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Today myself and four others started fresh at Dharavandhoo. We were warmly welcomed by a member of the island council and several hospital employees, including a coconut for each of us! I think that we have a great team there and we got a lot of work done today. It was awesome working with Zenia, a woman who works at the hospital. She is very thorough, works really well with the home owners, and isn’t the least bit afraid to get her hands dirty working.

Our team has discussed how the most difficult part of this project will be making it sustainable after we are gone. This challenge is apparent at Dharavandhoo and I am not sure how we will overcome it. The stakeholder meeting scheduled for tomorrow should help, as will working with the school. However, I am getting the feeling that we will not be able to complete this island the next four days that we have to survey it. It is a fairly big island and there are over 300 homes. The best we can do is just work hard each day and, along the way, try to inspire the home owners to take responsibility for controlling mosquito breeding within their property.

I can already tell that I am going to be totally exhausted after the next 5 weeks. However, I don’t think that I will have any regrets about how I spent my time. While this is hard work, it is also fulfilling emotionally, intellectually, and physically. I am happy.