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<\/a><\/p>\nKandawgyi Lake (amazing dim sum, beautiful foliage, and sketchy bridges)<\/p>\n and Burmese food (sticky noodles are my life).<\/p>\n On the second week (6\/26) we went out to the field:<\/p>\n On Monday, we met an MBA student \u2013Steele Austin Burrow (lol guess what part of the world he\u2019s from) \u2013from Georgetown who is also consulting for KKT. Check out his ridiculous portfolio here: https:\/\/www.burrowimagery.com\/<\/p>\n On Tuesday, we went to the local park to start some user testing on the maymay android application. A few things we noted in this young, urban population was the positive willingness to participate in the testing and the shockingly low tech literacy. Only 1 out of 4 users knew how to download an app or what a button was. This has been a huge barrier to mass adoption of the maymay app; although, this is true of most applications marketing in Myanmar. Interestingly, the most used apps, such as Facebook, are pre-downloaded onto all phones purchased in-country. This perpetuates the aforementioned downloading phenomenon, which leads to our deliverables \u2013stay tuned ?<\/p>\n Wednesday was our first trip to the greater Yangon area! Twante is a peri-urban community, but we went out a little ways to a very rural area. Here, residents live in bamboo huts and are often very sick due to limited or no access to clinics. The closest non-military clinic is a 15-30 minute motorbike ride, but visitation is heavily dependent on the patient\u2019s time availability, severity of illness, or income allowances.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Something interesting I noted was the similarity in Myanmar clinic operations with those of El Salvador, where I previously did a medical mission trip. For example, patients are given a record-keeping booklet at their first clinic visit (usually issued at age 5). This must be brought to all doctor visits so that clinicians have access to all of the patient\u2019s medical information and can add to it at each consultation. However, many patients throw away the booklet after the visit, lose it, or never get it back from the nurse. This results in a loss of information and redundancy in inputs. This leads to another of our deliverables\u2026<\/p>\n Thursday was a very busy day at work. I finished up a usability testing proposal for Koe Koe Tech’s CEO and our team set up a mass maymay phone survey. We have been able to rack up over 80 responses to use as quantitative data!<\/p>\n Week 3 (7\/3) was fairly quiet \u2013just cranking out some work.<\/p>\n Week 4 (7\/10) was half work and half vacation:<\/p>\n On Tuesday, we woke up at 3 am and drove to Mandalay to do a film interview. It was a 7 hour drive squished in the back of a small Honda civic (thank Jesus I can sleep in any vehicle at any time). We then got lunch at a place called Golden Duck (guess what their specialty is) and rested before proceeding to find the interviewee\u2019s home. This took some time, as many of the streets are not properly labeled. However, the family was extremely excited to have us come, so they dealt with the thirty minutes of phone calls and driving in circles, until the grandfather finally came out on a motorbike to show us the way to the house.<\/p>\n The interview went spectacularly \u2013we\u2019ve been struggling with having mothers elaborate on their experiences with their pregnancies and using the maymay app, but this mother was very talkative and Emily got some amazing footage. Here are a few photos of the most adorable and loving twins.<\/p>\n One thing I\u2019ve noticed is the role that fathers have in obtaining interview consent and content. We have had many potential interviews with new mothers fall through because the women had to check with their husbands and the result was a resounding \u201cno.\u201d On the other hand, it is sweet to see husbands support their wives during the interview itself. I\u2019ve noted the doting faces they make when they watch their spouse interact with us and the baby. They\u2019ll sometimes bud into the conversation to have their say, but in the end it\u2019s useful information that the wife simply did not recall in the moment. Some of my favorite footage that Emily got is of a father playing with his new daughter and hugging his wife. All in all, the only place we\u2019ve noticed a strong power dynamic is when scheduling interviews. Otherwise, we\u2019ve been more-or-less pleased with familial interactions in this country (in that, it is not worse than we expected, but instead slightly better).