A bonza bbq day!

As we awoke to the tunes of disneys enchanted (courtesy of knowles) we all prepared for the first day in the field of our final week. D+ is sweeping through the camp and some of the team have been making fairly regular (and musical) trips to the toilets!

I checked in on the cats by the WSPA van and mine is happy and still meowing away, whilst andrews has already found a happy home! We picked up dr waridi and ramadan and went off to sample in the northern district.

We sampled two farms today, both of which had lots of bulls which were quite fiesty (bruises from kicks ahoy). Following our lead lots of the cows were suffering from sloopy stools but seemed in otherwise good condition. We came accross 2 cases of suspected ecf, both of which we took lymph node aspirates from. It will be interesting to see what these yield back in the lab in London.

Unfortunately Caz developed a migraine when we were back at the lab. One of our first aiders lizzy was on the case straight away and got her the necessary drugs and rest she required! Will and Andy both successfully emasculated three tom cats in the afternoon under the watchful eye of one our good friends here, Dr Ramadan. 

In the afternoon Andy, Andrew and Tom went to market to buy us lots of tasty tuna fish for a bbq. Meanwhile Siobhan, Caz, Will and I went to sizzle in stone town (twas a scorcher of a day) and indulge in a bit of shopping. Lizzy, Fran and Niall held down the fort back home downloading pictures onto our computers from our sampling days.

The day came to and end with a bbq in our back garden (with our two friends lolly and fran who were chomping down some of the tit bits quite merrily). We had some gorgeous ginger and lime tuna with rice and vegetables.

Fran and will then entertained us in the living room with some of their many stories!

Looking forward to visiting a charity school tomorrow,
Bye for now
The hatch-meister ;)))))

Start of final week

Tonight the captain of our ship took to the kitchen and cooked up a Zanzibar style fish masala dish worthy of restaurant service (with better portion sizes) to set us up for our last week on the island.

We have three more days of sampling in the north of the island before presenting our preliminary findings and outlining our future plans to the Department of Livestock and Development staff on Thursday. My part of the project has been to conduct a face-to-face questionnaire to farmers with the aim of providing a context to our more laboratory based research (and hence my unhealthy affinity for clipboards in all of the photos). I began the construction process months ago whilst on rotations as a total rookie to this secret art by gathering as many relevant papers as possible. Very slowly, with the help and endless patience of my supervisiors at college a 30 question survey began to evolve. By our departure date I was fairly happy with the 50 crisp copies of surveys tucked in my lugguage, which delve into basic farm structure and management, disease awareness and finally more specifically about ECF and the infect and treatment vaccine.

Our whirlwind first day in the field threw up a few immediate challenges to my plan, with our only two interpreters working hard on gaining farmer copliance for blood and tick sampling it became clear that my best efforts at learning Swahili would only get me so far. In addition to the language barrier, farmers on Zanzibar are only availabe to us for sampling for a narrow window in the morning and so we have always been pushing the clock to get all of our samples. Never the less with a few alterations, perseverance and talking over bucking cows I've managed to survey about a third of the farmers we have met.

Inputing the survey data into a spreadsheet has been an evening job, but continues to highlight useful questions that need more work and less useful ones which can be cut. Most of the farmers I have spoken to have had good knowledge of the disease and many can describe recent cases. A growing population and urbanisation are forcing farmers to move to a more intensive way of farming to maximise the productivity of their land. For this to work it is essential that diseases such as ECF are addressed.

It's been a huge learning curve, but I hope we will be able to help the farmers of Zanzibar move forward.

Soz for the dry blog, time for bed ready for another early start!
Andy

Saved by the Tweets

The plan for our day off was very simple, all we had to do was make our way home to Stone Town from the north tip of the island.
But never take anything for granted in Africa.  I decided to head off home before the rest of the gang to get some work with data done and go to the market (also I don't really like the beach).  As soon as I got 10 minutes away, my car started making horrid noises.  I needed to call our friend Daude who rented us the cars, but unfortunately my vodacom call credit had run out.  Thankfully, I had some data left on my android so I was able to tweet the group for help. 
The cavalry arrived (liz-mo, caz-mo, and Niall-mo) and saved me from being stranded on the side of the road surrounded by curious children pressing their faces against my windows.  We then were able to call Daude and he sent a man out with a fresh car with haste.  Best rental car place ever!  (Www.zanzibarrentacar.com shout izout!)  So the cavalry kept me company while Daudes man worked his way across the whole island and also entertained the crew of kids as it expanded to over 20.  Caz and lizzy practiced some swahili and Niall showed the kids some of our mobile devices.  I was a bit frustrated with the car so I sat and watched, only contributing the music of T-pain which sparked a brief roadside dance party.  Eventually we all made it home for a nice family style italian meal topped off with some birthday chocolate for Cazoline.

-Andrew

Field blitz and a Rank birthday

Well Friday is never a quiet day in Zanzibar! With our ever helpful vets required at 10am back at the centre for an essential talk to all the vet assistants on the island we managed a day's work in 2 hours... it was hard, personally sweaty (the banter regarding my random knee sweat continues a pace) and pretty stressful but ultimately satisfying.

Niall, our new techno-man, had a bit of a baptism of fire in the use of the androids in fieldwork - ironically using old fashioned pen and paper to record his observations.

After The Hag and Alex checked their cat spays were out of the woods (they were happy and healthy) we headed out to the coast to celebrate Caroline Louise Rank's birthday - yes that's the 3rd of the trip!

Tom

Planting aubergines with the African Ladies

Alex helping Dr Ramadan

Eggplant,zoo,spay,niall,rain,edta,tick flag,car

Busy busy busy, too busy to blog yesterday. Field work continued on Wednesday as per usual, and us girls helped/hindered some ladies plant aubergine in an agricultural school. Later we got a VIP sneak preview of an as of yet unopened zanzibar attraction...the zoo. We were flattered to be asked for our advice about both the welfare of the animals and tourist potential. We had a frolick with the wilderbeest and zebra which running free with the guinea fowl,and had a horseride around the grounds.

Next was tidy/shopping time in preparation for our special guest Niall on Thursday. Today we visited a government farm, and with a herd of 153 and a crush it was the closest we have seen to the British system. Since it was the only sample site for the day we had time to take a good survey. The dream team perfected their field tick collection by stalking cows with the ceremonious tickflag. Success made Toms day! The low tick burden due to good management on the farm meant light work in the lab so Alex and The Hag went to help dr Ramadan spay a couple of stray cats-quite a contrast to life in the QMH.
The arrival of an extra set of wheels was followed by the arrival of Niall with some essentials-EDTA tubes, suncream newspapers and...chocolate. We enjoyed a meal at the old favourite Forodhani street market, and now we are back at HQ playing cards- GOOD TIMES!

Over and out...lala salama

Lizbo and Shish x