So my main task here in Cambodia is to manage a project that evaluates the effectiveness of the HydrAid (plastic biosand filter) water filter. Largely, we will do this by looking at the health impact and microbiological water quality due to filter usage. UNC is funded by International Aid (www.internationalaid.org) to do this trial in three study locations: Honduras, Ghana and Cambodia. The purpose of geographically different sites is to reduce the effect of location and cultural bias in the study in order to make the results generalizable to many areas. In each location, we'll be including about 200 households...so that means collecting and analyzing water samples, as well as interviewing each household biweekly...for about 6-8 months. At this point, I've hired and trained (hopefully) 10 Cambodians to assist on the project, in the lab and field. Much of the initial project setup is complete, thanks to the help of many people(!), so I'm excited to really get started very soon. I'm warned that life will really get crazy soon. So now all I have to do is make sure everything runs smoothly...
The picture above is the UNC project staff. I took them out for lunch...this included snails, a whole fish, some kind of "soup", fried chicken, and rice of course. I definitely wasn't a strict vegetarian when I left, but I grew to often prefer to not have meat. And really, when you live in Carrboro, NC, it is the norm to be a vegetarian so it's very accomodating to that lifestyle. Cambodia, not so much. I learned that on day one when my "vegetarian" plane meals were repulsive, and again when I began living in the village and meat is served 3 times a day. Anyway, I think that my staff are misinformed into thinking that I really like this restaurant because they always invite me to go with them. But I am honored that they invite me, and so I go, realizing, maybe, that there is more to life than good food. :)
(Check out those lovely UNC shirts in the picture.)
Some of the wonderful RDI staff.
No comments:
Post a Comment