Notes from the Field 2009

By Robyn Browning

We arrived to Arusha on Saturday evening, after an 11 hour bus ride to get there (not the 9 hours I was told to expect). The bus was cramped and hot and the seats were hard as a rock. So needless to say, we were all happy to be done with the bus ride by the end of the day. We were transported to Peace House Africa Secondary School where we were shown the guest houses, our homes for the next several weeks. Peace House has a beautiful campus. With Mt. Meru in th background and nothing but rolling hills surrounding us, it is a very serene and relaxing place. The campus is surrounded by an electric fence and there are security guards present 24/7. We have been advised to not leave campus after dark, which is mostly because we are very close to Arusha, which is known for being the most dangerous city in TZ.

Monday was our first official day of starting our research (to this point we have been traveling and spending time at the University of Dar). We were assigned to teams for the first two weeks of our project. Each team consists of a Univ. of Dar student, a Michigan Tech student, and a Public Health student. We have 3 teams of 3 people each (minus one team with 2 Michigan Tech students instead of a Public Healther). My team consists of Jarod, a Geology Master's student from Michigan Tech and Divina, a graduate in food technology from the University of Dar. Our first task was to create a list of NGOs that we want to visit in the surrounding area. We have a list of 8 NGOs currently, which includes Heifer International, Tanzania Girl Guides (an organization devoted to enhancing the lives of women through technology), and the Global Service Corps, among others. Without an abundance of contact information for most of the organizations on our list, we headed into Arusha to try and find them on our own.

Jarod had contact information for a woman who works for an NGO near Arusha, affectionately known as Mama Africa. We met with Mama Africa at a coffeehouse where she told us about her organization. She explained in detail the safe water project her organization has undertaken, which uses sand to clean the water. Mama Africa's organization also focuses on HIV education. Her organization only promotes abstinence. Mama Africa said that giving condoms was like giving out a gun and then telling people not to use it. Deciding to avoid confrontation, I did not bring up the topic of the spread of HIV within marriage, largely due to infidelity when the men are away from their wives.

We will continue to visit organizations throughout the week in order to better understand the public health needs of Tanzania, as well as how appropriate technology can address those needs. For now, it is time for a dinner of ugali (still corn porridge) and beans.

Posted at 8:22 AM
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By Sarah Brunsberg
Uganda

As I rise at 7AM every morning out of my slumber the first smell that greets me is the pit latrines being cleaned. It does not smell good but it does a good job of waking me up. The next smell that greets me is the pleasant scent of ginger in the tea that Kakaato makes us every morning. In Uganda they drink a lot of black tea and we are fortunate enough to have ginger water added to the tea. I will take this idea home with me.
At around noon each day the smell of the daily trash burn stings my nose. They burn the trash right out front of our site in the middle of the town just to ensure that all the townspeople get a smell it seems.

At the same time the smell of our lunch seeps into our workroom and we know that lunch will consist of: potatoes, rice, greens and noodles. We know this because this is what we eat each day for lunch and dinner. The food tastes good, we just wish for more variety.

Later that day we may take a trip to another town or market. Imagine this: driving down a dusty dirt road with eleven people crammed into a Toyota corolla and you are the only person wearing deodorant. Welcome to Uganda!

Posted at 12:50 PM
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By Katarina Grande
Tanzania

The team, along with its newest members Joel and Dasu journeyed to Arusha in northern Tanzania today. And what a journey. We woke up at 5:30 in the morning, crammed supersized backpacks and squished people into two cars, and entered to the zoo of the bus depot. The air, clouded with diesel exhaust and enveloped in noise added to the chaotic atmosphere. People were selling things everywhere. The bus stairs were so small and steep that I had to crawl onto the large bus. Eventually we departed, the morning sun already magnifying us through the glass windows like little ants. Our red faces dripped with sweat while the Tanzanians looked relaxed. I rationed my water to prevent my ridiculously small bladder from having to pee for the next twelve hours--there weren't really and rest stops or bathrooms at which to pause every hour like I usually require on road trips. Not to say the bus didn't stop. It did, in seemingly every tiny village on the way from Dar to Arusha. Approaching these villages half-sleeping, I would be jolted awake by people banging on the outside of the bus, shouting for us to buy their goods raised to the level of the bus windows. Towers of oranges, eggs, bananas, juice, soda, candybars, clothes, bread--it was, in an unconventional sort of way, like the food cart on airplanes.

