Let the Games Begin!

On Wednesday, the Water and Sanitation department headed out to Halala village (where all the meet is Halal!), to pre-test the Focus Group and Survey instruments I designed to study the differential rates of composting toilet implementation in our various target villages. It was really a splendid day. I love being out in the village, greeting the people, hearing what they have to say...really a great reminder of why I'm in this field.

Mike took some pictures of our focus group and surveys in action, which unfortunately I don't have copies of at the moment, but when I do, I'll post. For now I will include a picture of our valiant Water & Sanitation Department for your viewing pleasure.

So next week will be WatSan in full force! We're doing one village per day, with Thomas and I running the focus groups, and Khumbo and Francis doing the KAP (Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice) surveys. I'm really excited - I was nervous about doing a focus group through an interpreter before the pilot, but it's actually a bit easier than doing it in English, since I'm both the moderator and the note-taker due to a lack of personnel. The translation gives me natural pauses to scrawl my notes and think of follow-up questions.

So, all of next week I'll be staying in Liwonde so that I can debrief the focus groups each afternoon with Thomas, and then head back to the villages early in the morning. While I'm there I won't have internet access, so this will be my last post for a week or so.

On another note, I received the box of completed surveys for my first project, so I'll have LOTS of data to keep me busy after next week's WatSan data collection.

Oh yeah, and I'm moving out of my house on Sunday, and we still don't know where I'm going to live when I get back to Zomba next Friday. I'm not worrying though - I know God's plans are best, so I'm not going to stress...

That's all that's going on! Check out some new pictures on the Flickr site by clicking on the slideshow on the sidebar.

God bless and keep you all for the next week - until we meet electronically again!