Grace and Noah focused on formal documentation of Ukweli’ strategies, team members’ roles and responsibilities, and forming a communications log. They went to the World Hope Office and stayed there most of the day. The potential Ukweli strategies going forward included the positives and negatives of each route, as well as the possible outcomes of each strategy. Additionally, they created a new set of questions to ask at PHUs in order to gather more information about the practices of payment for health services within Sierra Leone– although services such as maternal healthcare and care for children under the age of 5 is guaranteed to be free within this country, the reality is that the service itself may be free but the cost of materials isn’t. For example, a clinic may perform a screening service for free, but the device used may need to be paid for in order to perform that service. The communications log was formed to allow the Ukweli-Lehigh team and World Hope International team the ability to view all Ukweli-related communications between the Ukweli-Lehigh team and Distribution Managers within one document– this is necessary to provide oversight and accountability within the venture’s operations.

 

The Distribution Manager, Hassan, met the team at WHI this morning and we instructed him that today was a sales day for him. So, he set out to go sell boxes of test strips and to engage with PHUs in general. When he arrived back, he discussed that each of the PHUs he visited were agreeable to buying Ukweli test strip boxes, but he will have to revisit them within the next few days to conduct Ukweli training with more nurses and community health workers (CHWs) upon his return.

 

Samara and Matt traveled to Garden City Hospital with Nurses Janet and Miata. As before, Janet conducted the pre-screening counseling while Miata performed the screening procedure as well as the post-screening counseling. While waiting for patients to arrive, Miata also introduced Samara and Matt to the head doctor of the hospital. Afterwards, Samara observed seven patients being screened and Matt sat in on the pre-screening counseling. The team then returned to the World Hope office where they met with Edwin to discuss his opinions on the interview questions. He expressed his concerns about some wording and perception issues– the team edited the questions accordingly. The Ukweli-Lehigh team hopes that the interviewing will be able to begin next week.

Noah and Matt went with Hassan, Naakesh, and two other teams to visit several PHUs around Makeni: Tambiama CHP, Panlap CHC, and New Hope Hospital. They had a list of questions prepared to ask nurses and other staff at these health facilities to get insight on their duties, operations, and their knowledge and use of Ukweli test strips. Each interviewed person would receive two packets of biscuits as gratitude for their participation. At Tambiama, a public facility supported by funding from UKAid and other organizations, Noah and Matt were introduced to a State and Road Community Health Nurse. Nurses of her type are usually stationed temporarily at health facilities in rural areas and highways, but she has been at this location since 2018. While she has screened with Ukweli test strips before, she has not done so for the past 3 months due to the Nurse-in-Charge being absent for health reasons. The nurse also stated that their Ukweli strips were given away for free to pregnant women due to their expectation of free healthcare.

 

 

 

After visiting Tambiama, Noah and Matt traveled with the group to Panlap Community Health Center (CHC). This facility was recently upgraded from a Community Health Post (CHP) to a CHC, indicating it grew to a greater capacity facility, although they still did not have an in-house lab and had to send samples to larger facilities for analysis. Noah and Matt interviewed a community health officer (CHO) who explained that they now only used the free two-parameter glucose and protein test strips provided by the government instead of the Ukweli test strips, which they called “World Hope strips.” They indicated that the government strips were preferable because Ukweli test strips were given away for free to pregnant women despite being bought by the workers out of their own pockets. 

 

 

The third location visited was the New Hope Hospital, a larger private hospital. There, the team interviewed another Community Health Officer who has been working at the hospital for 2 years. He said that they did receive Ukweli test strips and that screening is performed by a lab technician. However, there are not many pregnant women in the area and no maternity clinic at the hospital. 

 

 

 

Today, Grace and Samara went with the World Hope International Cervical Cancer Research Team to observe some screenings at Branda Medical Centre LTD. Grace and Samara traveled to this facility with the community mobilizer and got to observe how he engaged the community in order to increase the number of women getting screened. He parked the WHI truck in the middle of a village and ,with his microphone, began announcing that women from 25-49 should come to the nearby hospital to get screened and treated for cervical cancer free of charge. The confidence and enthusiasm of the mobilizer really drew the attention of the community and was truly inspiring to watch. 

