Data collection begins

The sunny day has turned to a cold rain, and in the background there's a train.

Our guest house is right next to train tracks, and the rumble isn't so bad -- it's the middle of the night shrieking whistles that are more notable.

We managed to get ourselves together, have lunch, change some money. Met with 6 potential local research assistants. Right now, Odina and Chad are out researching mobile providers and plans, and they'll be back eventually with 15 sim cards: 10 for our team to use for the week, and 5 for the starboxes and server to process thousands of text messages. I'm hemorrhaging cash already. 

Erica and Cynthia are out with a handheld GPS, traveling the city and marking locations so we can populate the database for user testing. It looked like a more fun task before the downpour began. 

Waylon is having some quality time with the starboxes and the server.

I'm working on hiring local assistants and getting documents translated so we can send them back to the University for IRB approval. English docs are all approved, but any translations also need to be reviewed.