As I settle into my life here, day to day events seem less worthy of telling everyone about. But I don't want to get in the habit of not posting about awesome things just because doing awesome things is second nature!
In the past couple of weeks, I have had the opportunity to participate in a ton of sweet social events, from (pre)Diwali celebrations to homemade pizza parties to ridiculous Halloween adventures. I also returned to Bondo for phase two of the participatory epidemiology study, where we learned a lot more about people's perceptions of zoonotic causes of diarrhea in children, and tried to brainstorm ways of preventing transmission with the communities. Next time, we'll see whether they were able to implement any of these preventive suggestions and see what the barriers to implementation of preventive measures are. The suggestions include sweeping the animal dung out of the compound every day, washing hands after handling dogs and other animals, preventing babies from eating dung off of the ground, boiling water and milk before drinking it, etc.
Tonight is the real Diwali celebration, with fireworks and food stalls at the Yacht (pronounced "Yatcht") Club. Luckily the Indian community in Kisumu is letting everyone participate, and I am really excited to eat delicious Indian food!
My project is going well, although setting up the lab for the diagnostic tests has been a total nightmare. Yesterday I was optimistic because the lab sample tracking software was working after being down on and off for about 6 weeks, and because the lab manager is back from vacation so I can finally get things rolling. HOWEVER I was just informed that the system is down again! This is especially bad because I won't be in the office at all next week and so far the only way progress has been made in setting up the software is when I sit directly next to the data manager while he works on it.
Next week I'm going to Kampala, Uganda for a conference on M4D (mobile technology "4" development) where hopefully I will meet a lot of people that are successfully using the software programs that I am currently struggling to implement. (Did I say my project is going well? It actually is, for example I'm starting to work with people from the Department of Veterinary Services to find out their priorities for disease surveillance, and I'm trying to come up with a paper to submit to the International Conference on Animal Health Surveillance in France in May...the software challenges are what I end up complaining about, but except for the incredibly frustrating Freezerworks, I really enjoy troubleshooting and I'm excited to see how what I learn next week at the conference will help!)
THEN on the weekend I am going whitewater rafting on the Nile with a few friends that will meet me in Jinja. I am sort of terrified but I have heard from at least 6 people that it is amazingly fun. We'll see if we end up chickening out and only doing Grade 3 rather than Grade 5 rapids. I also found out that it's possible to go on a 6 day horseback safari in the same area (along the Nile in Uganda) which includes one day of rafting, plus swimming with the horse in a "sandy bottomed pool" (in the river, great way to get Schistosomiasis, but…it's treatable…) and riding through forests full of monkeys and exotic birds! I would love to do that when I have an extra couple thousand dollars lying around…who wants to join me?
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