The next stop was Branda. At first arrival, Samara and Grace were introduced to some of the staff, including the doctor in charge and the woman who ran the facility. A WHI team member, Janet, then gave Samara and Grace a tour of the hospital which contained a variety of wards. There was a female and male ward along with a children’s ward and maternity ward. There was also a triage center and housing for the hospital’s matron. Once the introductions and tour was complete, it was time to wait for patients to come in for a cervical cancer screening. There was a little bit of waiting but then a few women came in for the free screening. Samara and Grace took turns observing the interactions between the staff and the patients, noting how the nurses were comforting the patients. The screenings took about five minutes and were very educational to observe. Overall, the experience was highly beneficial and intriguing. 

The Ukweli Team regrouped at World Hope and conducted a meeting with our distribution managers, Hassan and Jawara, to try and critique operations to increase sales. This conversation took a lot of brainstorming and gave us a new outlook on how Ukweli needs to begin to function. 

 

Day 2:

The Ukweli Team spent the day visiting peripheral health units (PHUs) to interview PHU staff directly. Noah went to Makama Community Health Post and interviewed Sister Mariama, the Nurse in Charge (NIC) at Makama CHP. The questions asked during the interview focused on obtaining firsthand accounts of the challenges related to UTIs and preeclampsia. The discussions sought to tease apart any potential difficulties that can be addressed in terms of the distribution of Ukweli test strips– although the feedback given was overwhelmingly positive, the insights offered by PHU staff appeared to be relatively uniform from PHU to PHU. For example, each PHU only buys one to two boxes of Ukweli test strips at a time because of the extreme lack of financial resources.

 

After visiting Makama CHP, Noah met with Grace at World Hope International’s Sierra Leone Field Office– the two traveled to Stocco Dots Center for another interview of the clinic’s doctor, Edwin. The answers were relatively similar to the answers obtained from Sister Mariama, but we learned that most PHUs have one day of the week dedicated to antenatal care (i.e., antenatal day). As a result, Ukweli screenings are only conducted one day out of the week at most PHUs.

 

Afterwards, Grace & Noah walked with the Ukweli Distribution Manager, Hassan, to view the Bombali District Medical Officer’s building. Hassan brought to our attention that the adjacent PHU, Primary Health Clinic, was hesitant to participate as an Ukweli-equipped PHU due to concerns related to payment for a service that is supposed to be free of charge. However, the team patiently discussed the purpose of the cost recovery model; that is, in order for the test strips to reliably be available at all PHUs, the cost must be recovered for the purchase of more test strips. In particular, the idea of the test strips is to make screening accessible to all without pregnant women having the burden of traveling long distances to a clinic with the ability to conduct further screening.

 

After further discussion, the Nurse in Charge at Primary Health Clinic appeared more receptive to participating as an Ukweli PHU, but she would like re-verification of our project’s permission to operate within the district– this is because a new District Medical Officer (DMO) was recently appointed for Bombali District, and PHUs are required to strictly adhere to the wishes of their respective DMO. Therefore, the team is currently attempting to arrange a meeting with the Bombali DMO to alleviate any concerns that Primary Health Clinic and other PHUs may have going forward.

 

In the afternoon, Grace went to Gladys Koroma Memorial Hospital and met with the nurse who oversaw outpatient care and antenatal care, Fatimah. Grace interviewed her and obtained essential information about the difficulties within a hospital. Fatimah expressed that pregnant women often do not go to get help given they either do not want to pay or they are used to having children and getting taken care of at home so, why should they start now? She also suggested that we should maybe utilize WhatsApp as a way to receive data from PHUs in regards to the results of the test strips. Grace also learned that some private health units do community engagement to try to convince women to come into the units and get tested and treated. This was very beneficial to learn about. 

 

Samara and Matt visited the Magbenteh Community Hospital in Makeni. They were introduced to the Human Resources officer, the hospital manager, and other staff, all who were very friendly and hospitable . Afterwards, the staff then showed them the room in which the cervical screening and treatment occurs. The staff described the full screening and consultation process and walked them through how the patients are treated for cervical cancer if they screened positive. The staff said many women are very open to the treatment if they screen positive, but some have to ask their husbands for permission. This has not been a huge barrier to the program; in fact, they reported that when men are counseled with the women, they are very willing to give their permission as head of the household for the wife to be screened.

