Women versus malaria

This is Restina and her three kids, who live in Katiet. Restina is one of those people who radiate competence. She walks into a room and you think - aha, SHE knows what's going down.


Restina grows durians (yum!), coconuts and bananas, and she's a volunteer for Surf Aid.

One of the organization's strategies is to go around to women in each village and ask: who do you go to for advice? Who knows the most about how to clean a cut, or keep bugs out of the house, or grow tomatoes? Then they train these key women on the causes of malaria and how to prevent it, and they send them out to spread the word. In general, women have good networks, they're eager to learn, they're not hung up on showing they're the smartest or most powerful person in the room, and they have great authority over household matters. Kind of a cool system, I think.

I recruited Restina's oldest boy to help me with a highly sensitive poultry-recording project. I was trying to get tape of chickens scratching around and clucking, but every time I got close enough they would run away. So I asked him to drive the chickens toward me, with the predictable result that the boy made far more noise than the birds. We all had a good time, at least - with the possible exception of the chickens, but chickens always look kind of annoyed to me anyway.