I'm sitting on the front porch of the lab with the pressure cooker. I just watched a chicken eat the cockroach we killed and swept out on Friday night, and I think I want to be a vegetarian again.
The surveys were perfectly planned out, but of course nothing goes according to plan. The essential question, "In the last two weeks has anyone in your family had diarrhea for three days or more?" came back all No's for me and only two Yeses for Sarah. When I did similar surveys in March for Engineers Without Borders in a community that was only about 60km North, I had the world's most patient, caring, and sincere translator. I guess no one can compare to Joseph. I felt like he REALLY cared, always told me exactly what a person said, built the people's trust, and could even know the cultural ins and outs that I was not aware of and clarify them for me. That's pretty hard to beat. This time I feel like we are doing work and trying to get through the questions as fast and as simply as possible. And I feel like no matter how hard I try, we make no connection with the family being interviewed.
We are planning to switch translators next week when we go to the next community to see if we can narrow down the source of the problem.
The pressure cooker is done, more updates later.
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