At the one actual stop on the trek, Robyn and I tried to purchase two bananas, but, when presented with the 4000 Tsh price tag (a bit less than 4 USD), we declined; our bartering price was not accepted. We boarded the bus again. The scenery was breathtaking and every-changing. Each village's huts were slightly different--thatched roofs, tin roofs, grass roofs, no roofs, brick, stone, straw. The climate changed rapidly from mountainous, lush, jungle to arid, dry plains and back again. Children waved at the lumbering bus, other villagers ignored them, uninterested. Some villages rested in shade, while most were hard at work--lugging water jugs, harvesting plants from fields, repairing bicycles, laundering clothes. I felt a little voyeuristic, peering into these peoples' lives from the bus window, even briefly. All the sights were fascinating; I couldn't look away. I wondered what the Tanzanians would think, riding on a Greyhound bus through America. I learned a lot from this twelve-hour glance of Tanzania. Once darkness set in and the educational window slideshow ended, I was more than ready for the unceasingly bumpy ride to be over. I felt like a microwave popcorn kernel--hot, greasy, jostled. We asked the Tanzanian teammates if they were overstimulated by the day; they said, "no way!" and laughed.

Posted at 1:31 PM
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By Sarah Brunsberg
Uganda

I arrived in Uganda after 30 hours of travel completely and utterly exhausted and was greeted by Peter who was a special hired driver to drive me to Kampala for the night. It was an interesting experience arriving so exhausted and making the drive to Kampala trying to understand Peter's Ugandan English while driving on the wrong side of the road and avoiding 10 head on collisions (or what it seemed like to me at the time).

It has been difficult adjusting to how they drive in Uganda, but other than I often feel safer in Uganda than in the United States. Before I left all I heard was how cautious I needed to be and the precautions I needed to take with my money and things. However, I have not taken action with any of the precautions I came with to Uganda. Ugandans are the nicest and most honest people I have ever met. In the market one day a man chased after Anna just to give her the left over change she has forgotten. Besides the honesty there are absolutely no beggars here and from what I can tell everyone works, and they work hard. The staff at our Ssembabule site are amazing. They keep it very clean and make us tea and food often. The only drawback is that toilet paper often runs out and is not replaced quickly.

The living conditions are extremely different from the United States and I miss the luxuries we have back home, but I am adjusting to the living conditions here. Yesterday we went out into an even more rural village than the one we live in and I felt lucky for the pit latrine toilet and bucket baths we use at our site. These villages have nothing and it is amazing how generous the people living here are. The council woman of this village offered me three lemons which I gladly accepted because I am missing the food variety in the United States.

My conclusions thus far are although I am very homesick and miss things about the US, Ugandans are amazing people who are forcing me to slow down and enjoy the simple things in life.

