We took our first Ugandan field work trip to the town of Katuso! Half of our group drove the 2 hours past beautiful greenery and hills to get there.
Upon arrival, we found our lodging on a back alley of the town surrounded by the most adorable children who were thrilled to see us!
From here, we traveled into town to get authentic Ugandan food for lunch. We stopped by our field manager’s favorite restaurant to get rice, beans, mashed bananas, posha (maize patty), ground nut (peanut) sauce, avocado and fresh fish. We all marveled at the amount of food and how delicious it was!
We then drove to the study village where the chairman of the community and the community health workers that are responsible for human landing catches were gathered. They kindly greeted us and were very excited for our arrival! These volunteers were tested for malaria and then sent to their posts for the evening.
We were able to participate with trying to catch swarming mosquitoes but since it had rained earlier none were out for us to catch with our nets (but it was still awesome because we got to walk around with giant bug nets!).
For dinner we tried rolexes, a local favorite consisting of chapati, eggs, vegetables and chili all rolled up and made fresh. They were a hit in our group and we even went back to the stand for more the next day!
That evening we stayed up with the field team to go do spot checks on the human landing catch volunteers to ensure they were not falling asleep and to facilitate them changing shifts halfway through the night. Additionally, the stars that were visible out in the village were breathtaking, we even saw the Milky Way!
We finally got some sleep before setting off early the next morning to collect mosquitoes from homes in the village through aspiration. This was followed by a wonderful breakfast of the same traditional Ugandan foods and fresh ginger black tea!
We spent the rest of the day identifying and sorting mosquitoes with the team and preserving them for later studies.
Finally, we trekked our to the known breeding grounds in the community to look for mosquito larvae. We even found and pipetted some so that we could collect and study them! We also found small water skimmers and even a huge water scorpion!
After this collection we headed back to Entebbe to switch off with the other half of the team!
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