right in the middle of it all.

I checked-in at the Mnarani Club, a beautiful resort nestling by the ocean, and headed off to KEMRI to meet my long-time email colleague Juliette Mutheau, then KEMRI’s Science Communication Officer. She introduced me to KEMRI’s designated artists-in-residence for the Art in Global Health project, Miriam Syowia Kyambi and James Muriuki. A fantastic team using all manner of media and performance to communicate their ideas, I immediately knew we would get on. We went to their cottage by the ocean; my mind fizzing with filming opportunities. Travelling to the cottage, I used my DSLR camera to shoot them in their tiny jeep during a rather turbulent drive on rocky roads. Once there, I brought out the heavy artillery, my EX1 camera, filming as much as I could. This tends to be my filming style – I know pretty much what I’m after but, in any given situation in which reality is unfolding before the lens, I’ll capture as much as I can. One never knows what might be useful and, when it comes to capturing moments, there are no second chances.

At their cottage, they took me out to see something that was ‘currently inspiring them’. Fifty metres from their front door, behind a wall of vegetation, was the ocean crashing against a series of cliffs, in all its deep blue, tempestuous glory. ‘Look’ they said, ‘listen…’.

Back in the cottage I filmed them discussing their process, their work. Listening to Miriam and James talk was remarkable; the depth of their thinking, reasoning, the scope of their questions, insights and ideas. This was a side to art I’d never heard: ‘good’ art is the product of intense intellectual interrogation, a process resulting in a thing, a piece of art, potentially provoking a viewer down a thought path of their own. Part of their thinking was to explore the boundaries between culture and science in Kilifi through a series of photographs. We went to a local food market with a handful of latex laboratory gloves. Less than 24 hours earlier I’d been in leafy North London; now I was standing in the middle of a busy, dusty street in Kilifi as Miriam explained to a bewildered but tolerant vendor why they needed private access to the market for half an hour to throw gloves. This sounds a little unusual, but their artistic aim was very clear: by photographing lab equipment in environments you never usually see it in, they create images in which worlds and beliefs collide, provoking a viewer to think and question their views of science.

Inside the market, James set up his camera while Miriam looked for good locations to launch some latex. This was art in action, just as much as the photographs that followed. The market was surrounded by curious onlookers, watching these two, possibly wildly eccentric, artists work. Over and over again, Miriam threw the gloves across the market as James tried to capture the perfect spread of airborne labware across tomatoes, carrots, potatoes… Frozen in time, the gloves adopt a life of their own, in a space that should be alien to them.

Back at the Mnarani, I finally met and chatted with Kevin Marsh, agreeing that we should cover some of the more scientific aspects of the trip. That the man at the head of the KEMRI-Wellcome Programme wanted to be so involved was fantastic, an invaluable endorsement of the value of film to the organisation. This did wonders for my confidence in the trip. Over the next couple of days, I filmed the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust’s scientists at work, interviewed its people and gawped at the hugely curious monkeys that seemed to appear on every external stairway in sight.

Patterns began to emerge about how science works in Kilifi. Teams of people from Kilifi regularly leave the centre, heading out into the various patchworks of communities to liaise with their members, literally building bridges between the population and the science all around them, to help explain how, for example, giving a single sample of blood can advance science and health.

Feeding into this battle of understanding is a government, I was informed by locals, that presently undervalues science. With little support within the education climate and beyond, there’s only minor encouragement to become a scientist and little hope of a supported career, should you become one. Growing up in such a climate, it’s hardly surprising the general level of scientific enthusiasm is impoverished.

To see the real value of science, one need only visit the hospital next door to KEMRI. In one area, the Wellcome Trust’s logo sits proud yet crudely painted onto the faded blue wall of one of the hospital’s ageing buildings. And while science is broadly about stretching our understanding of life and our place within the Universe, arguably it’s greatest, most immediate impacts can be seen in contexts like this, where advances result in tangible benefits to health. Blue-sky research will always be of great importance but the science in Kilifi has an urgency about it, a very real life-saving focus. In one of the most affecting experiences of the entire trip, I toured the busy hospital, including a children’s ward, meeting toddlers suffering from malaria. There, the importance of KEMRI and what it’s trying to achieve powerfully hit home.

Another experience I was completely unprepared for was an impromptu conversation with one of the cleaning staff at the Mnarani. Hovering by the door, it was clear he wanted to say something. “Do you believe in witchcraft where you come from?,” he asked. This was not what I’d been expecting but our chat revealed a whole other cultural dimension to Kenya that had blindsided me. In addition to Christianity and the Muslim religion, Kenya and many other parts of Africa have a powerful belief in magic. This gentleman was very curious about how we, in the UK, achieve success without fear of some form of magical retaliation (apparently, my room had strong magic, which I chose to believe was a good thing). This belief is not restricted to cleaners: senior researchers at KEMRI spoke of professors who have deeply superstitious beliefs. This innocent conversation was a powerful reminder that the culture underpinning a country has as much, if not more, impact on its scientific progress as its education system.

