Waking up to the sounds of cooking and children laughing around 7:30 am, I decided to use the morning light for a bathroom break, waking Brad up in the process (though I knew it not at the time). Noting that Dr. Bart was still asleep, I went back to bed, which consisted of a Thermarest covered by a sheet on a concrete floor with cargo pants as a pillow in a tent shared with Brad.

The toilet was in a room away from the house and consisted of a hole in the concrete floor covered by a wooden lid 6" off the ground with a board that hinged open. The room, though obviously without plumbing or power, was among the best facilities in the rural region, and much, much better than the typical private toilet: the bush ten to one hundred feet away from the house.

Brad and I, along with the others staying as guests at the house (Dr. Bart and Craig, a U of I student in Agricultural and Biological Engineering) as the rest of the Village Hope group (Abi and Kelly, an architecture student from MIT) arrived. We had a large breakfast of plantain stew (delicious), potatoes, bread, and water. After going to bed hungry (which was entirely my fault since I brought with me a bunch of Clif Bars), I overate.

A short while later, the group's guides arrived, and all of us met at the nearby secondary school (which had been partially rented out by VH) to got an idea of who was who and what we would be doing. After introductions, the various groups split up with their respective guides, Brad and I with a man name Joseph Bangura. With Joseph's help, we refined our social survey and decided to give it a test run at the closest village, Masemah.

With the excellent help of our translator, we were able to adjust a few of the questions on the fly (which I especially enjoyed), learning much about the villagers in the process. I will wait until we've gone to more villages to make generalizations, but I will note a few of the remarkable things. Everyone was happy to see us and thankful for us being there. Sickness is a very real problem for many in the villages, and must of these sicknesses seem to come from a combination of environmental factors (since the tropics typically have more diseases than temperate climates), unsanitary living conditions (both circumstantial and behavioral), and insufficient funds for proper nutrition and medical treatment, leading some to pursue what Brad described as "household medicine", like rubbing a certain plant's leaves on the cheeks to alleviate various pains.

One illness I observed was particularly unsettling and was potentially one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen. There was a small boy who had developed a number of sores all over his body. These sores were excreting what I can only describe as orange ooze. I cannot imagine the physical pain - not to mention the mental anguish - that child and his family were facing, and I cannot imagine the mechanism by which the human body would produce such a substance.

After surveying a few households and the water sources, the latter including a stream over a quarter of a mile away from the village, we returned to base to semi-wrap up our survey and to plan out the next couple of days: finalize the materials for the direct water quality measurements and lay the groundwork for finishing the next couple of villages.

Sunset occurred between 6-7 pm, followed shortly by a meeting with Brad and Dr. Bart (whom we are to call Jon), candlelight dinner in the near darkness (with plenty of laughing and the like), and finally bed.

One important lesson (among many) for the day: for me, one of the most important quality of life issues won't be the muggy heat or the various critter that frequent the area, but rather a continued intake of sufficient volumes of food. In other words, eat your Clif Bars, Mike!