With the completion of our field research there has been a bit of a change of pace around camp. Instead of being out in the field every day and traveling to clinics and hospitals we’ve been spending a lot more time at camp working on data analysis and beginning to write our reports. The camp is a fenced-in one mile radius so sometimes we feel a bit “caged in.” (Literally – little kids come up to the fence and stick their arms through at us when we are out walking around). But it always seems that as soon as we start to get stir crazy something fun and creative always comes up to save the day.

Last night we had a formal dance in the chumba after dinner. Our student affairs manager Molly cleared away all of the tables and chairs and decorated the walls with cloths bought at the market. She surprised us with sodas and brownies and a disco ball hanging from the ceiling (our soccer ball covered in masking tape and foil). We started off with some African music then switched to some American tunes – it was fun to teach the staff the YMCA.

For tonight’s entertainment we are hooking up the projector and making popcorn over the stove for a movie night. On Saturday we have split up into teams for an iron chef desert cook-off (Dad – my team is doing Black Magic Cake J). It has been fun to be creative with our time and enjoy each other’s company during our last couple of weeks. We will have all of our bivariate and multivariate analysis completed by this weekend and will begin writing our final report on Monday. Each group is responsible for writing their own portion that will be presented to the community and the final version of that is due next Friday.

I have plenty of great pictures that I keep trying to post but the internet connection hasn’t been strong enough – I’ll keep trying though!