Posted at 12:47 PM
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Okay. I'm finally ready to write about the work that I have been doing! It has been an incredibly busy and intense three weeks. It was quite a dramatic change from doing almost nothing for three weeks to all of the sudden working 16 hour days. We are implementing a mid-term survey on family planning in Ssembabule District in central Uganda. MIHV has been working in the district for almost 20 years and a big part of what they do is train volunteer family planning community health workers (FPCHW) to go out into the rural areas to educate about and distribute methods of birth control to women. The survey is called a Knowledge, Coverage, and Practice (KPC) survey. Therefore, the survey we are doing will assess to what extent the women in Ssembabule district have knowledge about family planning, how much of the area is actually covered by access to birth control services, and how many women are actually using some method of family planning. The survey, which is conducted fully in Luganda, is a 30 page instrument that will be conducted on 300 women in the area who are between the ages of 15 and 49. The past three weeks I have learned an INCREDIBLE amount about what it means to actually collect data in the field in rural Uganda. The first part of the process involved training 12 Ugandans to actually conduct the interviews. Finding 12 Ugandans who were from the Ssembabule area was a feat in and of itself. These individuals had to speak both English and Luganda fluently and they had to have at least a high school education. Originally, MIHV wanted to have interviewers who were actually from Ssembabule district, but it was not possible to find even 12 people in the area who were qualified, so we branched out to greater Uganda for the recruitment process.
The second week of the process, which took place this past week, was the actual collection of data in the field. The process we used to conduct the collection was called a cluster survey, meaning we collected the surveys from thirty clusters through the district. We first randomly chose 30 villages throughout the district and then had to randomly choose the first household in each village once the interview team reached the village. Choosing the first household could take place in two manners. First of all, we would find the home of the LC1, who is basically the chairman or chief of each village. Then this chairman would either have a written, numbered list of each household in the village or they would draw a map of all the households in the village for us. Then, we would assign a number to each household and randomly choose one number to start. One LC1 did not have any paper, so he drew a map of his entire village using a piece of charcoal in the dirt. After finding the first household, would then choose every second closest household until we had conducted 10 interviews for the day. This entire process happened for five days, which six teams each visiting different separate villages each day.
I have to say the days spent in the field were extremely eye-opening for me. I never expected that I would spend entire days here, hiking through the African bush, trying to find extremely remote huts in order to conduct a survey. I had no idea what I was getting into, no clue that I would be walking past cobras and monkeys in order to collect family planning information, but I feel so lucky to have been privy to such an experience. Here are some of the things I learned while in the field:
-In rural areas of Uganda, when we came up a woman or girl, she would kneel on the ground in front of us for the duration of our entire interaction. Women and girls are taught to do this as a sign of respect. It was shocking to me, because it seemed like such an act of submission, especially when I came across a group of eight school children, and all five girls kneeled before me and all of the boys, who were younger, stayed standing.
-A great majority of women do not want to have any more children than they already have given birth to. But a great majority of these women are not using any sort of family planning method.
-The worth of both a man and a woman in rural parts is still solely focused on how many children can be produced. Many tribes have to maintain a certain number of people (I think it's somewhere around 30 people) in order to remain a tribe and with the AIDS epidemic, entire tribes have been or are close to being decimated. People feel an enormous pressure to have as many children as possible so that their tribe is not eliminated.
-Uganda is also still an enormously patriarchal society and so women have little to no choice about how many children they can have or when they are involved in sexual relations with their spouse.
-It is extremely difficult for a woman to access family planning methods if it means traveling five hours one way to get an injection, which means leaving her children unattended for an entire day. It also often means going behind her spouse's back to use some sort of family planning, and then facing discrimination or abandonment when she fails to produce enough children.
-While most people we encountered are aware of HIV/AIDS and condom use, many do not fully understand how the disease is transmitted. Some are still very skeptical of condoms and believe that they do not prevent the spread of the disease.
-Rural Uganda is gorgeous. As I drove out into the field each morning, with the morning mist covering the rolling hills of 3000 shades of green, I felt my heart swell more and more for the people we were visiting. They have such a fertile, beautiful country, which often stands as an utter contradiction to the quality of their lives. A great number of women had lost more than one child and it is extremely rare to see individuals who are older than 55. Countless numbers of families are drinking surface water with no form of filtration or sterilization. It is not uncommon for people to routinely get malaria multiple times a year.
- My guess is that at least 50 percent of a woman's time (and her children's time) is spent finding and transporting water. While the children are little darlings, they are the dirtiest children I have ever seen. In a place where a mother of eight may have to walk over 10 miles a day to carry jugs of water from a source to her home, bathing of her family is last on the list of priorities for how to use the precious water.
-Generosity and hospitality thrives in these rural areas. For people who have so little, they give so much. Every day I have left the field loaded with gifts including, lemons, jackfruit, eggs, avocadoes and one day, two full stalks of corn and two cobs of roasted corn. I wonder how often the individuals who conduct door-to-door surveys in the United States are welcomed into someone's home, invited to stay for tea, and sent home with enough produce to last a week...

