It’s been a little over a week since we landed in Malawi and thus far the trip has been great! Our first week of work at the Polytechnic was mainly dedicated to helping us understand the technologies that we will be working with (this includes oxygen concentrators, CPAP machines, and radiant warmers) and learning about various things that might help us with our projects this summer. So far, we’ve learned about laser cutting, Arduino programming, sensors, 3D printing, and soldering.

(LED Arduino Project!)

(Key chain produced on the lasercutter!)

Hopefully all these new tools will help us get a jump start on our projects! Speaking of which, we just received our project assignments. I will be working on the PneumaShoe, a low-cost pneumatic compression device designed to prevent blood clots in bedridden patients. Over the next few weeks, our team will be collecting feedback from several hospitals and using this feedback to build a new and improved prototype.

Luckily, this week hasn’t been all work and no play. This weekend, we had the opportunity to celebrate the 23^rd birthday of a fellow intern. The combination of Malawian birthday traditions and American birthday traditions made for a memorable night! The fun continued on Sunday when we climbed to the top of Michiru. The journey was difficult, but in the end, it was definitely worth it. I’m very excited to see what new adventures and challenges await us in the upcoming weeks!

It’s been our first week here and I can’t get over how great and eye opening this partnership has been. This first week has been a mini o-week of sorts. The first few days were spent bonding with the Malawian interns and learning about the Polytechnic University. I learned about the very fulling staple food, nisma. Most of the time however, was spent having crash courses on standard engineering and prototyping skills. It was these days that were really insightful for me. My experience thus far in engineering has been conceptual heavy except with Global Health Technologies 360. Its only through an informal setting that I have learned how to CAD, 3D print, and laser cut. However, this week at the Polytechnic allowed me to further my technical experience in a much more formal way. I learned how to solder efficiently and correctly, how sensors actually work and how to pair them with arduinos, and most importantly how to take my conceptual understanding of circuitry to create functional real life circuits. Every new skill I learned really changed the way I perceived engineering. Theoretical engineering no longer was the only way I thought about creating medical devices. I could now rudimentarily take a conceptual idea and create a real life device. That’s something I never learned in any of my intro STEM classes. Don’t get me wrong though, I am a firm believer in understanding theory and that’s why I really value learning how to do something with all this theory. In my opinion its the ability to shape ideas into practical innovations that makes engineering so extraordinary. So if you are considering engineering take time to change your perspective by engaging with the crossroad of theory and real life application, its well worth the arduino hassle and solder smoke.

In other news I got my project assignment on Friday! I’ll be working with the Poly intern Webster on coming up with a process to locally manufacture worn out oxygen concentrator cup seals. Cup seals create an airtight seal in the compressor that allows for maximum pressure and oxygen concentration as such they are a critical element in oxygen concentrators. However, in Malawian hospitals the intensive use of the concentrators plus the high level of dust that enters the machine causes the compressor cup seals to degraded frequently due to high friction (from the dust particles) and high temperature (from the prolonged and inefficient cooling system and high friction). Since spare parts are extremely costly to import, many oxygen concentrator end up in tech graveyards. We are hoping that by locally manufacturing this important part then we could reduce the hospital’s reliance on a constant supply of donated machines.

While thinking about what to write for this blog post, I am surprised at how many mosquitos I have swatted at and how many times I have slapped my self in the face doing so. Arriving in Blantyre for a week now I have finally gotten my bearings in this unfamiliar place. It feels weird to wake up as my friends and family back home are going to bed and going to work everyday in such a bustling city. Work may have the wrong connotation; what I am doing at the polytechnic, learning how to use different design software and tools and improving my foundation in electronics, prototyping, and basic device knowledge and repairs feels too fun to be called work. Currently I am brushing up on my Autodesk Inventor skills while trying to learn how to use a laser cutter while messing around with Inkscape, a software for rendering digital graphics. This crash course of sorts is all in preparation for our team projects that we will be focusing on over the next month. My project will be geared towards protecting the compressor of an oxygen concentrator from dust and other debris, which can cause wear and tear in the machine over time. Hopefully the skills and knowledge I have picked up on during my time working on my Rice GLHT 360 project will be of some use with this real world problem.

