After a night of minimal sleep the AISHA team woke up bright and early for delicious breakfast before heading towards World Hope International. Today the team broke up into three separate groups each tackling different tasks. Rachel and Aabi traveled with the Mothers of Sierra Leone group to the Holy Spirit Hospital. There they met the general manager of the hospital, a matron, and a doctor, and created contacts with them. They learned more about what times are better to meet and different medications that are used at the hospital. The healthcare workers also gave honest feedback about AISHA and what can be done to improve, or help with the acceptance of the device by the community.
Sofía and Zavier traveled to Makump Bana to visit Mabinty once again. Here they continued to build our relationship with Mabinty and obtained more information about her position. She is a state enrolled community health nurse, and has a midwife who specializes in labor and delivery. Our two team members learned that the community is presently at an all time high for malaria cases with age ranges under 5. In terms of the demonstration of the Alexa device, there was difficulty with the MiFi working properly, and Alexa couldn’t properly understand Mabinty’s accent at times. Although, it should be noted that the question and answer skill was successfully opened, and the value of the project was clearly understood.
Elif, Eric and Omar were meant to travel with our translator, Hassan, to a few different PHU’s in order to complete demos. Unfortunately, Hassan did not show up, leaving us with the option of either traveling to the PHU’s alone, or waiting for another translator. Professor Mehta stated that it might be a better option to simply hire a new translator, which is what we ultimately ended up doing, leaving our demos for tomorrow instead.
By the time that Sofía, Zavier, Rachel and Aabi the clock struck noon. The remainder of the day revolved around a multitude of different tasks. Eric and Elif worked on the instruction manual for how to use Alexa and its skills. Rachel and Sofía worked on visuals for aiding users on how to easily use Alexa. Omar, Zavier and Aabi continued to work on skill development, attempting to fix the problems that arose during the demo at Makump Bana.
With our new translator being available 5 days a week, we discussed that for the future, we are going to go to the PHU’s every day that he is available. Our goal is to do demos at 4 PHU’s every day, with three team members, alternating the team members that go every other day.
Team Highlights
Omar → All of us sleeping.
Sofía → Having the first ever success when testing the device in the field after months of skepticism.
Eric → Dinner.
Aabi → We went to the hospital and talked to the general manager of the hospital and the doctor. Elif → Having kettle cooked chips at noon and nap time.
Zavier → Mabinty telling us her story about why she’s passionate about furthering education.
Rachel → Meeting the doctor at the hospital.
Average rating of the team’s day: 3.60/5