I first moved to DRC for a job managing bed net distributions in the rural interior of the country. I was thrown into the fire with this, only out of grad school for ten days when I left. But somehow I managed to stay afloat and figure it (thank you Google) and a few weeks after moving to DRC I found myself in the middle of a village in Kasai sweating and uploading ODK software onto smartphones for use collecting net distribution data. And then I found myself in front of a room full of villagers that didn’t know how to use them and I didn’t speak French yet.

Those were the days.

Thanks to my wonderful colleagues, Andrew Chou and Charlotte Ndolerire, we figured it out. We made it work. And we distributed and hung up 13,000 nets over the next couple of weeks, including this net you see here hanging over this beautiful, confident young woman and her newborn child.

And then two months later, we went back and distributed 600,000 more to cover the entire province.

Those really were the days. Riding around in our Landcruiser with $60,000 cash under the seat and three drums of gasoline in the back of the truck because there are no banks and no gas stations in the middle of DRC.

I am slated to head back to DRC in January for another one of these massive bed net distributions (will be my sixth).

And I cannot wait.

Magic 357/365, Malaria Warrior, Democratic Republic of Congo, 2014