In addition to the work done at the Polytechnic we have also had time to get to know the Malawi Interns better outside of the classroom. Last Saturday was one of the intern’s birthdays so we all got together in order to throw an impromptu party for him. Having a cookout (or braii as it is called here) and dancing to a combination of South African, Malawi, and American music, it is interesting how easy it is to get accustom to a new place when only a week before I did not know what to expect. Apparently it is a tradition here to dump water on the person whose birthday we were celebrating, very similar to celebrating birthdays at Duncan College at Rice (we usually toss people into a tank of water we have by the commons). If not for the mosquitos and the constant reapplications of bug spray, I feel almost at home here.

This week we will be visiting the hospitals across Southern Malawi in order to better understand to the problems we were tasked with and to gain hands on experience on how the hospital system here operates and what role we as students and engineers can provide. It will be interesting to see if the rest of the hospitals are like Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital here in Blantyre and what nurses and technicians do in order to solve some of the problems they face here. Hopefully this can give us more insight to what needs to be done and what we can do to address it.

It’s currently 5:32 PM (BST) and although we have not yet reached Malawi, we have done our fair share of traveling. Over the last few days, I’ve traveled from Chicago to Houston for Houston to London from London to Johannesburg and the final leg of the trip will take me to Blantyre, Malawi.

So far, the London stop has been the most exciting. With a 12 hour layover, we had plenty of time to experience many of the sites that London has to offer. We saw Big Ben, watched the changing of the guard, and had a lovely lunch in the park. While our stop in Johannesburg has not been as action packed, we did manage to step outside the airport for a few minutes (now we can officially say that we’ve been to Johannesburg!). It may be a good thing that we’re not going on another excursion because the downtown has given me the opportunity to reflect on all of the things that we have done and all of the things still to come.

While we’ve only been traveling for 3 days, our journey started weeks ago.  Over the last few we have put a countless number of hours into trip preparation. We collected valuable advice from last year’s interns, we prepared several technologies to be taken to Malawi (including a breast cancer model, dosing clips, and an ostomy training model), and we brushed up on our Chichewa. Because of all this preparation, it would be easy to believe that I am fully prepared for what’s to come. However, one of the most valuable pieces of advice we received from the previous interns is that our experience may be completely different from their experience and we should learn to expect the unexpected. As we travel through countless airports and through the streets of London, I can’t but feel more and more excited about many memories, progress, and (hopefully!) friends that will be made in the coming weeks. I do not expect the journey to be easy, but I am certain that it will be worthwhile.

I have no idea what I am doing.

This thought hits me as I sit at the gate waiting for my plane to arrive to bring me to South Africa and then to Malawi. Having already travelled overnight and still with another day to go I feel a pit in my stomach as I write this post. Maybe it was the airline food I had ate hours ago (some sort of BBQ chicken concoction made by the chefs at United Airlines), but more likely it was finally realizing that my internship, spending seven weeks in Blantyre working at the Malawi Polytechnic University with fellow Rice Interns, has finally begun.

Before I continue any further I want to focus a little more on what I will be doing over this summer and what to expect from this blog post. Over the course of this trip I will be working on improving projects that were brought from Rice University, partnering with local students at the polytechnic to discover solutions to major problems here, and conducting needs finding to discover more issues that can be worked on in the Rice 360 class in the coming years. Personally I have brought anti-fog silica gel eyewear attachments that my team and I have worked on over the past semester but we have also brought a breast cancer training model and an ostomy bag train model among others. This blog should chronicle my experiences with these projects along with anything else we do over the course of trip, ranging from places we have visited to hardships and frustrations we will encounter.

I have travelled in the past before, but this was the first time I have travelled alone overnight. In addition I will have visited Europe and Africa for the first time by this time tomorrow. This experience almost has a surreal quality to it, especially since I am traveling alone until I reach Johannesburg where I will meet up with the rest of the interns. If anything I think traveling like this is fitting; although I may not know exactly what I have in store for me (though if you are reading this in the future you will), I will say that I am definitely being pushed out of my comfort zone. I never expected to do something like this. In fact, I never really considered traveling abroad in any capacity in college. But now sitting in the airport having returned from visiting the city of Frankfurt holding a Rindswurst in one hand (I have no idea what that is; a local recommended that I get one while in the city) and typing this with the other, it strikes me that I will be learning so much more than just what I had signed up for. I came because I wanted to see how other countries dealt with regional health issues and to explore the different solutions that ingenious people around the world come up with, but even though I haven’t arrived yet I have already learned a lot about myself. I am not a huge fan of figs, I can’t sleep on planes for the life of me, and mustard in Germany is the most amazing thing I have had in a long while. These may seem super trivial but I think they underscore a larger point; living abroad hopefully I will be able to learn as much about myself while magnifying my passions for bioengineering, specifically in a global health setting.

