Last week Jon returned from a trip to Southern Africa... Swaziland to be exact.
But I'll let him tell the story- since I wasn't there.
*sniff* *sniff*
So the trip to Swaziland was a long one. We left Houston at 4 pm on a Friday, and arrived at our hotel at 3 pm on a Sunday... Luckily we had a 10 hour layover in Frankfurt, so my advisor and I went to check out the city:
It was pretty rainy at first, but then it cleared up.
So the trip to Swaziland was a long one. We left Houston at 4 pm on a Friday, and arrived at our hotel at 3 pm on a Sunday... Luckily we had a 10 hour layover in Frankfurt, so my advisor and I went to check out the city:
It was pretty rainy at first, but then it cleared up.
There were a couple cool old cathedrals-This is St. Peter's Cathedral.
Frankfurt had a pretty nice town square-we mostly stuck to the Olde Towne (if you add e's to the end of words they look older, right?)
The one attraction that Frankfurt had was the house where Johann Goethe was born (he was a famous writer, probably best known for writing "Faust")
Most of Frankfurt was leveled during WWII, but the Opera House survived.
Once we arrived at the Johannesburg airport, we got to meet Nelson Mandela
And we could buy a Zebra skin...if we had $2000 for such a thing!
The first day we spent meeting with the government officials and discussing our project. We met the Minister of
The next day we went to see the sites where we could potentially implement our technology. A little about our project: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (the UN FDA basically) had a project in which they built small dams to provide year-round water for agriculture in the rural areas of Swaziland:
But unfortunately the water is really dirty, with lots of human and animal waste, bacteria, etc.
So we are trying to use nanotechnology to help disinfect the water before they use it on their crops, in their homes, in their food, or even just for drinking.
So we met with a bunch of them and learned what we could about the water, how much they use, how often they use it, how it gets from the dams to the fields, and how they felt about the possibility of technology helping to make the water cleaner. They were very kind, accepting, and interested in our technology.
Research-wise it was a very successful trip-we learned what we needed to learn and have a good idea of how to move forward. We will go back in November (hopefully WITH Amelia this time!) and present my research on how much my nanotechnology can or can't do for them and they will decide whether they want to fund a test reactor there in Swaziland.
But while we were in Swaziland, we of course had to do some other sight-seeing. We went to the Hlane wildlife preserve:
Where we saw all kinds of cool animals. They took us around in these monster Jeeps
And we saw Elephants (this is a baby-don't get between him and his mother!)
There was a rather tense moment in which this fella almost chased us down. Turns out you aren't supposed to drive towards a bull elephant or he thinks you are challenging him :)
Lions (we were about 30 feet away from this fella-lucky for us he was feeling pretty lazy that afternoon...)
Giraffes
Warthogs (no, he didn't start singing Hakuna Matata. We were very disappointed.)
And many others (antelope, zebra, wildebeests, springboks, crocodiles, rhinos and lots of cool-looking birds). I wanted to take home a baby elephant for Amelia's birthday present, but apparently there are laws against such things :(
Another fun part about the trip was the food. My dad served his mission in South Africa, and when we were growing up he would always make curry. I got to eat some super-yummy South African curry while I was there, and I must say-my dad did a pretty good version :)
-Jon
