As I started packing, I have begun to think about the things I will bring back with me from Malawi. I’m not sure I could formulate an exact list because I’m bringing back more than what is in my suitcase or my camera. This is a list of some of the things I will carry home with me:

1. Approximately 2kg of Malawian-grown coffee and 250g of black tea, as well as some dried hibiscus flowers from which you can make tea- something I have started to love doing after coming home from work.
2. Approximately 16 chitenges; 6 pairs of happy pants, 4 bags, 24 napkins, 2 shirts, and a pair of shorts, along with some fabric I haven’t modified yet.
3. Four bottles of Nali, which is Malawi’s own hot sauce made from peri-peri peppers. It’s almost too hot for me, but not for many of the Malawians I have met.
4. 500 pictures; some work-related and some for myself.
5. A recipe for nsima.
6. Some ideas for devices or technology that could serve as future design projects at Rice.  I am more able to provide new ideas now that I have seen a low-resource setting and its constraints, which are very important to keep in mind during the entire design process.
7. A small but strong Chichewa vocabulary.
8. A six-pack from all of our Insanity workouts. Actually that’s pretty far from true (although I’m sure I’m closer now than I was when I left).
9. A number of new mentors and role models. I’ve met some of the hardest working and most compassionate people I’ve ever known, and of anything I take back I hope it can be the inspiration they have given me to work hard and to always treat people as though they are family. Even though I have only had a summer with them, I would consider the people I have met here to be family to me.
10. A worldview with better peripheral. You can’t understand a place like Malawi from a textbook or Wikipedia article. It takes living in the country, meeting the people, and trying to solve problems as they stand right in front of you to know what words like “developing” or “low-resource” mean. I only had two months in Malawi, and my vision or understanding isn’t 20/20, but I see much more clearly than I ever had before. Out of everything on this list, number 10 is probably the lightest- and in some ways the heaviest- thing I carry with me home.

It’s a very bittersweet goodbye leaving Blantyre, and I will miss my new friends and new favorite places a lot. The attachment I now feel to this place only highlights the desire I have to continue working in the global health field. I am grateful for the opportunity to come to Malawi, and I hope that the work I have done here and will do during my time at Rice will be as meaningful to someone else as this trip has been to me.