Minuet demonstrated the thermal ablation instrument. The rod heats up to 100 degrees Celsius in five second and applies to the lesions on the cervix for 40 seconds to ablate the cancerous tissue. The procedure is virtually painless and no local anesthetic is applied.

Samara shadowed Minuet while screening a patient. Samara observed the consolation and screening process. The patient was nervous at first but Minuet was kind and comforting during the entire process. The vinegar was applied to the cervix and the nurse waiting one minute before she examined the cervix. After her exam, the patient left and Matt and Samara were taken back to the World Hope office to continue revising the IRB informed consent document.

Today was our second day in Sierra Leone, but we actually started our work today. 

Our team has two subteams: operations for Ukweli and working on research for cervical cancer. We left our hotel at 9 AM and traveled to World Hope International where we began introductions and getting settled. Excitingly, this was our first time meeting in-person with several of our WHI colleagues that have worked with us on this project for several years.

We began the morning with a meeting with our distribution manager, Hassan, and we we were able to get a clearer picture as to how operations were working on the ground. From this conversation, it came to surface that there were some things that the team didn’t realize were occurring– for example, Hassan had expressed the reason for lack of sales of our product was that several community health workers were hesitant to sell and make profit to the women they are testing because it is not a good look for them within their community if they are proving false on the quote on quote free healthcare system. On the other hand, this shows that women going into the PHU are expecting the government-promoted free healthcare system. Therefore, this is leading to a decrease in demand as the economy is severely depressed and the advertised free healthcare system isn’t truly free of cost. This issue is something the team will have to work towards solving as a decrease in demand and a constant supply will cause damage to the goal of self-sustainability of Ukweli.

 Additionally, we discovered that the actual screening wasn’t still occurring the way it was intended to be done. In the original operation system, women were getting tested both at PHUs and in the comfort of their own homes because community health workers used to go out into the communities. However, Hassan had informed us that due to lack of funding the workers no longer would travel into the communities and that usually one person, the lab technician, is usually screening the patients. This led to us realizing that one person is typically responsible for logging the data of the screening results.

The conversation then led into Hassan conveying his issues he was currently having with his motorbike that Ukweli currently provides.  This issue is something we must work on to be resolved as this causes issues with the distribution of our boxes. To begin to resolve this issue, the group discussed how to proceed with WHI’s regional manager, Sharr. The regional manager was understanding, however, he had expressed that the decision of Hassan receiving a new motorbike was not his decision and it was up to another person to approve and talk to about the cost of the bike. Therefore, we will follow up with Sharr.

Afterwards, Hassan and a WHI driver drove Ukweli and two other teams to interact with PHUs. First, we went to Rescue International Hospital and we were able to introduce ourselves to the lab technician and technician assistants who use the Ukweli test strips on a regular basis. We got a tour of the PHU and received a walkthrough of what services are provided. Next, we visited Gladys Koroma Memorial Hospital. We briefly sat inside, but, the Hospital’s doctor was busy and we scheduled to meet for another time. The same occurred with the next PHU, Makama Community Health Post. We then tried for one more PHU– the DirectAid Hospital, but it was closed due to the lateness in the day. While we were not able to speak or interview anyone, it was still beneficial to see the layout and different services that PHUs offer. After further reflection of  our conversation with Hassan and PHU visits, we generated a working list of questions for PHU representatives themselves that aim to enhance our understanding of the challenges they face pertaining to maternal health and Ukweli Test Strips.

 

 

 

Samara and Matt met with Edwin, the director the WHI Cervical Cancer Screening Program, in person finally! They met Edwin’s staff and they each introduced themselves and their role within the program. There were three nurses and one community mobilizer. One of the nurses offered to work as our translator for the next two weeks. This is very exciting for the team because the nurse has the experience and knowledge of the community to appropriately interview participants. The community mobilizer talked about their demand generation strategies. For example, he goes to communities to preform concerts and utilizes the door to door method. Additionally, he recorded a jingle for the radio and recruits celebrities to talk about the program on their social media platforms. The celebrities are trying to help break the stigma that screening is a scheme by the west to limit birth rate. He said the most successful channel for recruited women to be screened is the radio. 

 

During the month of August, the Cervical Cancer Program will be based in Makeni and traveling locally. Matt and Samara have the opportunity to shadow the nurses and community mobilizer tomorrow at a hospital. Going to the hospital will allow Matt and Samara to smooth out some logistical questions: How many women will be able to participate in the study each day? What environment will the interviews generally take place? How quickly are the women screened?  

