House Screening

We've finally been able to start the house screening project we mentioned before. So far we've screened two houses and will do a third next week. What we mean by house screening is that in Kenya many of the houses are built with open eaves (as in the top of the wall does not touch the roof and there is a gap). This is to allow for ventilation but some research has been conducted by Dr. Walker and others finding that the majority of mosquitoes enter homes through these open eaves and contribute to the spread of malaria. Every house is different and attaching the net with our staple gun (borrowed from the CDC) is often a challenge. We usually gather quite an audience while we are screening the homes as most families live in a sort of compound with several homes for grandparents, parents and children so usually the whole extended family comes out to watch us stapling nets to the roof and walls. We're hoping the house screening project will take off and help to reduce malaria in the area.
We've also been working hard to train Oti and Amos in the peer educator curriculum so they can then assist in training the youth. Sunday we have our first meeting with a group of interested youth in the community to start our Kenyan group of peer educators. We're looking forward to this very much.
After two months of eating mutton (me) and chips and spinach (Nura and Olivia), we decided to ask the cooks at the hotel whether it was possible for them to make us anything else to eat, such as one of the many items on their 'menu'. They suggested that they would make us a burger for our next visit, and they did and it was actually quite good, the best burger I've ever had...in Usenge.
We've got a little more than two weeks left here then we're going to Nairobi for a few days to meet up with the two interns who are coming here after us to continue the work we've started.
Love,
The Wandering Three