Posted at 9:37 AM
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Seriously. Sometimes I just want to shout "Shut up, Uganda!" It's 6:40am. I'm in a hostel in Masaka. It sounds like they are demolishing some large cement blocks with steel pipes just down the hall from our room. I finally got to sleep at 4:30 am, when the restaurant downstairs decided to stop blaring their hip-hop music. I have to say that I definitely wonder when Ugandans actually sleep over all of the noises here. Take the guards at our site in Ssembabule, for instance. I stay up until around midnight each night, and there has yet to be a night where I haven't been trying to go to sleep to the sounds of their radio and chatter. There are also not been a morning where I have not awoken to the same guards and the same radio going strong at 4:30am. And when I say going strong, I mean it's the loudest radio I have ever heard. Not to mention the rooster in our neighborhood that has no internal clock and just cock-a-doodle-dos incessantly all day and all night. Or how, around 9pm every night, every single dog in Ssembabule joins up for a good, ten-minute long howl. It's quite an uproar: the crooning of thirty-plus dogs can drown out all the sounds of our community. The place where we stay is also across from a motorcycle repair shop, where the repairmen are constantly revving up motorcycles to test their engines. Yesterday, a cow that was staked in the yard next to our place pulled up his stake and spent the day meandering around town mooing like he was heartbroken. No one seemed to think this was out of place. I imagine that when I come home to Minneapolis, the silence in my neighborhood will be nearly deafening.

Posted at 9:31 AM
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By Katarina Grande
Tanzania

Today we ("we"= the research team: Robyn, myself, and the Michigan Tech folks: Paddy, Bryna, Jared, Bryna, Professor Kurt Paterson, and Professor David Watkins) worked out the logistics of our collaboration with the University of Dar Es Salaam. We went on a tour of the university, including a detailed description of each instrument in every lab. It was especially interesting to see the water resources lab and the research being done on biofuels. Much of the research being conducted at the university is very public health-based--how to improve sanitation, wastewater treatment facilities, and alternative fuels. I learned about the jatropha plant, which produces coffee-like beans that are very efficient in terms of energy use, plus it grows well in arid regions like Tanzania.

One of the U of Dar students on our team, Leonard Dasu, has researched how to extract oil from this bean. While he was conducting this research, oil prices skyrocketed worldwide. So, he presented the technology to farmers at the annual fair in Arusha (where we're headed next to begin our project). This fair is held to recognize the national holiday of NaneNane (nah-nay nah-nay), a celebration of agriculture. Farmers were quite interested in Dasu's work and the possibilities of a lucrative new crop. Since then, oil prices have dropped and interest has waned a bit...but surely this will remain an important biofuel technology of the future.

Posted at 1:27 PM
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June 25, 2009
Today we worked out some logistics of the collaboration with the University of Dar Es Salaam. We went on a tour of the university, including a detailed desciption of each instrument in every lab. It was interesting to see the water resources lab as well as the research being done on biofuels. I learned about the jatropha plant, which produces beans that look like coffee that are very efficient in terms of energy use, plus it grows well in arid regions like Tanzania. I recognized much of the lab equipment, including a rather new GC/MS (for the non-dorks reading this, that's a machine that basically determines the chemical components of a solution)...however, the university can't use this very useful machine because the power supply isn't constant enough to appropriately power the machine. We met the students who will be spending the next few weeks at PeaceHouse near Arusha with the group; they're all wonderfully nice.

Posted at 11:05 AM
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June 24 2009
Karibu! "Welcome!" I'm here in Dar Es Salaam -Tanzania's largest city. The drive from the airport to a hotel--the group's first stop--is relatively wild. After two overnight flights and a seven-hour layover in London, Robyn and I are greeted by Wilford and Professor Kimambo of the University of Dar Es Salaam. We squeeze into an old Toyota truck, my leg propped up on the dashboard so Wilford can shift. We enter the city. Though early in the morning, Dar is wide awake under the intense winter sun. We pass women carrying buckets on their heads, children lugging gasoline jugs full of water. The daladala buses roll by, absolutely packed with people. In this city, perhaps most cities in Tanzania from what people say, traffic laws are optional. The roads are chaotic, but at the same time people are cordial. Where turning around in the middle of the road would be greeted by X@!%@ in America, here, people motion that there's enough room to move. People walk among the cars, often pointing at us shouting the classic slang white person announcement. There is a deep culvert in the middle of pothole-stricken road. No curb or safety gate lines this deep pit. Smoke spews from diesel trucks and nearby fires. Hello, environmental public health!

