95 Degrees and 90% Humidity

(From Mary Bohan)

It’s been hot in Singapore, to say the least. After spending the year in a non air-conditioned dorm at Duke, I thought I was prepared for the heat. I wasn’t. I remember exiting the aircraft after our 25 hour flight from the US, and feeling the surge of heat as soon as I stepped onto Singaporean soil. After a two hour adventure on the train and bus we arrived on the campus of NUS, each carrying more than our body weight in bags for our ten week stay in Singapore. We asked everyone we could find where our residence hall was but no one could tell us, and we dragged our belongings in circles around the nearby hospital. I remember the final ascent towards the residence hall a few hours later, taking two steps at a time and thirty seconds to recover each time, just enough time for the black spots to clear my head and for me to regain full consciousness, dripping with sweat and more exhausted than I had ever been in my life. To say the least, the heat is a bit much. Our rooms have no air conditioning, only one ceiling fan, and we have three huge windows to open but no screens, so we have many bugs visiting us daily. Our bodies have somewhat acclimated, in that we are no longer dripping with sweat and drinking six bottles of water a day as we were. I’ve completely given up on doing anything with my very curly hair, as any straightening or blow drying will be destroyed by the humidity within minutes. During the first few days of our stay in Singapore, we were so worn out by the heat that we would take the free shuttle bus in circles around the campus in order to take advantage of the air conditioning. I said to Tammy, half seriously, that I would consider taking a nap on the bus and seeing if anyone noticed. It was that bad. Every day on our way to work, we are faced with a huge hill, probably 20 stories high, which we must ascend and descend in order to reach our office. It’s become a given that we will make a stop to the sixth floor to get a glass of water each morning after our climb. So much for being 1 degree north of the equator!

I can definitely see where the conditions here contribute to the potential for diseases such as Yellow Fever and Dengue. The humid weather, lack of air conditioning, and open windows seem to be asking for mosquitoes to breed and spread disease. In my own room, part of a newly constructed residence hall at the biggest university in the country, I often there are often many different types of bugs coming through the windows and even the walls. The bathroom has a constant stream of ants, as does the refrigerator in the kitchen. I have yet to see anyone use any form of bug spray, or any form of netting to prevent against these insects. In my few weeks here I’ve gotten quite bitten up by bugs, and even joked to Tammy on the ferry from Indonesia that perhaps given my symptoms of a fever, nausea, and many bug bites, perhaps I had contracted one of the diseases we have been researching! So far I’ve been fine! After seeing all of the work that is being done from a virology and vaccine perspective, I wonder why no one is implementing any other preventative techniques against these diseases. It’s definitely something I’m going to look into.