Hi everyone! This is the first post of my travel blog, which I am starting for my trip for The Full Belly Project to test aflatoxins in Zacapa, Guatemala. I am leaving in two days on Sunday morning, so right now all of my travel plans are finalized and I am packing everything up to go soon. I have been preparing for this trip for the past 4 weeks in Wilmington, NC, doing research on aflatoxins and building a UV aflatoxin scanner box to bring to Guatemala. I posted some background information on another page linked above, where I explained some of the my previous experiences working with The Full Belly Project and also included a short bio. I will continue to update this blog with more pages/information about our aflatoxin research and our work with Vanderbilt University as I get the opportunity.
Tomorrow, I am going into the workshop on Saturday morning to take some pictures/video of the current equipment that I am bringing on the plane, which includes the two halves (top/bottom) of the UV aflatoxin scanner, and a cardboard box for the Universal Nut Sheller (UNS) assembly. Also, I want to give some video credit to The Full Belly Project volunteers who have been doing the woodworking to build the aflatoxin scanner box. This has been especially important because we needed to build the box to be sturdy/light/compact enough to pass all of the IAATA and Delta requirements for international checked baggage to fly on the airplane.
In other news, today I received the VICAM AflaCheck test in the mail, which includes 25 +/- tests for concentrations of aflatoxin above/below 20 ppb. I packed the test kit in the top half of the UV aflatoxin scanner box, and I will be able to use it in the village to have some immediate feedback whether or not our aflatoxin-reduction technologies will be effective. However, to obtain exact quantitative data about the ppb concentrations of aflatoxin, we will send samples to a lab in Guatemala City for HPLC/ELISA testing.
Overall, I am feeling really excited about the trip and seeing rural Guatemala. I have never been outside of US/Europe/Canada before, so this will be my first experience in a small village working with local farmers. I took the first dose of my malaria pills today (Malarone), and I have a large supply of pills for traveler's diarrhea just in case. I'm looking forward to meeting some native Guatemalans, and hopefully I will be able to help a few of them with the Full Belly technology that I'm bringing along.
Feel free to comment on these posts if you have questions/thoughts/advice for me about my trip; I welcome any feedback that you have. I will try to keep you all updated for this blog regularly throughout the trip, so anyone following this can track my progress and the results from our experiments as we discover them. Talk to you soon!
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