Walikunda

So just to keep everyone (and frankly by this stage myself) updated on where I'm actually going now, I'm going to start off by travelling round some upriver villages with a team from the London School of hygiene and Tropical Medicine for the first three weeks, collecting eyeswabs from any unlucky kids I manage to catch. I'll then go to the MRC's entomological research station at Wali Kunda to collect flies and do some behavioural studies.



Wali Kunda is primarily used for malaria research, and has a number of experimental huts set up to measure how many mosquitoes attack sleepers. There's some more information on what they do there here, which I'd really recommend having a look at because it is quite fascinating. Yes she did see a snake please don't tell my Mum. Just to make you all jealous, and to remind myself that it's not all snakes, this is the view from the station:





If you want to know exactly where I'll be suffering from acute tea deprivation, here it is:



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The nearest town of any size (pop. 4343) is Brikama Ba. Rather hearteningly, the first things that came up when I googled it were this article, which cheered my inner Feminazi, and this video: