Day 60 - Creciendo Sin Paludismo

Creciendo Sin Paludismo, or Growing Without Malaria, is the name of the Malaria Project that Marathon runs here on Bioko.  So this morning we met with Dr. Wonder, the coordinator of the whole program.  As part of our assignment we asked him all of these questions about the environmental risks, health risks, and the assessments they make for those risks.  But otherwise, he went over the entire process and explained all of the techniques that the various sprayers need to learn before they are actually allowed to go in and spray the homes.  He also talked about all of the properties of the insecticide and how it is biodegradable and better for the environment since they only perform indoor residual spraying.  For anyone who doesn't know, they spray only enough so that they mosquitos land on the wall and then die, not too much so that they are repelled.  Even though Dr. Wonder said that if they are repelled from bedrooms and living rooms it is still better than nothing.

Once he had explained everything and given us masks and coats, we were off!  We went to two different homes and got to see how the spraying is done.  They basically go to homes the day before they plan on spraying, tell the families, ask them to move the furniture away from the walls and then they come and spray.  Some families were very reluctant and even called us "ants and cockroaches" for coming and invading their privacy.  All in all, it was a really cool experience getting to see how they are moving toward keeping families safe.  Marathon is also working on a Malaria vaccine, so hopefully that will be up and working soon!  But since they have started the spraying twice a year the mortality rate from Malaria has decreased significantly.

For the second part of our day, we were supposed to go to Baney, a small village on the island, with Shaya, Justin and Adam to show the Drill Documentary.  It got cancelled though because the president is doing various things around the island right now, so the security is really tight with traveling out of Malabo.

On the plus side this let us have time to watch another Barcelona v. Real Madrid game!!

Since Shaya's turtle volunteers just finished their 5 month span of living at Moaba Playa we got to meet them all.  Karrim has a house in Malabo, as well as Moka, so he had us all over for dinner.  Man is he a good cook! I am obsessed with the plantains here! After we ate we all took a trip to this club called Galaxia...it was fun except the people here don;t go out until around 2 in the morning and so we were there by ourselves for a bit.  It was a fun night either way though!!


Here are some other random pictures I have!

More arm wrestling at Riaba Playa.

One of the stray pigs that were in Riaba.

The fish and rice that Adama's wife made for us...it was delicious!

Reed posing with his chameleon buddy in class.

Aurora and I in Olivia and Mark's apartment.

Dinner that Herminia cooked for us!

Mmmm pescado.

Hasta luego,
Lindsey