<\/p>\n On Thursday morning, we drove with Steele (yay for traveling with a professional photographer!) to Inle Lake for a few days of vacation –and man was in serene. We ended up going on a boat tour of the lake and saw cigar makers, boat craftsmen, blacksmiths, weaving houses (where they make thread out of lotus stems!!), paper makers, traditional Inle fishermen (most known for using one leg to paddle), the Kyan people (most known for the \u201clong neck women\u201d), and so many freaking pagodas and buddhas. The food was amazing, the water was inviting, and the relaxation was much needed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On Sunday we took a 12 hour night bus, arrived in Yangon at 5 am, took a nap, went to work at 1 pm, and promptly entered week 5!<\/p>\n Week 5 (7\/17) was jam packed with interviews so that we could gather all the data we need to produce our deliverables. There was an average of 10 interviews per day (plus insane travel time to certain rural locations). It was crazy.<\/p>\n And finally, here we are in our last week of work: week 6 (7\/24).<\/p>\n On Sunday we woke up at 4 am to drive 5 hours to rural Ayeyarwady for an interview. The roads almost flooded during our drive (in fact, BBC reported a pagoda sinking, in a flood, in this same region, on the very same day). However, that trip was worth it as we got one of our best interview content. Athena and I were also able to do more street interviews to gather a more diverse sample (especially in such a rural location). However, we overstayed our welcome after 13 interviews…<\/p>\n This leads to another finding during our stay in Myanmar: the fear of foreigners. Considering the country\u2019s political history, this is not surprising. However, it makes research that much more difficult. Local hospitals and rural areas are afraid that (1) foreigners will mess everything up or spy on them and report to the media and (2) that the foreigners will be harmed during their stay and then blame Myanmar. This means that we are constantly walking on egg shells every time we go out for research in rural locations (Yangon is filled with expats, so people aren\u2019t as nervous here in the city that we are staying in).<\/p>\n On Monday, Athena and I essentially cranked out an entire deliverable. I\u2019m very proud of us! This is in regard to nursing training modules on how to use and share the maymay application. Athena took care of the research questions and convoluted data analysis and I took care of the training slides and in-depth talking points. We are hoping to user test these modules with local nurses and create a final iteration later this week. However, there is currently an H1N1 outbreak in the greater Yangon area, which means that many clinicians are tied up at the hospitals (and we should really get on buying health masks). Yay for unforeseen circumstances! But it\u2019s okay \u2013I don\u2019t doubt that either way things will get done.<\/p>\n Emily is on subtitling duty and sitting down one-on-one with a professional translator. I\u2019m super impressed with how organized and detail-oriented she is about it all! Y\u2019all are gonna be so impressed with the final product!<\/p>\n So other than that, please keep us in mind as we hit a full speed sprint to finish up our work here in the office this week!<\/p>\n On Tuesday of week 7 we will head to Bagan for the last half of our vacation week! This is what it should look like \u2013I\u2019ll post pictures once we get back of what our experiences are!<\/p>\n All in all, I have really enjoyed working with Koe Koe Tech and my GSBF team in conducting action research with young families and the general public. Observing the impact that maymay has had is an incredible journey, as it directly touches so many lives and dependants. I couldn\u2019t be more proud of the work Koe Koe Tech is doing! To see a solution that can be broadly applied (especially seeing similar problems in El Salvador) coming to life before my very eyes is extremely heartening.<\/p>\n Again, thank you to everybody for your support and prayers. It took a while to get adjusted, but my amazing team has helped a lot! I am so excited to continue working towards our goals \u2013despite so much changing each and every day \u2013and see what further adventures this trip holds!<\/p>\n Till next time y\u2019all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, hello everybody! Those of you invested in my summer are reading this, so I profusely thank you for your support! (If you have been keeping updated on this blog, then just scroll down half way to where I have added the rest of my adventures!) I promised you daily blogs, but it turns out … Continue reading One Giant Post…<\/span> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n