7/24/10 Halfway point at 131 houses

For the past two days, we’ve been spending long days in Bwiri. Its so beautiful up there, but the houses are pretty spread apart so we have to hike a lot to get around. I think we must walk about 5 miles each day. We usually arrive at 10 or 11am and then leave at 5pm with lunch on the field. It does seem like a lot of people missed out on free nets from the last government campaign and many of those with nets have very tattered nets that really reduce protection. Today, David, a Dutch medical student followed up us along and had some medical use. He took a look at a back injury and wrote a medication for a boy with a really bad fungal infection that was eating away at his scalp. During our first survey day in Bwiri, we met a toddler with a broken right femur and it was being held together by a local bone setter’s wood contraption that looked like a big bracelet. I was pretty horrified at the sight since the little boy started screaming when his mom moved his leg. David got to take a look at that boy, but unless his parents want to and can afford to bring him to the hospital, its really hard to do anything. We finally finished doing baseline surveys and interventions in Bwiri. Between the two villages that we’ve been surveying, we have a total of 131 households after 3 weeks of work! Woohoo we exceeded our goal of 125 total houses!!