Hi everybody- we are reporting live from Blantyre! So update from us and a quick hello from Malawi!

All five of us are moved into the Kabula Lodge, quickly acclimating to the “winter” schedule (the sun sets at 5:30), and are making lots of new friends! Above is a photo of the sunset yesterday. The journey to get here was not a short one, see the next (probably run-on) sentence below for details. As of Thursday afternoon we have survived getting to Houston (I had the advantage of already being here), driving to the airport with 12 suitcases (don’t worry – several of them were for packing devices), passing baggage check with them all under 50 lbs (one was EXACTLY 50.0), an 8.5 hour flight to London (New York to Frankfurt for Erik), a 12 hour layover in London, an 11.5 hour flight to Johannesburg, a 3 hour layover in South Africa,  a seemingly shorter 2 hour flight to Blantyre, a VISA procurement in Malawi, and then a bus ride to our new home!

So far we have met our housemates (two Canadian law students and several Dutch med students) as well as Matt Petney (director of the Polytechnic “OEDK” of sorts) and Sam Olvera (Rice grad who works with CPAP project). Matt was kind enough to invite us over to his house for breakfast this morning and we had a great time trying to drill them for Malawian culture advice! He also managed to cut our SIM cards so they fit into our cute new phones! We are all quite enamored by our small smart phones and had a great time trying to put contacts in. For the rest of the day we explored the city, tried out our haggling skills at the market, went to a jazz concert with out housemates and the Lodge manager, and then made dinner! We assumed because it was our first day trying to buy groceries that we probably overpaid (since we stick out like foreigners) so our goal is to decrease the amount we pay for the same amount later! Our total was 4,800 Kwacha… which shocked us because when we converted it back at the house, it was only a total of $6.70! So much cheaper than fresh produce would be in the U.S.! Erik is a pro in the kitchen (he was coaching us through the basics) and we managed a simple dinner of spaghetti, I’ll keep you posted how the four of us improve our cooking skills.

Lastly, I’d like to mention that the mosquito nets are actually quite beautiful as well as being very functional. I tell Serena and Millie every night how much I feel like some kind of fairy or something! Below is a picture Serena snapped captioned “Megderella”!

Over and out,

Meg

Tomorrow I and four other interns will touch down in the Warm Heart of Africa, otherwise known as Malawi. This will be my third trip to Eastern Africa yet this experience I believe will stand out as one of the most profound journeys I will ever take. My reasoning being that this study aboard represents the culmination of practical, ethical, and collaborative research and innovation in maternal and newborn global health.

The Rice 360 Institute is at the forefront of creating innovative ways of solving common medical issues in low-resource settings. They represent a shift in global health that utilizes the talent pool of a university to come up with low-cost innovative medical devices. Their work has had such a profound impact that they have been named one of eight finalist for the McArthur $100 million grant. However, this study aboard is much more than just going and handing over tech that I and other interns created. Its about engaging with Malawians at the Polytechnic University and The Queen Elizabeth Hospital so that I and by extension Rice 360 can learn how to develop devices that will actually be of use. A main concern with global health these days is that low-resource settings sometimes become a tech dump for Western developers because there is no collective transnational research done on the accessibility, affordability, and effectiveness of the product. Rice 360 seeks to fill that void.

Now that I have given my spiel on the practical reasons for being a part of this study aboard, I want to discuss the much more nuanced sentimental reasoning. I was born in Eritrea, a small and relatively young East African country; in fact we just celebrated 26 years of independence. This trip represents an idea and hope that my parents instilled in me: to remember and shape the land of my birth. Growing up in America I have been provided with the skills, knowledge and opportunity to one day make a meaningful impact. My work this summer will be a testament to Rice 360’s notable work in shaping the health outcomes of Malawi and one day the whole African continent.

Here us (missing Eric) making the most of our 12 hour London layover: