7/9/10 Research time

The research has been going well so far. I really enjoy walking into the Yakina subvillage and going house to house to complete our questionnaires. So far we have had nearly 100% participation, this is an unheard statistic in the U.S. Every participant seems to answer our questions and even let us observe their bed nets in their bedrooms. A lot of expectations that I had of mosquito net use are different. In this subvillage, everyone seems to know that malaria is caused by mosquitoes and that bed nets help prevent this. Nearly everyone we survey has at least one net, though usually old and torn. Melody and I have been giving nets to those that need it. It is sort of a sad situation, literally everyone has had malaria multiple times in the entire area…even our educated translators that always sleep under nets. Many of our participants have lost a child, brother, or friend to malaria. It is sort of a way of life, getting malaria is equivalent to getting a cold in the U.S. Ironically even though parents know that malaria tends to severely affect their children more so than adults with immunity, we have found that many households that have limited nets will have the parents sleep under it and leave out the children. Perhaps one of the way to make net usage more effective especially if you want to cover the children would be to provide enough nets for everyone in the family. News travels pretty quickly, everyday it seems like people approach us and let us know that they need a net if we have not visited them. I really love the swarms of young kids greeting us mzungus and absolutely delighted with my digital camera. The funniest thing happened the other day. This pack of kids that looked about 4-5 years old followed us and I took a picture of them and showed it to them and they started rolling with laughter and were content and just ran off. Seeing so many roosters, hens, and chicks also amuses me. I just need to learn more Swahili to be able to communicate more than just hello, thank you, and goodbye!