Hear more of Barry’s audio diaries from Kenya:

Barry Gibb

Barry Gibb is a Multimedia Producer at the Wellcome Trust.

Read Barry’s first post on his tour.

Find out more about Art in Global Health on the Wellcome Collection website. Find out more about the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme.

In the latter half of 2012, I was asked to take part in something extraordinary.

Art in Global Health sees six sets of artists selected to take up residency in each of the Trust’s major research centres across the world. Danielle Olsen, curator of this ambitious venture, was looking for ways to somehow record their progress, their artistic process as they immersed themselves in the research centres, the science and scientists.

We discussed various possibilities, several of which she had already initiated, such as blogging, audio or video diaries. Then she mentioned the possibility of making a film, a globe-trotting visual delight, filled with art, science and exotic locations – a fantastic way to reveal the artists, the scope of what they were trying to achieve and the cultural nuances of each location. What I wasn’t quite prepared for was the moment Danielle casually asked, ‘So, will you do it?’. How could I refuse?

Of course, it’s never that simple. Working in any large organisation, on a project of this scale, you quickly discover there are layers of protocol and bureaucracy. This was, potentially, a massive additional undertaking alongside my usual work, involving visiting six different countries and six different institutions around the world: Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Vietnam, Thailand and Germany. I’d be out of the office for weeks.

Thankfully, a rather enthusiastic consensus was reached: yes. I’d go out to each country to interview and film each of the artists, to try and capture a sense of their emergent process and ongoing works. Additionally, we agreed it would be a fantastic opportunity to try and capture as much of the science going on out in each research centre as possible – to work with the in-house communications and public engagement teams to plan a series of filming opportunities and interviews with the scientists as well as the artists. Adding more to the mix, we also decided that each scientist, once interviewed about their own work, would then be asked a series of questions about the artistic residency too. Naturally, filled with a naive enthusiasm, I had no idea yet how exhausting this would be.

Once this fairly portly framework was agreed, Danielle and myself had to act fast. We had around a month to organise the trips, a couple to actually do the filming, then get back and edit it all together. All this, of course, amidst my usual flurry of film work.

My feeling was that the best approach would be to take on two research centres at a time, spending four days in each – two days to focus on the artists and two days to focus on the scientists and their work. Add in flights and travel and the first 11-day trip started to take shape, in no small part thanks to the fantastic assistance of our Travel Coordinator, Rod Richardson. Visas, flights, hotels, filming permissions, emergency contacts – Rod made sure I could get where I was going, safely, have a place to stay and not get arrested for producing a camera whilst there.

The first trip was to the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya and the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme. The last thing I wanted was for the scientists to think, ‘the Wellcome Trust is sending someone to film you – perform!’. Instead, my hope was to make the trips feel collaborative from beginning to end – that we’d all benefit. The best way to achieve this, it seemed, was to work as closely as possible with the Centre Directors themselves and their own, existing, engagement teams. There followed weeks of learning new names and trying to tease out the various interrelationships of all concerned. Treading lightly.

Fully vaccinated, the first trip was fast approaching, but before delving into the travel lounges, flights, cheeky monkeys, countless motorbikes, spicy foods and shanty towns, I needed a bag. The first thing I did was check Philip Bloom’s blog. A guru amongst indie filmmakers – if ever there was a man who would know about taking filming equipment on planes, it would be him. Sure enough, Mr Bloom recommended the ThinkTank Airport International V2.0. A bag with a ‘version number’ has to be a good bag.

The Airport International V2.0

The case had to be able to take everything, leaving me wanting for nothing. Once I was out of the office  there would be no way to access any help, so maximum self-sufficiency was paramount. For this first trip, I’d calculated that if I wanted to be able to film, during each 10-11 day trip, up to around 20 hours max (10 hours per country, 5 hours for ‘science’ and 5 hours for ‘art’), I’d need around 250Gb of memory cards. Into the bag went:

• 1 x Sony EX1 video camera
• 1 x Canon 550D DSLR for discrete reportage shots
• 2 x chargers and 2 batteries for both cameras
• 2 x Sennheiser radio mics with spare batteries
• 1 x Rode shotgun mic (plus 2 x XLR cables, just in case one got lost)
• 1 x pair of headphones
• 3 x SxS memory cards (expensive!)
• 2 x ‘SD card to EX1 SxS’ slot adapters
• 12 x 16Gb SD cards (far less expensive)
• 1 x lens cloth
• 1 x lens pen
• 1 x blower brush

By the time I actually got to the airport it was a bit of a relief to finally get going after all the pre-planning shenanigans, but also more than a little daunting. I was on my own. Bye-bye comfort zone, hello Kenya.

Find out more about the Art and Global Health project.

Updated 4/4/2013: Corrected spelling and job title for Danielle Olsen.