Today was a very long day but rewarding in the end when got to do our first field visit. We started at 8AM by going over our completed survey with the nine translators that will be working with us in the field. There are five different focus groups: water source and collection – water storage, use and agriculture – household sanitation – food preparation – and hand hygiene. Each group was responsible for their own part of the survey, challenged to break down all of the information they wanted into about 10 questions.

The survey we went over today was a combination of all five group’s questions with an additional section on basic demographics such as age, sex and education. It took about 6 hours to go through the entire survey with the translators who speak both Kiswahili and Maasia tribal language. The wording of a lot of our questions did not translate well into these two languages so it took time to communicate exactly what our questions were focused on through the translations.

Once the translation of the survey was complete we split the group of 20 students into 8 groups of 2-3, with one translator each (we have an extra translator as a substitute). We then went to the “KuKu Ranch” area in Kimana to do a test run of our now completed survey. The ranch area we tested in today is different from where our main study will be focused – and the results will not be used. Today was just to time the questionnaire and see if any problems came up during the interview.

The drive out to the ranch we were studying at took about 20 minutes and ended unexpectedly. It seemed like we were in the middle of nowhere but the jeep stopped and our translator jumped out, so reluctantly my partner Annie and I followed. After climbing a giant hill with nothing but red dust, rocks and acacia trees we finally spotted the boma or Maasi home. The boma was home to three women; a mother and two of her children with about 12 little grandchildren running around. The women were reluctant to participate at first, wanting money or some sort of compensation for their time, but eventually our translator Joseph got them to give in. The women gave us wooden benches to sit on as we asked our questions – Joseph translating and myself writing down the answers and filling out the charts within our questionnaire. The entire time I was writing, the children were all gathered around us, sitting quietly giggling and smiling. The answers that we got even though they were not for our final project were already interesting and I am excited to begin collecting data from our study area.

Here are a few sample questions from our survey just to give you an idea of what we are working with:

What is your primary source of water?
Do you treat your water, and if yes how?
Is their a farm adjacent to your water source?
Do you use pesticides?
Have you been trained on informed on how to use pesticides?
How do you dispose of your garbage?
Where do people usually help themselves at home (toileting practices)?
Have you ever seen someone helping themselves at a water source?
What do you usually wash your hands with?
When cooking inside, are children under the age of 5 present? (smoke inhalation issue)
Do you think that food, water, or evil spirits cause disease/illness?
Where do you go when you are sick?
Do you think your water is safe to drink?