Today was a rough day for Ukweli, but we still accomplished as much of possible. At the beginning of the day, Zachary posted his daily meme of the day (which was a fire meme). The team figured out what Hassan will be doing during the interim period of time between acquiring the marketing license and now. He will be traveling to mother support groups in order to educate them about the danger of preeclampsia and maternal health in general. He will also be meeting with religious officials, traditional healers, chiefdom heads and anyone else with a far reach in order to expand the Ukweli operations and educate those under their purview. This will also allow Ukweli to establish our base clientele for when we are ready to fully launch and able to sell strips. Jordan, Cassidy, and Rohan completed the preeclampsia data log for Hassan to fill out after he has talked to one of these groups or leaders. This will allow us to understand the prevalence of preeclampsia in the community and assess the full effect of the condition on the community. In order to check how effective this messaging strategy is, Naakesh and Zach created a survey for the groups that Hassan has presented to. Jawara, another World Hope employee will call the group heads and ask them how effective they felt the messaging was and if they would recommend us to any other groups. Not only would this help us fix any flaws that we did not notice in the education, but it would also increase our range of effect if more leaders recommended our presentation to other groups. During the break in our work, Naakesh was able to beat level 300 on candy crush. (This is not that large of a milestone though because Cassidy is on level 1500). We were also able to name the second puppy at the World Hope office. Originally his name was Boots, which I think is adorable, but we quickly found that the local accent has trouble pronouncing the word boots. We renamed the dog Attin, which means playful in Timné. This is a fitting name due to the fact that this dog really enjoys playing with every person that comes his way. There was also a large parade today on the street in front of the World Hope offices today. The Ukweli team went outside in order to observe the festivities. Only later did we find out that it was actually a memorial service for a recently fallen government official. We were very thrown by this news due to the fact that people in the street were so lively, they were cheering and playing joyful music. I believe that they were celebrating a life instead of mourning a death and that is a beautiful sentiment. Still wish that Jordan hadn’t smiled at the service though. Show a little respect man.

Jordan at the parade with a random dude making direct eye contact with the cameraAfterwards, the team worked on the business paper. This document is the origin of the turmoil for the Ukweli team. We argued with Khanjan but eventually came to a mutual agreement. He will take a hard look at the paper and deem whether or not more resources should be put towards it. Also Chris tried doing a high kick and fell really hard. I could hear it while he was outside and we were on the opposite side of a building.

Now the Unwell team will lay down to rest in each of their respective beds. Hopefully Zach will snuggle with me tonight.

This has been DJ Bambi, thanks for listening. Signing off.

Hello Ukweli Fans!

We had a loaded and interesting day. Rohan and Zach split off from the rest of the team this morning to visit two different peripheral health units: Makamp and Mapaki. Although the meeting with the Nurse in Charge at Makamp ended abruptly because a women in the process of delivering a baby arrived on a motorcycle, we got some good information about their operations and they seemed very interested in our product. Similar to Makamp, the health workers at Makapi were interested in our product, and were excited for our team to eventually come back and train their CHWs. There was also a Peace Corps Volunteer from Pennsylvania (small world) working at the Makapi clinic, and she provided us with very good insights about the health care system of Sierra Leone. 

A photo from the Makamp Community Health Post in the Bombali District.

A photo from the Mapaki Community Health Clinic in the Bombali District.

While Rohan and Zach were at the clinics, the rest of the team was back at World Hope figuring out the rest of the operations for the trip and pushing to get our Marketing License for the test strip approved. During that time, the team found a pretty cool tree to climb, so Ukweli now has a fun thing to do during breaks from work. 

After Rohan and Zach returned from the clinics, the whole team assembled to lay out the strategies for the rest of the trip. We decided on how to conduct trainings without being able to actually sell the test strips, which appears to be a likely scenario with the marketing license being held up for a little longer than expected, and decided on three Community Health Clinics (Binkolo, Kamabai, and Makamp) to target for Hassan to officially train while the Lehigh team is still in Sierra Leone. After calling Hassan to tell him about our plans, a few team members made their way over to the local hospital so Jordan can get his ear infection looked at. Ukweli is glad to report that he is on the road to recovery. After that, the team had enough time to start planning out which song to sign acapella to for the GSIF talent show on the last day in Makeni. We’re not going to spoil what songs we’ve narrowed it down to, but needless to say it will be great. 

Cassidy, Jordan, and a Malnutrition team member in front of the hospital where Jordan got his ear looked at.

While most of the day was fairly calm weather-wise, around 3:30 Greenwich Mean Time (11:30 Eastern Standard Time), it started raining very hard (maybe even four ‘hards’ according to Hassan (inside joke for Ukweli)). 

*Side Note: Lights just went off in the hotel lobby, I’m going to power through and write this in the dark.*

Obviously, going outside and playing tag in a downpour is the best thing to do in the rain, so Ukweli and team members from various other projects took part in a round of tag that lasted 15 minutes and left everyone soaked and very uncomfortable. It will be interesting to see if the clothing will ever dry due to the high humidity Sierra Leone has during the rainy season.

