First Day in the Field

So today was the day. After a little preview of a different aspect of the project, I finally got to go out in the field today! Granted still not part of the PAZ project that I am here for, but very cool non-the-less. We made visits to two homesteads as part of the IDEAL project where they are tracking a group of calves from birth to market to assess their disease burden. Pretty interesting stuff.

It was kind of crazy getting to these houses... When you go from a well paved road to a not-so-well paved road to a pothole laced road to a dirt road to a dirt road laced with potholes to two tire tracks through grass and trees, I didn't think that there was much farther that you could go.... And I was wrong. Toyota Land Cruisers will even take you down footpaths through some pretty rough country. And understand that when I say potholes, I don't mean the ones where the top layer of asphalt is missing in a spot, I mean where the ROAD is missing. Just randomly in the middle of a section of road that you had previously been flying across. And we also got to a point on one of the roads where we had to start collecting rocks so that we could make a bridge through the mud... I really wish I had taken pictures of this but I was too busy grabbing rocks along with all the random people that stopped to help.

Speaking of random people.... There are ALOT more people here than I thought. Its weird cause while its certainly not an urban area by any stretch of the imagination, the population density in the area is through the roof. And the area that this density spans that goes with out running water and electricity is absolutely mind-boggling. As some of my pictures will show, the 'main roads' will just flood with people on there way to market or school or wherever. The literally come out of the woodwork. Its pretty incredible.