We’re back!  After two months in Namitete we are back home and I’ll be the first to say that it was the fastest 8 weeks I’ve ever had.  Although it’s been nice to come back and see my family I’m already missing life back in Malawi.  Our last few days in Namitete ended up being both sad and exciting.  Saying goodbye to all the friends we made during our time there was a hard process.  Saying goodbye was especially hard since we didn’t know when we would see them again, and that was a hard idea to swallow both for us and for our friends in Malawi.  It wasn’t all sad though, in between the goodbyes there were a lot of happy times.  During our last few days we we tried to pack in as much as we could.  Some of our best friends at the hospital made dinner for us and taught us how to make nsima.  We went out to see Gift and his family for one more visit, when his mom insisted we stay for lunch.

Hannah and I making nsima with Sister Justa.

During our last week we also presented Sphygmo to the Matron and some of the other nurses at the hospital.  They were all so excited about the possibility of having Sphygmo at St. Gabriel’s and they wanted to start using it as soon as possible.  It was really cool to see how excited they were about a device that we brought from Rice and we started to think about the impact that the technologies we bring could have on the people at St. Gabriel’s.

Just me and some kids.

My time in Namitete was an unbelievable experience and I am so thankful that I was given the opportunity to see a part of the world so different from what I know.  The friendships we made and the experiences were had are things that I will remember forever.  I will miss Malawi very much but now I can’t wait to use what I’ve learned in the work that I will do at Rice.  Thank you all so much for reading and keeping up with my adventure and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me!

Zikomo Kwambiri! (Thank you very much)