The road construction prompts a traffic jam--I'm definitely used to this since Minneapolis is perpetually under construction...but there wasn't any order to this jam. Ultimately, after maybe an hour of sitting, Wilford hauls the truck over a foot-tall curb and heads down a side street. Everything I've been studying about Dharavi (the largest slum in Mumbai, India) is illustrated along this street--people living in hutments, small businesses based in such shacks, trash, poverty, and yet, amidst it all, happy people. We arrive at our destination. The hotel ladies bring Robyn and I passionfruit juice, with ice. The guidebooks' first rule: never drink anything with ice if you're not certain of its source water. Not wanting to be rude, I down the delicious juice. I read the English newspaper Professor Kimambo bought from a road vendor while in the traffic jam. The paper was full of public health--the AIDS battle, malaria problems, and an interesting article about how aid to Africa is ruining the continent and its livelihood. I am conscious of this and don't want to come here to "fix a problem" and then head out. Solutions really need to be largely community-driven--this is where public health and engineering become catalysts.

That evening, Professor Kimambo picks up the group to get some food. He brings along his sassy 6-year-old daughter, Joy. Her front teeth were missing because "rabbits and rats stole them." She goes to an English-language school and is flawlessly fluent in English as well as Swahili. Since kids tend to befriend me, we quickly became hand-holding best pals. Wise beyond her age, Joy teaches me some Swahili. The first phrase that she thinks of translates to "when you go to bed, you wear your mosquito net." Shortly thereafter, eyeing the groups' Kilimanjaro and Safari bottles of beer, she proves us with the word for "drunk person." We spend the rest of dinner quizzing Joy on multiplication facts and spelling--she's a much better speller than I. She braided my hair in a groovy 1980s-style updo. We had a great time.

More later. Sorry about the lack of photos.

Posted at 10:59 AM
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I have not been able to reach internet for the past few weeks. This blog entry is a couple weeks old, but I thought I would post it anyhow. I am in Masaka for the next couple of days, where there is more access to internet, so I will continue posting, if possible. I have so much to share with all of you!!

June 10th, 2009.
I had a very humbling experience today. I was sitting outside of the gate where we live, talking to my sister, Katie, and to be honest, I was complaining. The work we are supposed to be doing here is getting off to a VERY SLOW start. Every day I look around this village, and as I join up with the big "I traveled to Africa" cliché, I have to say it is the worst kind of poverty I have ever been witness to. There is SO MUCH work to be done here and for the past week I have found myself sitting at a desk with two other volunteers, staring at the wall as we twiddle our thumbs. Many times I have been told, in regards to working in Uganda, that "nothing goes as planned here" and "everything takes twice as long to finish" and I am so new to this country and this culture, and I hesitate to just walk around this village to find something to help with. I don't want to impose myself upon anyone, so I just sit. And wait. And call my sister to talk (complain) about the situation, as I was doing this afternoon. While I was sitting and chatting, I noticed a boy who was maybe 11 years old, standing about 20 yards away and just watching me. At first, I didn't think anything of it. I stand out a great deal here and it's not unusual for the villagers to completely stop what they are doing, drop their jaws, and just stare at someone who is, quite possibly, the whitest, blondest person they have ever laid eyes on. But this boy, dressed in his tattered blue school uniform, stood firm in the middle of the road for a good ten minutes. In the midst of receiving some sage advice from Katie (she has lived and worked abroad all over the world), I waved at the boy in greeting. He tentatively took a few steps toward me and so I walked over to him and he just handed me a tightly folded piece of paper and walked away very quickly. I unfolded the paper, not really sure what to expect, and read:

"Good evening. I am called Henry. This is my telephone number. I want you to become my sponsor and take me in your country. I am at K---- Secondary School. Please help me and support me."

