Today, Carrisa, Caleb, and I finally completed our 41-hour-commute to Blantyre, Malawi. Transporting the hugeeee amounts of luggage has been quite the struggle, but we’ve managed to get all 9 suitcases and 6 carry-ons to the Beit CURE International House in one piece! I couldn’t imagine a better group of people to laugh with while clumsily hauling these bags around, and I am so excited about the amazing summer that we have in front of us, together.
As Caleb and Carissa mentioned in their blogs, these past few days have been incredibly busy with packing and preparing all of our equipment and supplies for the trip. Though it has felt rather overwhelming and stressful at times, Dr. Leautaud, Dr. Ramos, and my teammates have so wonderful to work with. And now that we are all finally here in Malawi, I think we feel much more prepared than we did just a few short weeks ago. Shannon introduced us to Dr. Godfrey very briefly today when we made a pit top at PAM (Physical Assests Management) at Queens on our way to buy some SIM cards, and even from just that brief interaction, I am SO excited, honored, and thankful for the opportunity to be spend the majority of my summer working and learning from someone so knowledgeable and experienced.
As a newly graduated bioengineering student from Rice, it was really interesting to spend these past few weeks going over all the old class materials from ELEC 243, BIOE 383, 385, and 449 so that we may work and learn from professors at the Polytechnic University to develop two Bioengineering lab courses. In light of all the personal introspection that naturally occurred before my graduation this past Saturday, I’ve also had a great time looking back on all the academic material that I’ve learned during my past 4 years at Rice. So, I’m very excited to be spending the majority of my time in Malawi working with PAM at Queens and the faculty and students at Poly to figure out how we learn from one another’s programs to eventually build a stronger BME curriculum and workforce to carry out the necessary medical repair and maintenance in the area.
My teammates and are now just working in our room at CURE, learning the ins and outs of the of the CPAP troubleshooting/repair manual. We have the next few days to get used to our new home and to prepare for the incredible summer ahead!