*Side Note: Lights are back on in the hotel lobby.*

A few of the GSIF members who took part in the game of tag.

Dinner tonight was pretty good also! After eating pretty much exclusively rice and beans for the whole trip thus far, tonight we had rice and beans… but also potatoes! Having a little change in the meal made being soggy and cold a little better.

Sage was also very excited that her outfit matched Mark’s outfit pretty well (the kid who couldn’t open the tuna can for all those readers who have been following along with the blog post), and made sure a picture was taken.

Today the Ukweli team spent their time indoors for the majority of the day. The team spent the day running through messaging strategies with our great buddy Hassan. He did a fantastic job learning from Naakesh, Jordan and Zach. While that was going on, Cassidy, Sage and Rohan worked on the hiring contract that Ukweli would need for its employees while also starting preliminary quality control tests. When exposing the strip to a detrimental amount of light and humidity at the same time, it was found that the test strip was still able to hold viability up until an hour of exposure. Testing has started for temperature and humidity exposure and soon, light, temperature, and humidity. The testing had to be performed in the mushroom dark grow house in order to keep temperature and humidity stable, but it is through a field that has many fleas and Rohan wore shorts that day. Thankfully no diseases were contracted from the fleas so all is good on that front.

After this, the team all came together to take about the employee contracts. During a break in this process, Sage taught the team how to play an annoyingly complicated version of crazy 8s. Rohan lost every time they played. During this process many questions were raised that Khanjan had to answer. Questions such as how will we incentives CHWs to track negative readings on the test strips, how will Hassan transfer the money earned to us so that we can buy more test strips from the manufacturer, how can we market this to men who need to be screened for UTIs, and what is for dinner? During this meeting, Hassan brought some special green oils that he would rub in his nose and around his face. He let Rohan try a little bit and it burned like the sun itself. He had never felt such pain, but it did clear his sinuses. Hassan then gave a bottle to the very handsome Rohan telling him that he should rub it on his face that night.

After this meeting, the Ukweli team ran over the bakery to catch the malnutrition team making their first batch of bread. It was amazing. The dough was pillowy enough to take a nap in and tasted so delicious that it made Sage say “Gee willikers”. Over the day was a success but it gave the team a lot to think about and a lot to work on in the future. The puppies at World Hope also were so adorable today, especially when they took their naps.

This is the bakery where the malnutrition team made that amazing bread.

Another day of traveling for Ukweli Test Strips! Today the team, along with the Sickle Cell Diagnostic Team and Safe Motherhood Documentary Team made trips to two different clinics within the Bomboli District: Rokulan and Kalangba. These trips were made in order to talk to more health system employees to better understand the current situation regarding Community Health Workers (CHWs) and how we could implement our test strip into these clinics systems.

Section of the road on the way to the CHCs in Rokulan and Kalangba.

 

After an hour and a half ride along semi-paved roads, we arrived at Rokulan, an understaffed and undersupplied Community Health Clinic (CHC). At this clinic, we were able to talk to Mister Francis, a Community Health Officer (CHO) for 26 years who is the head CHO of the chiefdom and leader of the chiefdom. During our time with him, we learned that the CHWs working under the Rakulan clinic were still waiting on the quarterly stipends that should have arrived, and often are not supplied the proper devices to effectively do their job. When we asked Francis about preeclamspia in his clinic, he said the location has not dealt with cases, but since the clinic refers any expecting mother with symptoms of preeclampsia to other hospitals, preeclamptic women could have been to the CHC. Despite the zero confirmed preeclampsia cases, Francis seemed very receptive to our UTI and Preeclampsia test strip, and was happy to work with us to train other CHWs at his location. We are planning to come back to the clinic to train the CHWs on how to use our test strip later on in our trip.

Rokulan’s CHC sign with part of the village in the background.

The CHC located in Rokulan.

 

Our next stop was at Kalangba, a Community Health Clinic that was along the highway back to our hotel from Rokulan. During this visit, we mainly talked to the Community Health Officer and Midwife, but other members of the CHO were present. Similar to the health workers in Rokulan, the workers at Kalangba were very open to us returning to their clinic and training their CHWs, a great sign in the project’s push to expand throughout the Bambali district. The Midwife at the clinic also confirmed that pregnant women have come to the clinic with preeclampsia and many more have shown signs of it, making them even more excited about our test strip being introduced to their clinic.

Images from the Community Health Clinic is Kalangba.

 

After Rokulan, Ukweli returned back to World Hope International, where we met with Burnadette Udo, a World Hope Worker that has recently moved from the Makeni office to the Freetown office. After sharing more about our project, Mrs. Udo seemed very optimistic about our test strips entering the market, and thinks that our product can eventually successfully make its way into Freetown. After our meeting with Mrs. Udo, we continued our work finalizing our training protocols with Hassan Suri, a World Hope International employee assisting us with our project. Hopefully the training and messaging protocols will be done tomorrow so the team can begin mock training sessions!