Now that I have been home for a week, I’m not sure how to feel. Everything is familiar yet different at the same time. I somehow managed to go from living with 10 other people to 11 considering I had extended family in town. However, it was quite easy to keep busy with unpacking and spending time with friends and family. Every once in a while when things slowed down, the little things would remind me of my time in Malawi and the people that became another family. Like making tea and piling on the bus to head to the Poly design studio in the morning or joking around while cooking dinner. It feels like only yesterday we were at the studio working on our prototypes.
On our last day in Malawi, saying goodbye was the hardest part. In the midst to completing our presentations and celebrating our hard work, we realized that it was time to say goodbye to everything we had known for the past few months, goodbye to the Poly design studio, goodbye to market in central Blantyre, and goodbye to our friends. Without them, I don’t think I would have enjoyed my time in Malawi. Sometime in the distant future when I will look back on this time, it won’t be the little things I remember, but the friends we made and relationships we built.
Overall, this experience has been one that I will cherish forever. It taught me so much about engineering, people, new cultures, and healthcare in different countries. I hope the knowledge I have gained does not end here and I can continue similar work in the future. I am proud of my teammates and our engineering accomplishments and I wish them all the best in their future endeavors. I know they are going to do great things and impact people’s lives for the better.
I also want to say a special thank you to donors who supported Rice 360 and made this internship possible without your help I would not have another place to call home.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how hard it was to believe that we were halfway through this internship. Now, looking out the window of one of my four flights back home, I can say it is even more difficult to accept that our time in Malawi has come to an end.
This morning felt just like any other morning: I woke up, showered, and watched the sunrise while drinking my morning tea. Soon after we finished dragging our luggage up the stairs, Mr. Richard appeared with the bus to drive us back to the Lilongwe airport. While loading the suitcases, we joked about how it was just like the day we first arrived in Malawi, only now he would put the bus in reverse.
It was then time to say goodbye to Kabula: the kitchen where we cooked all of our meals together, the terrace where we soaked ourselves doing laundry, the place we all began to call home as time went on. Soon after that, it was time to say goodbye to Blantyre, then our friends from Tanzania, and finally Malawi.
One Week Later:
The past week has been full of quality time with friends and family. Due to the time difference between Michigan and Malawi, it was difficult to keep everyone fully updated throughout the course of the internship. As a result, I often share my stories starting from day one, using my journal entries and photos as guides to what I was seeing, thinking, and feeling. In day-to-day conversation, I’ve noticed myself begin to repeat a phrase: “When I was in Malawi…” I’ve said it while driving down the road and cooking dinner, comparing my experiences here to my time abroad. I’ve even said it while going under for oral surgery, sharing that we had gathered feedback in Malawi on a locking mechanism for the IV that was feeding into my arm.
In my downtime, I’ve also been working on finishing a book I started reading at the beginning of the internship. “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” is a collection of personal narratives from the African childhood of Alexandra Fuller, some of which take place in Malawi. Reading through them at a time when I am also reflecting on the past few weeks has given me a lot to think about, and one quote, in particular, has stuck with me…
When describing an English guest to their house in Zambia, Fuller writes about how people like this man never last long, and then they return to their homes and say “when I was in Africa” for the rest of their lives. Coming across this similar phrase, I couldn’t help but compare myself to the foreign man. We too had spent a short period of time in another country, seen both its beauty and its challenges, and then returned to the United States to share our experiences.
Thinking through this comparison, I began to once again flip through pictures of our work, and eventually the differences became clear. I saw our very first hospital visits, our ideas at every stage of the design process, and the final prototypes that came out of it all. Continuing to flip through my camera roll, I soon came across our speeches at the internship’s closing dinner. As I played the videos, I heard Nana talk on living with people of diverse cultures, personalities, and mentalities. Hannah highlighted the similarities between each of our lives, despite living on opposite sides of the world. Foster recounted an interview question that we all received: “Are you able to associate with people of different backgrounds?” Tebogo then gave the answer, saying that the studio would not feel the same once we all returned home.
Finally, I began to play the speech of Dr. Ng’Anjo, one of the professors who welcomed us to the design studio when we first arrived at the Polytechnic. To the room of interns from three different countries, he said, “Keep the course. Whatever you have learned, don’t just say: Oh, it was an experience. We were in Malawi … Blantyre … a lot of dust.” The room laughed. Smiling at his own joke, he continued: “Amidst the dust, amidst the noise, amidst all that you have experienced… say this is the knowledge that we got, and I’m going to run with this knowledge.”
