This is an update

Considering I found myself checking my own blog for updates, I figured it was time to write one…

This week has been good, the ILRI vets that came to visit were super awesome and I definitely want to be them when I grow up. One of them has been offered a job as the veterinary medical officer in charge of the CDC base in Cairo. I encouraged her to take it and then hire me! Perfect. They came to Kisumu to discuss some logistics for a participatory epidemiology study they are planning to set up in Asembo, the same area where I'm setting up my surveillance system. There's an ongoing zoonoses project that looks at diarrheal diseases in children under five, and they are doing participatory epi, which involves semi-structured interviews of community members, to determine what local knowledge exists about the diseases. They asked me (or maybe I begged them I don't remember) to help out by evaluating one of the interview teams, and this means I get to go to the refresher training that they are holding and learn how to do participatory epidemiology myself! Then after I experience it we are going to go out and do it for my project! This will establish a baseline of what people know about zoonoses, and then after the surveillance system has been running for a while, or at the end of my time here, I'll do it again and see how things have changed.

We haven't gotten any reports from my pilot villages since the day we implemented it when it turned out the cow was in heat. I wasn't there, so I'm concerned that the animal health assistants may have discouraged the animal health reporter from reporting by making it seem like it was a really bad thing that he reported that this cow had nervous signs. After seeing the presentation on education through listening and talking about participatory epi, I'm really concerned about improving the communication between our animal health assistants and reporters or farmers. So Tuesday I'm going to get the 3 animal health reporters to come in and try to figure out whether there really haven't been any events in their villages (which is possible) or if they are facing some barriers to reporting that we can help out with.

Also, today I moved into a new house! Steph was kind enough to drive down and pick up me and my two suitcases and Marisa's bike and drive me up the road to my new place, which is in the same compound where she lives. Technically I'm renting one room in a three-bedroom house, but there's no one else staying with me at the moment and I'm not sure if anyone is going to come. This means I'm paying about $300 per month for a furnished three-bedroom house with a back garden, an amazing view of the lake and the sunset when it's not cloudy, and a very nice woman named Nida that cleans and does laundry. Plus it's much closer to the center of town, and about a 3 minute walk from where I catch the shuttle to the office, and it has screens on the windows that keep out the mosquitoes! Where I was staying before I was essentially sharing with hundreds of mosquitoes (plus some people that are nice and don't suck blood). The mosquitoes were fat and lazy and I could frequently catch one in one hand absent-mindedly. The only problem with my new house is that it's adjacent to a very active construction site.