The timing of this note couldn't have knocked the wind out of me more quickly. Here I was, a grown woman from a very privileged life, grumbling impatiently and missing home, and here is this child who, based on the language I was speaking and the way I looked, was sure that I had it better wherever I was from. All I could think to myself was how selfish I was to be having such a hard time in a new culture that I will only be in for three months, whereas he would be willing, at such a young age, to leave his entire family and probably the only home he has ever known, to seek a better situation for himself and his family. While I find myself at a loss for how to respond to his note, Henry reminded me of a saying from South Africa that I once learned call Ubuntu. It means "I am a person through other people. My humanity is tied to yours." It is impossible for me to understand where I come from and who I am without first considering my relationship and my connection to other people in the world. Sometimes, it is so easy to become self-absorbed and frustrated when things are not going my way, or the way I expected, so I am thankful that Henry showed up when he did. He brought me much some much needed perspective on the situation. I think, ultimately, this is why I chose to come to Uganda this summer. It was time to step out of my comfort zone, to test my limits, to understand the various ways in which to achieve my goals, to find diverse meanings for beauty and hardship, and to see similar situations through a new lens.

Posted at 2:04 AM
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Today is day 5 of my trip of 34 days to Tanzania. Kat and I arrived in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday morning after 30 hours of travel from Minneapolis to Chicago to London to Dar es Salaam. We were both warned that Heathrow would be a disaster, but actually our 6 hour layover there was quite pleasant. No problems and pretty luxury accommodations at the airport lounge. We skipped a trip into London due to our time constraint and the cost (not to mention my overpacking of my carry-on luggage).

After we arrived at the airport and paid our $100 for a visa, the professor in charge of the University of Dar es Salaam contingent met us outside of the aiport so that he could escort us to our hotel. The drive to the hotel was quite an event. We came upon traffic jam after traffic jam. There aren't a lot of rules of the road here, but everyone is very courteous and drivers really help each other out. With the windows down the entire time, it became very nauseating as the roads aren't in great condition and you can feel yourself breathing in the large particle matter from the surrounding vehicles. We eventually made it to the hotel safely, very grateful for our safe and rather crafty driver.

For me, I seem to be focused on comparing Tanzania to Haiti. So far, they look pretty similar. Lots of people walking on the side of the road, people working hard, small shacks piled up on top of each other, buses (called daladalas here) zooming about filled to the brim with people. However, Tanzania seems to be more developed than Haiti. We ate at a rather nice shopping mall the first night here, which was a little surprising to me. The mounds of trash burning on the side of the road are smaller here (piles here compared to mini mountains in Haiti). Also, so far no power outages and you can get the water to become mildly warm when bathing. On our outing last night I noticed an abundance of street lighting-- not something you would see in Haiti.

We just concluded our first official meeting with the professors and students from the University of Dar. At the end of the meeting, the professors selected the four students from Dar who will accompany us while we are in Arusha. We leave for Arusha on Saturday morning, a 9 hour bus ride. We hope to get settled into our guest house on the Peacehouse Africa campus on Sunday and then officially start our research on Monday.

Posted at 8:35 AM
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I will start my post this week with some good news about the Cholera outbreak, from our school at least. The two cases seemed to be our only ones, and they have fully recovered. The older student was even back in my class Monday night, acting as if nothing has ever happened. The current nation-wide report stands at 4000 cases though, and roughly 85 deaths. The evening news continuously reports on the Cholera outbreak, but seems to always been giving the same information: current tallies of deaths and cases, and just that the government "has it under control". On the local level though, there's no sense of which water sources are clean, whether the Cholera is confined to a specific administrative district, or any guidance on what to do if you are feeling ill. Christine has mentioned that such covertness is Kenya's biggest problem with regard to public health. Officials don't give the public enough information to keep them safe from disease, and then the public loses trust in any prevention measures the public health officials suggest. Certainly this balance of sending appropriate messages to the public without causing excessive worry is difficult for all countries, but with Kenya's government already distrusted by its people, managing the flow of public health information is even more sensitive.

Class has taken place all three scheduled times since my last entry. That in itself is an accomplishment. Thursday evening we addressed the molecular-level process of how HIV invades T-cells and compromises your immune system. I had some drawings of the various stages of HIV: not-infected, early infection (weeks), later infection (months), late infection (AIDS). My artistic talent is not so wonderful, and everyone got a kick out of the "body warriors" my stick figures with swords holding antibodies. But, I think the point was well made that the warriors die off, and the virus takes their places in the blood.

