We began the day with sourcing more materials in the market for spawn generation (which has seemingly become very usual for us). We picked up more rice sacks, rice, and buckets. We then got to the site and checked on our existing spawn bags which we determined about 25lbs were contaminated mainly due to excessive moisture/water as well as some being infested with flies. We were disappointed, but unfortunately not surprised. The buckets looked fine thus far besides having lots of condensation and no signs of drainage from the bottom holes. We took more rice and are trying a few new techniques to avoid contamination. We have a mesh bag that we have only added a bit of limewater to and inoculated it today in the hopes of eliminating the excess water that comes from soaking. We also created more spawn buckets but this time mixed in dry rice straw in hopes that it will absorb the excess water. These buckets also used hydrated rice and not soaked that will hopefully still kill contaminates but not soak the rice. These buckets were then covered with cloth to allow for air exchange but not insects. We are concerned with the fact that although the cloth bags do not allow insects in, we still see flies landing on them and contaminants are most likely still transferring through the mesh. We believe our best bet is to hydrate the substrate with limewater, inoculate, and mix with chopped straw inside a bucket that will be covered with mesh. Will is also intrigued by changing our substrate to newspaper or ground nuts. The newspaper is easy to hydrate and should be cheap to source although we have not found any vendors selling it. Ground nuts, on the other hand, are extremely common and cheap. They are sold boiled so contaminants should be at a minimum and the hard casing will prevent contamination and insects while the spawn can still eat through and get to the nutrients inside. Will is planning our experiment tonight and we will implement tomorrow. We only have four days left of work so we are focusing on locking down our spawn procedure as Jawara has a strong understanding of the mushroom inoculation piece already and will be able to complete it without us. The later part of our day was visiting Gbondenbu for our banana leaves. Our partner at the village provided us with five bags as asked. He was true to his word and did well by us so we wanted to continue business with him but at a lower price. Surprisingly he had no problem with changing our cost from 20,000 SLL per bag to 15,000 SLL per bag and we will pick up 20 bags from him this coming Tuesday. If he comes through on this and is content with the work, he will be a fantastic partner for us moving forward. Besides the project, our team had a very fun day with Jawara and our new driver, Alisine. We joked and also had very interesting conversations. Specifically, we asked about their opinions on Americans wearing Africanas, the formal and quite beautiful clothing that locals wear on Fridays. While we expected locals might be offended by our use of their culture, they said quite the opposite that it would make them proud to have us share a piece of African culture with our friends. Unfortunately, this information was too late for us to get fitted for Africanas but maybe something will open up for us. We have a big day of spawn generation tomorrow and we are excited to make this happen.