A nice picture by Agnes, not related to the field site but our jungle walk where we found a larger parasite in the watercourse.
About one hour before heading out to the field we took a second breakfast with some scones, coffee and tea at ILRI.
This is a picture of the field vehicle we used to get out in the field with. On the roads there were a lot of police controls with stingers ("spikmattor"), but we were always let through without inspection. Although we don't actually know, we speculated that this might be because of our car registration plates which were red. The red registration plates means that you come from an international organization such as ILRI or the UN.
The google maps estimated an 8h drive to our field site. They were only off by approx. 3-4 hours as most of the last hours of road was not really a road at all, but more like a really rough and stiff field with decimeter deep cracks in it.
To get to the site we rounded Mount Kenya which was quite amazing. Sadly it was foggy around the top, and through the window of a fast driving car our pictures were not great this time around. We were however surprised by how wide the mountian was, and on the picture below you can just see an online picture of how it looked like.
Following below are just a few images captured through the window of the car. The last picture on the right represents the veterinary research center out in the field. The local hospital was even smaller than that, with only two hard working staff and a line that was longer than the house itself. Once coming back, the plan is that I will join the hospital team in screening of Brucella and Coxiella cases (febrile bacterial diseases), while Carro joins the veterinary team for baseline screening of Rift Valley Fever (RVF) virus and Peste des Pestis ruminants (PPR) virus for later vaccination trials. This visit was only to check out the field site and to make contact with the officials at site.
