"When we spray, we finish and we collect the adult mosquito then we record them," said Ramadhani. "The work is fine. I’ve sent my children to schools."

The scouts also have introduced innovative methods for reducing mosquito reproduction. The most effective has been the use of small fish in ponds and pools to eat the larvae of breeding mosquitos. The deputy director of the Kenya Medical Research Institute, Dr. Charles Mbogo, explains how the strategy was developed.

"The idea came from the Mosquito Scouts after scouting for mosquito larvae in the hotel industry," he said. "Most of the hotels industry have these fish and when they sample that all the time there is no mosquito. They were asking us why and we informed them that actually the fish do eat the larvae. So they started introducing them into some of the areas where there were no fish and immediately we started seeing a big decline in the mosquito populations."

The work of PUMMA and the Mosquito Scouts has proven effective in recent years. Data from the Malindi District - which includes the city and its surrounding areas - shows a 20 percent drop in malaria cases reported from 2006 until 2010. But there is still much work to be done. More than 100,000 malaria cases were reported last year, and more than 40,000 were children under 5 years old.

One of the largest challenges is the hundreds of pools sitting behind the gates of Malindi’s resorts and vacation villas. As Mbogo explains, many of the city’s wealthier residents live there for part of the year, leaving behind large empty pools which become breeding grounds during the rainy seasons.