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!

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!

Hello all!

On Sunday we trekked from Kitwe to Ndola, then from Ndola to the Gorilla Guest House in Entebbe, Uganda (details on the experience to come later in our episode(s) of, Uganda Be Kidding Me!).

We arrived at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) on Monday, August 19, where toured the beautiful grounds overlooking Lake Victoria, their molecular and morphology labs, and insectaries.

We chatted with some of the masterminds of the entomology department: Victor, Angela, Abbe, Paul. They help rear and optimize the mosquito colonies for all of the department’s ongoing projects under Target Malaria!

After saying hi to a few of the UVRI ground monkeys (according to Angela, they liked this better than the zoo!), we had the opportunity to tour their brand new insectary, and later observe mosquito blood feeds with their synthetic membrane system!

On Tuesday our group split up into 2 teams. Half of us learned how to calculate mosquito egg hatch rates…

…how to dish and set mosquito eggs…

…and also got to experience a little local cuisine :). It was delicious! [Fresh fish from Lake Victoria pictured below].

Meanwhile, the other half of us went out to local villages to set up traps, collect mosquitoes, and observe the human landing catches work in real time (HLC) overnight. Field experiences TBD…we miss you field team!

We will be trading places tomorrow…wish us luck!

On Friday, the team headed out into the field again-to the rural areas surrounding the city of Kitwe, in the Copper Belt.

This might have been the bumpiest road yet! We ended up at a small village, which served as a control sentinel site for the Copper belt region. We met with Mary, a local Environmental Health Technician, Weston, a Vector Link entomologist, and a representative from the Ministry of Health for the province! They took us through their four main surveillance activities: vector behavior, resistance management and Indoor Residual Spraying quality assurance.

Mary gave us a great demonstration of how to morphologically identify mosquito species. Zack worked through the dichotomous key on a microscope to identify an Anopheles Arabiensis .

At this site, they use Human Landing Catches (HLC) and Pyrethrum Spray Catching (PSC) to surveil mosquitoes. They employ local members of the community to conduct this surveillance. We met up with a group of HLCs and PSCs who graciously demonstrated their work for us!

Human Landing Catchers work from 6pm to 8am four nights a month. They expose their feet and legs to act as “bait” for the mosquitoes. When a mosquito lands on their legs, they use an aspirator to capture the mosquito! Don’t worry-they’re given prophylactics.

Pyrethrum Spray Catchers wake up at 3am on study days to visit local households. They lay white sheets on the ground and spray the walls with insecticide, killing the mosquitoes such that they fall onto the sheets. This gives the indoor resting density.

We topped off the day with a visit to the Tropical Disease Center in Ndola where we explored more labs!

We embarked on our journey to Kitwe!

With a rented van we set out, luggage in tow. We celebrated the leg room in the van and the extremely comfortable seats! However, on the journey we noticed a concerning trend that we always seemed to be behind a toxic or hazardous material truck! Not the most comforting in a country that loves to pass each other on the road!

After a quick stop at ShopRite to pick up cheese, crackers, popcorn and fruit for lunch, we continued into our next leg of the trip. We created a fancy little backseat charcuterie with our cheese, crackers and grapes for the road.

After a few more hours of reading, listening to music and intermittent napping (about 7 hours altogether!) we arrived in Kitwe during the onset of a beautiful sunset.

Our hotel, the Lifesong Lodge showed us to our rooms on arrival where we found not only large beds but televisions and wifi, what luxury! We settled in and ordered a Debonair’s Pizza, garlic bread and watched a Netflix rom-com for some team bonding.

Our day kicked off with a welcome tour of the National Malaria Elimination Center from Vector Link, taking a look at their insectary and mice housing. We were able to hear about their daily anti-malaria field work tasks like Indoor Residual Spraying as well as some of the laboratory work like Insecticide Resistance Testing.

We were then lucky enough to join some members of PATH, who also work out of the NMEC facility. We were able to pick their brains about their relationship with the community and the intervention areas where we could engineer something that could really help! Their experience and opinions were priceless and gave us many insights about malaria surveillance and control.

From there we moved on to a presentation with Vector Link and the Ministry of Health workers about their role and responsibility in spraying and resistance testing. We had time to speak with each of the members, get their input about the role of innovative technology and dig deeper with many questions about their process.

We concluded the evening by meeting up with Dr. Stevenson who had driven into Lusaka that day from Macha. We all got a delicious Indian meal together and ended the night with some wine and Netflix (as well as our new friend Georgie!). Tomorrow off to Kitwe!

We had a great time presenting to all the people who have helped us this past week at the Macha Research Trust before we all said our goodbyes. They were great hosts to us and taught us all so much! But unfortunately we had to move on to our next stop in Lusaka, which came with a nice 7 hour car ride for us to enjoy. Next up we get to meet with the team at VectorLink where we hope to learn a lot more, cheers!

Our weekend in Macha was a great opportunity to transcribe our notes, do in-depth analysis, and prepare for our Monday presentation to the MRT team. It’s not all work and no play-we carved out time to experience some local culture and have fun!

On Saturday, we walked down to the local market (above) The cafeteria is closed over the weekends so we prepared to hone our Masterchef skills. We bought buns and beans and greens! We even managed to find garlic! We tried some local cuisine: sweet corn muffins and a bun that’s kind of a fried croissant.

Our team was really craving water that tastes like the water we have at home…we ended up buying all the water bottles in the store and we’re very excited about it!

We made an epic dinner Saturday night. Sophia was responsible for the creative vision and everyone pitched in to chop veggies and prepare sides! We made the best garlic bread Monet’s ever had and pasta with a fresh tomato and bean sauce! We also had greens and an apple crumble for dessert. With the limited ingredients we had available, we were so proud of our meal and are now considering opening an Italian-African fusion restaurant 😜

Some of us hit up local church services this weekend and experienced some of the amazing musical culture! The a cappella harmonies are just breathtaking!

Sunday evening, we had a “braai” (South African term for barbecue) with help from Lyle, an American grad student doing research at MRT, and a wonderful MRT researcher and his sweet family.

Lyle made a trip to Choma to get supplies for the night. Luckily, the taxi driver turned out to be his butcher. So, we were able to get super fresh chickens (we were relieved when Lyle didn’t walk through the door with live chickens, which was our initial interpretation of the message).

In the evenings, we practiced our dancing and acting “skills”! We played a rousing game of Heads Up and got to know each other’s Spotify playlists very well. Turns out, we have Salsa and Zumba enthusiasts in our mix!