Muzungo Madness

Yesterday the other half of our team headed out to the field for more mosquito surveillance activities! We headed to the same field site where we experienced a bit of the celebrity lifestyle with the local kids. They called our names or yelled “muzungo!” when they saw us, followed us throughout the compound, and even asked for our “autographs”. They’re incredibly cute and welcoming!

We spent the afternoon doing mosquito sorting and labeling-a long but necessary process. We’re almost-experts at distinguishing between males and females and we’re learning to identify the different species!

At 4pm we headed into the rural village for the HLC meeting where we watched the volunteers pair up and head to their posts!

After a yummy local dinner-rollexes (our group’s new favorite food) and grilled corn, we jumped into the field vehicle for late-night spot checks. As we’ve heard from other sites, a major challenge of Human Landing Catches is that the volunteers get sleepy! We saw this first hand tonight 🙂

We woke up early to perform pyrethrum spray catch on a selection of village houses! This involves laying sheets on the floor of the bedroom and spraying insecticide on the walls. It was super exciting to execute the spraying ourselves and to meet the volunteer households (and their super cute kids and pets).

Our group has fostered a love of goats on this trip and there were plenty around to pet and photograph today! Sophia even encountered a pet monkey (it is the jungle, after all!)

When all the houses were sprayed, the team took us out to the sweet potato fields for a larvae demonstration.

We are so grateful to the field team for sharing their expertise and showing us such a fun time!

Meanwhile, the other half of the team worked at UVRI on pupae sexing and other entomology activities. They also visited the Ministry of Health in Kampala this afternoon and were impressed by the vector control team’s passion and dedication to eradicating malaria!

The final leg of our trip is now over but stay-tuned for some last group photos, videos, and bloopers from these three incredible weeks!