 

Once these questions are answered and the IRB is approved, Matt and Samara can create a better plan for interviewing women.

 

Ukweli Test Strips would like to officially welcome Tori Chan, MPA-MPH, as World Hope International’s new Health Director!

Tori is an experienced non-profit and public health professional with 9+ years working with international organizations, charities, and foundations. She worked with World Hope from 2015-2016 as the International Grants & Partnerships Manager based in Sierra Leone and now rejoins World Hope again in 2020 as the Business Development and Partnerships Manager, Asia. Her expertise is in partnership development, project management, research, and grant writing. Prior to re-joining World Hope, Tori worked with Partners In Health based in Liberia where she worked closely with the Ministry of Health and other stakeholders on laboratory systems strengthening and community-based disease surveillance projects. She also has experience in philanthropy, previously working with ELMA Philanthropies on their humanitarian and relief portfolio, helping to identify and fund underreported humanitarian disasters around the globe. Other organizations she worked with include World Vision International and the Women’s Foundation of California. Tori holds a BA, Art History from the University of California, Riverside, and an MPH, Global Health and MPA, Health Policy & Management from New York University.

In her role as Health Director, Tori will focus on developing new partnerships for World Hope. As needed, she will provide support on other World Hope initiatives where there is a focus on public health and health systems strengthening.

In this edition of Ukweli adventures, one of our very own fierce warriors – the longest trooper at Lehigh to have stayed on the project – turned a whopping 22 years old today. Indeed, it was a birthday to remember. Cassidy Drost, 5’8″ hailing from sunny San Diego and master of any and all card games, celebrated today in Makeni surrounded by all her Global Social Impact Fellows. Not only did she get to ride shotgun all day, but she was doused with a birthday card, an avocado fresh from the market, ice cream at dinner and several exciting birthday gifts awaiting her back at Lehigh. Cassidy is officially the oldest GSIF and we were all so happy to celebrate her day together in Sierra Leone.

And the fun continued all day. Instead of doing office work all day, we took a ride first thing in the morning to the Gbendembu clinic. While we were originally planning on talking to the clinic’s CHWs on messaging for Ukweli Test Strips, plans changed when we arrived and found out that the CHW monthly meeting actually occurs later on in August. However, we were still able to salvage the visit and had the unique opportunity to speak with the first female CHW I have seen in Makeni during fieldwork. Hassan did a great job yet again guiding the discussion and informing the CHW directly of the opportunity Ukweli Test Strips presents to health workers like herself, both in terms of financial incentive and in empowering them to do more to serve the individuals in their communities.

Some adorable goats outside the clinic!

 

After the interview with the CHW, we all walked back toward the World Hope van…. until lo and behold, Sierra Leone roads struck again. The victim this time? The back right tire of the van. That’s right, a flat. But with some help from a nice man in the village who helped us change the spare tire, we were back on the road in less than a half hour. The delay was actually welcomed by the team, since the village was pretty and it was a comfortable temperature. It also gave us the opportunity to buy some ginger cakes off of a local woman. Flour, water and ginger is apparently all it takes to entertain a bunch of college kids and keep us happy while we waited for the tire to be swapped out.

 

Cassidy doing a tree pose under a ginormous almond tree!

 

On the way back to World Hope, the sun continued to shine and the day kept getting better as Ukweli took full advantage. William, our driver, pulled over by a pretty stream and we were all instantly reconnected with nature. The team took photos, skipped some rocks and then took in the views at the bridge going over the stream… until Hassan got nervous we were getting too close to the edge (us Ukwelians can be ris-que) and walked back to the van.

Two members of the Ukweli team plus Marc on the bridge!

Back in the cave at the World Hope office, the team got right back to work on Hassan’s contract and motorcycle logistics, which we hope to finalize tomorrow in our last day in Makeni. We also identified a quality control test to run and some last-minute edits to the training materials. The day ended with an upbeat meeting at Radio Mankneh, where we connected with an employee at the radio station and got ideas for programming for Ukweli along with pricing options. Patrick from Mankneh was very engaged with our project and we hope to get Ukweli on the air both through in-studio interviews and in-the-field coverage of Hassan’s training sessions.

I was about to sign off… but, wait. This just in from THE Khanjan Mehta. Breaking news out here from the Makambo resort. The money for the marketing license has FINALLY been officially submitted, and our 90-day countdown until approval from the Pharmacy Board starts NOW! Though the team is disappointed at the delay in the whole process, we are so happy that we are now on the right track and we can officially launch the venture, featuring the selling of our test strips, this fall.

YEET

Finally. After a few hard-pressed days for the Ukweli squad (as our loyal readers will know from following the past few blog posts), we had ourselves a day. In fact, today was our best day of fieldwork yet. To start off, Sage, Cassidy and me had a stellar meeting with the station manager of Radio AMZA, a local radio station walking distance to World Hope. This followed a productive informal meeting on Saturday with other AMZA employees. The station manager was incredibly nice and helpful and seemed very on board with potentially running a radio program that is aligned with Ukweli in the future. He gave us two options: an in-studio program and an in-the-field program. The two would complement each other well, and the station manager emphasized the importance of including women in the conversation and airing our program in a variety of local languages to be better understood by those in rural communities.

From there, the whole team traveled to Kalungba clinic for our first ever practice training with professional health staff. Six health workers took part in an Ukweli training, with six Peer Supervisors and CHWs in attendance. Hassan absolutely killed it. I am so proud of him. It was amazing to watch him work and interact with the health staff. It was immediately clear that the health workers respond to and respect him, and Hassan presented himself as the perfect combination of knowledgeable and intelligent while being approachable and charismatic. After the three-hour training, the whole team followed each health worker who passed the training’s oral exam to a nearby village to conduct real screenings of women in the community. I left the village incredibly inspired by the dream of Ukweli looking real and tangible, arguably for the first time. Despite the disappointment of the marketing license saga, watching Hassan in action proved to the team that this can still happen and we can still make the difference we set out to make.

Almost on cue, the day ended with the most beautiful sunset of the entire trip thus far (though I’m holding out that the sunset on the beach in Freetown will beat it). There truly is light at the end of the tunnel.

🙂

 

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.

Let me tell you a story. I want to share the Ukweli dream with you.

The date is August 2025. We have our marketing license (finally) and we are selling our test strips to thousands of women across Sierra Leone. Hassan drives his new motorcycle to the Kamabi clinic wearing new Ukweli swag and is holding a large bag of Ukweli Test Strips. Hassan gets into the clinic and the Community Health Officer welcomes him with open arms. He completely sells out of test strips and the Ukweli Health Workers are grateful for the opportunity to better serve their community. Hassan calls us and says that this is our 500,000th box sold. At this point, we have covered all of Bombali including Koinadugu and Karene in Sierra Leone and we have screened millions of people. We are expanding to Tonkolili in October. Our dream is to help to lower the maternal mortality rate in Sierra Leone.

This is our dream.

Here is the reality.

Picture 1. Marc portraying our reality.

Today, we were lost. With no marketing license, we are struggling to move forward. Today was the first time that I felt that we were not moving forward with our project. We had a long and turbulent meeting with our advisor. Here is what we can say with great confidence. (1) Ukweli values ethics, social responsibility, and integrity. (2) Nothing heals a hurting soul quite like “Don’t Go Breaking my Heart”.(3) Jordan CANNOT cut an avocado properly.

Picture 2. Jordan’s avocado cutting methods. What the actual hell. 

So after our meeting, we took a walk. I saw a tree. It gave me great joy. The tree really reminded me that we needed to stand tall and keep our roots, well at least a part of the palm tree did. On our walk back Zach used his dog sense to find and track the scent of World Hope, so we could get back to “work”. We printed some training packets at the local print shop.

Picture 3. Rohan and Jordan almost getting killed by an “Allah is Great” truck and a motorcyclist.

Zach accidentally sniffed out some fried dough. After the snack break, the team ran into two “Apotos”: Nate & Maria. They were trying to find avocados to bring to dinner, Nate left the avocados at World Hope by accident.

Picture 4. Rachel, Zach, and Naakesh smiling at the Wesleyan church. 

 

Tomorrow, the plan is to simulate our operations from our state-of-the-art control center at World Hope International. aka the conference room with spotty Wi-Fi. aka the cave.

Goodnight.

Picture 5. The Ukweli team at the print shop portraying the four stages of grief. 

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.