7/20/10 Exploring Bwiri

Today is the first day in Bwiri, a new village that is 14km away from Shirati. We are surveying the other half of our households here since a malaria director said that Bwiri is hard to reach due to its bad roads leading up to the village and that the many government handouts of nets and education might not have reached there. The roads are pretty bad, our car drives at 45 degree angles at some points, crossed a small stream, and drives on lots of huge rocks. Its like riding on a safari or off-roading at some points. When we arrived, we met with the village chairman and secretary, pretty standard procedure before interviewing members of a new village. Since it appears that many people in Bwiri never received nets, we decided to prioritize our surveys and free nets for families with a child under 12 months. We only have about 100-150 nets left so we knew that we could not cover the 600 families in the area. At first I had my hesitations for coming all the way to Bwiri, a 40 minute drive, and paying money to do so with transportation and all. But the need for nets and education in the village is very great. Unlike the other village we have been surveying called Yakina, not every household had a net in possession. Melody and I would have preferred to give more than 1 net to families or cover all families, but we have such a limited number. I am pretty excited to see the rest of the village and see the impact that our intervention can have on this village. Its also so gorgeous here, its higher up in the mountains and there are tons of big scenic rocks.