Listening to these words once more, I am reminded that while our time in Malawi has come to an end, the experience is not confined to a single summer. The names of my fellow interns do not simply stay on the pages of my journal, they light up the screen of my phone. Despite the distance, ideas continue to flow. I receive updates from my teammates as they gather feedback from district hospitals on our training model and application. As progress is made on the MUST Design Studio, suggestions are shared from what is done at the OEDK and the Poly.
When I was in Malawi, I found something that I want to continue to be a part of for years to come. As Dr. Ng’Anjo put it: “by working on these types of projects, you serve life itself.” I chose bioengineering because it lies at the intersection of technology and people. I wrote this statement when I applied to Rice. Last year, I used it as motivation whenever I was struggling with a problem set in a physics or math class. This summer, I had my first opportunity to understand what this statement truly meant.
– Alex
Team SimpleBallard after final presentations.
I would also like to thank all of the donors and supporters of this internship program for making this possible. Without you, our newfound community of engineers from Malawi, Tanzania, and the US would not exist.
Our last couple of days in Malawi were a whirlwind and I honestly can’t believe that it is over. Of course, we had a lot to do and not enough time, but part of the experience is making do with the time and resources available. On Monday, we were finally able to set up the first ever design studio at the Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST). For majority of the summer, the design studio has been under construction, but we finally had the opportunity to view the space and at least begin the process of organizing and assembling the equipment. Due to time restraints, we only had the Rice and MUST students set up the new studio while everyone else continued to work on their projects. Our focus for the day was to get as much of the 3D printers built as possible, create an organized inventory check out system, label everything, and make sure all the laptops brought had the proper software. Unfortunately, we couldn’t finish everything we set out to accomplish given that we only had a day, but we made a good start and left and extensive list of tasks to improve the studio in the future. One day I hope I get the chance to see it in use knowing it will encourage students to learn through hands on experience.
Tuesday, the final workday before presentations, was a long day to say the least. The only way to we were going to accomplish everything remaining in the project was to make design decisions together and then divide and conquer. Once deciding on the best way to approach completing the last portion of the project, Maureen and I worked on the final presentation, while Cholo and Tebogo started assembling the acrylic pieces. As we were making the presentation, we had to anticipate that our audience did not have prior knowledge of our project or the need we were trying to solve, yet technical engineering experience
Late night at the studio
as they were mainly professors. With that in mind, our main priority was to demonstrate the need to prevent hypothermia specifically during transportation between the wards, how it significantly impacts a neonate’s health, and how the device functions. After a tedious amount of time, we were able to include the information we wanted and now it was just a matter of making it presentable and easy to understand. By this point, majority of the students had left the studio and the rest of us came to terms that it was going to be a late night, so it was all hands on deck. After putting the last touches on the presentation, I began working on the device with the rest of the team. The device was almost done for the most part, we only had a few brackets to put secure the device which seemed simple enough, but took time working with acrylic and the size of our device. We did one last check to make sure everything was working properly (thankfully it did!) and we Eventually we are able to finish the device and it is a huge relief. Now all that remained was our big final presentation the next day.
Final presentations!
On Wednesday morning, we were all a bundle of nerves for our presentation. For me personally, this was only my second formal engineering presentation, so I was especially nervous to say the least. As the time came near, we each practiced our presentation multiple times to ourselves and each other and made sure everything transitioned smoothly. Luckily our group was going third, so we had the opportunity to observe a few presentations before presenting. Before the first group presented, all the professors and Rice 360 engineers in the audience introduced themselves which only intimidated me more. The first two groups did an amazing job clearly describing the need for their device as well as how it works and handled questions from the audience with ease. Finally, it was our turn and there was no going back. During the presentation, everything went off without a hitch. We remembered to say all the additional information however the questions were more of a challenge. A few of the professors already had experience working with devices in the same field as ours and were more technical with our questions, but having only developed a first iteration, it gave us a lot to consider for future improvements. At the time it felt like we were under a lot of pressure, but we received nothing but positive. Of course, there were questions about why we chose to design something a particular way or if we had considered doing something differently, but that is how progress is made. Obviously, these professors had way more experience and their criticisms could only improve our design and in the end help people. Walking away from that project, we had a long list of future improvements to make and design aspects to reconsider, but it could only get better from there. That last day in Malawi could not have ended better, with everyone together celebrating our accomplishment and looking to the future with hope.