Continue reading "Healthy, Happy, and Class is Back in Action" »

Posted at 5:06 AM
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It has been one long week for me in the past few months. Whiles the anticipation of seeing and being in a new land builds up and the excitement heightens, fear and anxiety sets in. My week started very well shopping and getting ready for my trip to Geneva for the first time and broadly to Europe for that matter. I have been looking forward to doing my internship with the World Health Organization (WHO) since 2008 when I applied for the summer internship. It is a very competitive process and I was very excited I got selected to work with the Department for Nutrition for Health and Development (NHD). My official acceptance letter came in quite too close to the time I had to leave for Geneva but from the immense support I got from the School of Public Health, my friends and family, I am now very confident that I will have a very enjoyable experience in Geneva. So I started my week with a lot of anticipation that I was going to get everything settled the middle of the week which was Wednesday since my flight was Thursday. Somehow, by Wednesday night, I still had no idea where I was staying or which address to go to when I landed on the soils of Geneva even though I had communicated with a few people since I did not know anyone personally in Geneva. I had all my immunizations completed a couple of months ago and knew that was no problem and that item was immediately cancelled off my to-do list after I had found all the documentation.
After being so busy in Downtown Minneapolis in the IDS Tower trying to do my forex exchanges and getting a brand new camera for my trip, I was refusing to accept the fear that took over me when I thought of my homelessness situation. On Thursday and within a couple of hours that I had to leave for my flight I was called and told that I had a lady who was going to host me for the period! And yes! I was so excited and relaxed. I later got to know that she worked for the WHO as well and I felt like that solved all my problems! And was in for a wonderful experience of my life! For those of you whom I haven't met or spoken to yet, I am Eunice Abiemo, originally from Ghana and just completed my first year of my Master of Public Health (MPH) degree. I am offering Public Health Nutrition with an interdisciplinary concentration in Global Health. As my field experience, I will be interning with the Global Nutrition Policy Team of the WHO/NHD during the summer assisting in reviewing national nutrition policies, drafting case studies and doing some data management that will eventually reflect in the lives of vulnerable population groups in developing countries. I am so elated that I can't wait to explore Geneva and possibly some other parts of Europe! I will appreciate your advice and comments even as I psyche myself for this extraordinary experience of a lifetime!

Posted at 5:28 PM
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Hello, hello!

Here is a weekly recap:

Friday (6-12) I went with Scott and Tyler to visit Tekera Resource Center. Tekera is a community development project outside of Masaka that was founded by a couple from Canada, Bruce and Brigitte Daley. While we were there Bruce gave us a tour of the school (there are approximately 280 students that attend the school at Tekera) and showed us the fields and fields of crops that they grow and sell to local vendors. He explained the gravity fed irrigation system that Tekera uses to water their crops and highlighted the many benefits of sustainable agriculture (such as crop rotation, inter-cropping and micro irrigation) in regions where water is scarce. Following Bruce's tour, Brigitte took us to the Level 2 Medical Clinic that she started at Tekera. Brigitte first traveled to Uganda in the late 1970's and spent a couple years working as a registered nurse. She was forced to leave during the time that Idi Amin came into power and always longed to return. Thirty years later, after she and Bruce retired from their respective careers, they moved to Uganda and started the NGO Tekera.They have done amazing work and I encourage you to check out their website: http://www.ugandavillage.org/. On Saturday I traveled with Moreen to another Women's Empowerment Group meeting in Kajalubanda (a rural village 4 miles from HIA). The topic of discussion for the day was breast cancer. While I discussed the cancer process, the risk factors, screening methods, and ways to treat and reduce one's risk of breast cancer Moreen translated. Following the discussion on breast cancer, I was able to conduct a community health assessment of Kajalubanda.

Monday (6-15) I stayed around HIA to help the engineers dig a trench and survey the HIA property. The trench (which is 2 ft deep, 1.5 feet wide and 600 ft long) will be used to lay the piping from the borewell to the water storage tank. The soil composition is mostly clay and is extremely dry and compacted, so the digging of this trench is not an easy task! Thankfully, the students at HIA have been assisting us with this portion of the project. The topographic information collected from the survey will be used by Architects for Humanity for the development and expansion of HIA in the future (plans can be seen on the HIA website).

