Loni and I have continued our work on the Munsieville Survey and rapid needs assessment data collection. We can now officially say that our Munsieville Survey is fine-tuned and ready for implementation. Each survey takes about 45 minutes to an hour. I mentioned in an earlier update that Project HOPE had planned to get 1000 surveys. Well, thanks to some mathematical wizardry on my and Loni's part, we discovered that we would only need about 400 surveys to get the same statistical power (something that SIGNIFICANTLY cut on costs for this project). So, with 10 hired surveyors it would take a little less than 2 weeks to complete data collection.

Unfortunately, due to government holidays and political unrest, we will not be able to implement the survey before leaving South Africa. However, we have drawn up a strategy for implementation to help things go more smoothly for our boss, Stefan, when he finds the time and resources to carry it out in the next month or so.

As Loni mentioned in an earlier update, we have been continuing Project HOPE's ongoing quest to find a suitable location for its Munsieville Model by conducting rapid needs assessments in the informal settlements of the Randfontein area. Most recently, we have been shack counting and surveying in Big Elandsvlei (this is in addition to Master, Jabulane, Elandsvlei Klein or "small", and Zenzele). They call it "Big" Elandsvlei because it has more land than the other Elandsvlei settlement, though this in itself is misleading. We counted a total of 210 homes there, whereas at Elandsvlei Klein there were 350 densely packed onto a smaller plot of land. Elandsvlei was a bit different from the other settlements in that it had no formal system of sanitation, not even latrines. Nearly everyone used a bush toilet (i.e., dug a hole in the woods). One of the women we surveyed informed us that rape is a big problem when using the bush toilet in that settlement, something I'd never even considered before.

Due to the aforementioned political issues, there have been many strikes occurring throughout the entire country of South Africa, including both municipality workers and even physicians. The municipality worker strike has had a grave impact on the people living in informal settlements who have to rely on the water tanks to survive. Already residents in Big Elandsvlei were reporting to us that they'd been without a water tank refill for the past three days. Besides a dwindling supply of drinking water, this has had other impacts on the residents, specifically the children. They have not been going to school because there was not enough water to bathe or wash clothes. The parents are consequently refusing to send their children to school because of it.

In spite of the municipality strikes and the resultant disruption in services, we haven't had any issues with our rapid needs assessments. Big Elandsvlei is the last settlement Loni and I were tasked with surveying. Naturally, being interns, we were given the sacred responsibility of doing data entry for all of the surveys we have collected. We are nearly finished with inputting data for the 185 caregivers and 266 children in the above 5 mentioned settlements. Once finished, we'll hopefully have a preliminary analysis completed for Project HOPE before leaving for the States.