Update

Hey Everyone,

Thought I'd give y'all a quick update on things over here in Kenya. I've been keeping busy with this malaria project that i've mentioned a lot lately, and now it's about time for things to get rolling. All the training sessions are done, and our work plans have been made and turned in. The staff at PSI and I agreed that my group should bump up the number of sessions it holds, so now my group will conduct 50 sessions per month instead of 10. While that's a big increase, it's the most efficient way to accomplish the goals we've set out. This way, instead of one team running one session per day, we're going to have multiple teams running sessions in different communities/villages simultaneously. The sessions will start April 1 and run through April 20, with me sitting in on as many sessions as I can over the course of the month. The last 10 days or so of the month will be reserved for writing reports and planning May's sessions.

Also worth mentioning was a trip I took with some friends to Lake Naivasha and Hells Gate National Park in the beginning of the month. The lake and the park are about 1-2 hours outside Nairobi, and we had a great time. The lake is gorgeous, and the cabin we stayed in was right on the water, so we could hear hippos throughout the night. Hells Gate is a unique park because you are allowed to hike through it without a guide or vehicle. It was pretty hot, and we ended up hiking about 15 miles or so over the course of the whole day, but it was a really cool experience. We'd be walking along and there would be zebra, gazelle, warthogs and ostrich hanging out like 10 feet away. The reason you can do this is because there are supposedly no elephants or predators in the park. The funny thing about that is that we came across what seemed like fresh footprints of some sort of predator. We didn't immediately know what the footprint was from, but it was clearly not any type of hoof. It was definitely a paw. There were some big prints, and some smaller ones, and they just happened to show up when we were in a slightly more secluded, less open area of the park. We promptly left that area and found more open areas. We found out later that the tracks were from a hyena. Hyenas are mean, and enormous, so i'm happy it wasn't hunting us and that we didn't come across it.

Anyways, that's all for now. I'll be staying pretty busy from here on, but i'll be sure and update again if anything cool happens. Hope everyone is doing well. Take it easy.