On Tuesday I went with Fred, Moreen and Tyler to a special needs school to distribute mosquito nets. In the afternoon, Diego and I spoke to the students about composting and sanitation. Part of the EWB project involves the installation of two composting toilets using diverting plates. Diverting plates are used to separate the feces (dry matter) from the urine. It is essential that both be separated and that only dry matter (ash, leaves and/or woodchips) be added to the feces. This enables the microbes to effectively and safely biodegrade the feces into compost. The compost that is generated from the composting toilets will eventually be applied to the school garden. Along with the students, we will begin the construction and planting of the garden this week. The garden will be used in conjunction with the Biology and Agriculture curriculum taught at HIA, and will be tended by the older students.

Both Wednesday and Thursday were spent doing community outreach and community health assessments. The mornings were spent constructing and/or planting gardens at child-headed households, and the afternoons were spent collecting information from the surrounding communities and conducting community health assessments.

The information gathered from the assessments so far have been striking. Many of the individuals surveyed have to travel long distances (1 to 2 miles on average) to the nearest water source, which is often a swamp or a pond. In the event that the nearest swamp is dried up (which often happens during the dry season) the distance is much further, and may require an entire days trek. Those that can afford to take a taxi to collect water do so, but many cannot afford the luxury and are forced to wake in the early hours of the morning, returning home in the mid to late afternoon. Water collection can occupy a significant portion of one's day and can prevent many children from attending school. Most, if not all of the individuals surveyed, collect their daily supply of water for drinking, cooking and washing with 20 L jerry cans. On average, each household uses 2-3 jerry cans a day. When full, a 20 L jerry weighs 45 lbs. The furthest I've carried a single 20 L jerry can was 100 meters and that was exhausting!

One of the communities surveyed, Bugonzi, is 3 miles away from HIA and the nearest water source is a brown, murky swamp. The turbid water collected from swamps and ponds are ridden with bacteria and other potential health hazards, so it wasn't surprising to learn that there are high incidences of diarrhea in most of the communities surveyed. Children younger than 5 years of age are those that experience frequent episodes of diarrhea. Diarrhea kills over 1 million children every year through dehydration and malnutrition. Children are more likely than adults to die from diarrhea because they become dehydrated more quickly, and 1 in every 200 children who contract diarrhea will die from it.

Bugonzi is only one of many communities surveyed that is in dire need of a reliable and clean water source. To help the Bugonzi community obtain clean water, some of the engineers are designing and constructing a biosand filter. The biosand filter will be used to purify the murky swamp water that the community is forced to drink and hopefully lower the incidences of diarrhea. Here is a link that you can check out on water and sanitation technologies and the specific biosand filter that we plan on using in Bugonzi (click on technology on the main page, then click on household water treatment - filtration) http://www.cawst.org/index.php

And that shall conclude my blog for the day. Sorry for the length. Until next time...

Posted at 9:02 AM
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We are advised to write our intro blog while packing. Well, that doesn't exactly fit into my just-in-time, panic-driven packing methodology. So, I'll write this entry now, about 22 hours before my flight leaves for Tanzania.

I'm an Environmental Health student in the UMN School of Public Health interested in global health, especially water issues related to health. I just finished a marathon of a semester (and an actual half-marathon this morning, incidentally) where much of my time and energy were focused on a project working to design a sustainable system that addresses the water problems of Dharavi, a slum in Mumbai, India. (Here's the Challenge's website--future SPHers, I recommend you apply for this excellent class!) The project turned out to be a great preparation for this field experience.

I'll be traveling to an area of Tanzania near the city of Arusha where I, along with the rest of the research team, will be based at PeaceHouse Africa, a Minnesota-headquartered nonprofit boarding school for AIDS orphans. The team consists of four engineering students from Michigan Tech University, four students from the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, as well as public health student (and blogger!) Robyn Browning. This is the pilot year of a 3-year NSF-funded program where we'll be laying the groundwork to conduct research and eventual improvements in the areas of safe water, sanitation, air pollution, and malaria.

For the first few days, we'll be forming partnerships with NGOs and research centers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's largest city. Then, we'll move to PeaceHouse Secondary School to continue the project. I'll be taking a brief break in the middle of the trip to hike up Mount Kilimanjaro with fellow SPH student (and blogger!) Amber Koskey. Pending internet availability, I'll update this blog as much as possible. Thanks for reading!

Posted at 7:30 PM
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