Hello, everyone! Pardon the delay in posting – I wrote this and many of the following posts many weeks ago, but had to save them until I could get some computer problems fixed. And now here we are!
22 June, 2018
These have been my very first few days in Malawi. It doesn’t take long to see life is very different here. It has already been eye-opening for me, despite having experienced many corners of the world already.
A quick introduction, since I am an atypical undergraduate, and probably an unusual global health intern as well. I’m a thirty-two year old philosophy and kinesiology major and a part owner of a small maritime company in the Port of Houston. I used to be a nuclear submariner (mechanical engineer and chemist), and am working towards a career in surgery. How did I find myself in Malawi? Well, since 2014 I have been blessed to work in the Richards-Kortum lab, and I was part of the original team that invented Bilispec. I brought a lot of diverse engineering and design experiences to our research, and now I’m here to help make our device a more sustainable reality for our partners here in Blantyre. So, my three goals:
1. Manufacture our single-use Bilispec cards locally
2. Train our friends at the Polytechnic Institute how to manufacture them
3. Equip and train our friends at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital to validate those strips for use in the hospital
Of course my fellow interns and I are all eager engineers at heart, so we’ll be supporting one another with each other’s projects as well. I am so very grateful to Rice 360 and its sponsors for allowing me to continue contributing to the Bilispec project and also to the other initiatives which my peers have undertaken at both the Polytechnic and the QECH. This is my first time in Malawi—in Africa, even—as well as my first global-health-step outside of the laboratory. It will also be my first introduction to medicine in a low-resource world, and to top it all off, my very first blog post in my life. That’s a lot of firsts! Thank you!
After a warm welcome by my new Rice family, I am all settled here at Kabula Lodge.
The weekend is about to begin, so I will have to wait until Monday to introduce myself at the Polytechnic and Queens, but I am excited to see what everyone has been up to, and to get started on my own projects! For the next few days, however, it seems we are leaving Blantyre for a two-day trip to the Majete Wildlife Preserve. What an introduction to Malawi.