Welcome to my new blog site! I finally started one. ; ) I am sure this will significantly reduce the burden of large attached photos cluttering your inbox as you read about my travels! Blogging is a new project for me and I am just now trying my hand at it. Thanks for your patience as I have finally come out of the dark ages of emailing travel updates and join the rest of the blogging world.
Right, so here we go....I am in Tanzania and it is my first visit to this country. Tanzania, located in East Africa is the southern neighbor of beloved Kenya. The are many things to love about Tanzania, it is warm and sunny, right on the Indian Ocean and is home to more wildlife areas than any other place on the Earth. Some of the parks include the famed Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Tanangire, and the Selous Game reserve. And then there is the Zanzibar archipelago!
I arrived this past Thursday after a 29-hour journey from Seattle which included 4 flights, 5 airports, and 9 hours of layover time (not the most direct route). It was grueling to say the least....but I am finally here! My last flight over, on Thursday morning, was from Nairobi to Dar es Salaam and we literally flew right over Mount Kilimanjaro....freaking amazing. Kilimanjaro is the highest peak on the African Continent sitting almost 20,000 feet above sea level. The top is a flat plateau and snow-covered. Fortunately, I was sitting in the 'F' position set on the airplane for optimum mountain viewing but unfortunately, my camera was safely stowed away in the overhead bin and getting it would of required me climbing over 2 large Tanzanian men. I will not make this rookie mistake on the way back.
I am here to conduct the Tanzania arm of a 3-country qualitative assessment to determine preferences of African households for water and sanitation interventions. The other two arms are in Mali and Ethiopia. The three assessments are being led by three different PATH researchers; Mali (Siri), Ethiopia (Jennifer), and Tanzania (me!). The Mali assessment wrapped up last week, Tanzania is launching on Monday, and Ethiopia, not far behind, will launch on Wednesday.
As some of you know, PATH got into water work 5-years ago when we were awarded a 25-million dollar grant form the GATES Foundation. For the last 5 years we have been doing extensive research in India and Southeast Asia but are now interested in expanding our WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) portfolio into Africa. One of the nice things about working at PATH is the organization values background, formative research before expanding into new areas. So, this is what we are hoping to accomplish through this assessment. We are aiming to learn more about what households are currently doing in these three countries for water storage, treatment, and sanitation management in order to get an idea of a direction for a strategy to hopefully intervene in a positive way.
In all three countries we are conducting this qualitative assessment by visiting households and stakeholders in rural and urban areas and conducting 2-3 hour in-depth interviews with a small sample in order to determine 'anything and everything' related to what households are currently doing with water and sanitation. This includes conducting a semi-structured interview with the lady of the household, following them to their water source to collect water (while videoing), coming back to the house and observing water storage and treatment practices, observing hand washing facilities, and the household latrine (yay!). In addition we are hoping to get feedback on our PATH water filters to determine their appropriateness for the African context. They were developed for and intended for the SE Asian market and our hunch is they will need to look a little more 'Africa- appropriate' (imagine clay pot) to work well here. We shall see.
Since arriving I have been arranging logistics, hiring a local research consultant, ensuring we have Tanzanian ethical approval for our study, and anything else that needs to be done to start piloting our interview guides tomorrow.
The Tanzanian arm of the study will be conducted in 2-places within the country, Dar es Salaam (urban) and Mwanza (rural). This first week will be spent conducting interviews in Dar and then
myself and Anna (research consultant) will travel Mwanza on the shore of Lake Victoria.
In other news, Stevan is coming out at the end of the research period and on March 3rd we start an 8-night vacation here in Tanzania. We are currently planning a mini-safari as well as a substantial beach vaca in Zanzibar!!
I plan on posting more frequently, with shorter posts so check back often if you like. Hope everyone is well.
Love,
Liz
