The title is just a play on words. With any trip, there is positive and negative. I feel like I’ve experienced some negative today revolving around mosquito net distribution. Melody and I started our surveys in the subvillage of Yakina and decided that we would give an appropriate number of nets to each family as we deemed it fair and also not give any nets to families which show that already have a sufficient number of nets. We also decided to replace nets that were very worn with lots of holes. Let me tell you, nets are quite a coveted item in the entire area since they are expensive for local residents and a nice commodity for comfortable sleeping. So we gave nets to cover every person in the family in Yakina. There were 3 instances where we were “double dipping” which is when Melody or I would give a person a net and survey them and then the other person would visit them and accidentally re-interview the same person since we did not have a full list of our participants at all times. Of course the double dipped people did not say anything about another group interviewing them since they knew that they would be getting nets. The situation is certainly our fault for not being in better communication about the names we visited, but we were still upset about the dishonesty. Furthermore those that we interviewed twice claimed that they had old tattered nets and never mentioned the new ones they got.
So the blog title comes from Better Owour. Pili and I first interviewed this single man with no children of his own but lived in a homestead with his other family members. He showed me 4 tattered nets so I decided to give him 2 nets. Melody and Enock came a few days later and re-interviewed him on accident and decided to give him 1 net. I obviously was not pleased when we learned about this but had to return to Better’s house for evaluation. On the survey, he told us that in the 4 households on his property, they were using the new nets. When I went to observe the 4 different bedrooms, there were 4 nets hanging above the beds, but none were ours. I also saw other brand of nets that were new in bag, so it seemed like Better had about 8 nets in total and left the ones we gave him in the bag. I was pretty angry since he took advantage of our net distribution and took away nets from families that could have really used them. He was pretty quiet during the interview and sheepishly brought back one of our nets to give to his sister-in-law in front of Killion and I.
Its has been interesting to see our shift in attitude. In the very beginning we were optimistic and idealistic and felt that everyone should get as many nets per family as needed. Now after seeing the desperate net situation in Bwiri and some selfishness in Yakina, our attitudes have shifted a bit. I feel like I used be more inclined to give a net for someone that would tell a story about how they have extra nieces or nephews moving in or if there was one child not sleeping underneath the net, but now I feel like I have to weigh their story against a family of 5 or 7 in Bwiri that uses no nets at all. In an ideal world, I want every person to be covered underneath a net including parents and grandparents, but with limited resources you have to ration. Sometimes free government nets that are intended for children under 5 years are used for the parents only while the kids that are most vulnerable to severe malaria sleep without a net. I feel like this experience has shown me the realistic side of giving free things and how so much thought has to go into distribution while realizing the gratefulness of some recipients and the greed of others.
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