Hello again from the Axa bus!

Last time around, I mentioned adjusting to a new culture and finding a little bit home away from home. I mentioned that this internship extends past the design kitchen. It’s not just about engineering and design. It’s about appreciating a different way of life and thinking. In order to give you a full picture of what I mean, it’ll help for me to show you my team and our home for the next two months.

My team consists of four of us from Rice (Christine, Leah, Theresa, and myself) and four from Malawi’s Polytechnic (Brighton, Harvey, Kate, and Vincent). This year, along with working together, we’ll also be living together.

Our first night together, Brighton and the rest taught us a Malawian card game (called “knock”? – I’m still trying to figure out the exact name). It’s similar to Uno, and winning depends a fair amount of luck and skill. (Theresa somehow ended up winning most rounds. Maybe she had a few extra cards up her sleeve?)

Along with cards, it looks like Brighton plays a mean game of chess, and he agreed to bring his chess board next time he visits home. I don’t know if I have a chance against him, but I’m gonna give it a shot anyway.

Harvey and I went running, and my cramps, sore muscles, and searing lungs reminded me why putting off running for more than a few days was a bad idea. I’ll need to start running every day if I’m going get back into any kind of shape.

Vincent and I are rooming together, and I’ve found a kindred spirit in him. It does me good to know that there’s someone else out there as bad at cooking as yours truly, but that’s alright. We’ll learn together (I have feeling Vincent’s more of a chef than he lets on).

Speaking of cooking, we’ve traded off cooking for the last few nights. We’ll probably end up cooking together one of these nights, but we’re eager to try each other’s respective local dishes. We made pasta a few nights back, and last night, Vincent and the rest shared a savory beef dish with us. We’re going to try cooking nsima, a local staple food.

That’s our life at home. We’re all learning, adjusting to one another, and beginning to understand each other.

I’m sitting here in an Axa Bus (think Mega Bus but with a radio announcer religiously calling out soccer plays in Chichewa). We’re leaving Blantyre behind for a few days so that we can head to Lilongwe, and these next few hours are a good opportunity for me to fill you in on these last few weeks.

When I think about internships, I usually think about them as opportunities to grow and to learn from new experiences. Each day usually brings a new lesson. That’s how it was in the operating room last summer and at the lab bench the summer before. The exciting part about this internship, part of the reason why I applied, was that the chance to grow doesn’t stop when we leave the design kitchen and the Polytechnic. Each time we explore the city, we meet new people, learn to understand and appreciate a new culture, and pick up a few fragments of Chichewa. A few phrases I’ve learned:

Mwadzuka Bwanji – Good morning

Pang’ono pang’ono – Little by little

Ndili Njala – I’m hungry (my personal favorite)

Learning Chichewa’s only the tip of iceberg. With the lifestyle, the speaking styles, the approach to solving problems – there’s a lot of opportunity to reexamine my own way of thinking, comparing it to what I see around me. What do I do well? What can I do better? As I continue to adjust to life in Malawi, each new perspective, each shift from my personal normal, is a chance for introspection.

Even with all of the new ideas and different ways of thinking, sometimes, it’s the familiar that’s most surprising. A quieter style of speaking demands constant attention – a definite distinction from my own often fast, loud, and decidedly American style of speaking. And yet, this quiet style of speaking is not quite a new to me. In its own way, it reminds me of the operating room, where hushed voices combined with face masks and the din of machinery made just hearing the surgeon challenging. It’s an old experience in a new setting.

I’ve found another unexpected, wonderful piece of home here, a hemisphere away.

“Salaam”

Just being able to say that one word puts me at ease. Even as I pick up a little bit of Chichewa (pang’ono pang’ono), I’ve gotten to speak more Urdu here than I have in a long time. Whether it’s been in grocery stores, electrical shops, or at restaurants, it seems like each stop has offered me the chance to speak as if I were at home. The words roll off my tongue. The conversations shift from my asking where the bread is to our talking about good places to eat to talking about the internship.

The old and the new, the familiar and unfamiliar, are mixed together here in Blantyre. There exists an intersection between what is Malawian, Pakistani, and American. Whether it’s been finding a Malawian who speaks better Urdu than I do or a Pakistani raised to speak Chichewa, I’ve found a little bit of home in a place far, far away. Malawi has a vibrant, beautiful mixture of cultures, and I’m excited to see what these next two months will bring!

Tiwonana (See you later)

We’re approaching Johannesburg as I write (05/27/16). Being in a space that’s become so familiar – an airplane – offers a stark contrast to the fact that everything outside couldn’t be further from familiar. I’m on a different continent, but for now I’m just in another airplane flying at 39,000 ft. In another day, I’ll be in Blantyre, Malawi. On the one hand, I’m excited to begin working. I’m excited to become part of a new culture, to explore new places, and to make new friends. I’m looking forward to all the hands-on, practical experience we’ll be gaining over the next two months. Peppered in here and there are bits of nervousness about not knowing what to expect when we arrive in Blantyre. What does the Poly look like? Who are the interns we’ll be working with? How’ll we settle into the daily life in Blantyre?

Our internship actually started 3 weeks ago with the following goals:

• Construct six medical device prototypes
• Order any additional parts we’d need to work with at the Poly
• Design survey questions meant for both the Poly and QECH
• Familiarize ourselves with the line voltage monitoring system
• Familiarize ourselves with oxygen concentrators and common mechanisms of failure

When we weren’t soldering or working on the device prototypes, I found myself on the phone talking with US Plastics, Parker Fluidics, DeVilbiss, or another company trying to figure out exactly which parts we wanted to order. (I don’t think any of us realized just how extensive the possibilities are for anyone interested in ordering tubing.)

In those 3 weeks, we made a real home for ourselves in the OEDK. There was no better way to prepare for the trip than to spend our time engrossed in the projects we were taking with us, building some of them from the ground-up and taking apart other ones to better understand them.

As we descend from 39,000 ft., I can’t help but wonder what adventures we’ll have and what lessons we’ll learn over these next two months.

“I wish you could see the hospital.”

– Dr. Sam Meja, Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, 3 months ago

Our internship started 3 weeks ago formally. For me, it’s been on my mind since my conversation with Dr. Meja and Dr. Kommwa 4 months ago. This last semester, my team and I were making a pneumatic compression device meant to be used by patients after surgeries, and during the design process, we talked with two doctors in Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) to get a better idea of who we were designing our device for. Sitting half a world away, we were trying to figure out what the hospital was like:

• How much space did they have?
• What kind of technology were the nurses most familiar with?
• How long did power outages last for?
• What chemicals were used to clean devices moved from patient to patient?

Our questions went on, but midway through our conversation, Dr. Meja pointed out that it’d be so much better if we could actually be at the hospital, speaking with nurses, patients, and physicians, seeing patient rooms, and getting a real idea of who we were working for.

Four months ago, I knew where I wanted to be this summer. Three months ago, I applied to this internship, hopeful. Today, I sit a two minute walk away from Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, and I’m looking forward to talking to Dr. Meja and Dr. Kommwa in person!

We’re sitting on the runway at London’s Heathrow airport as we wait for Airbus engineers to sign off on some paperwork before take off. It’s kind of ironic – engineers (Airbus) holding up engineers (our team going to Malawi). Either way, sitting here on the tarmac gives me the perfect chance to kick off my blog posts. As an overview, I’ll be posting about twice a week for the next 8 weeks. I’m going to do my best to include pictures, videos (if I can make my GoPro work [Future interns take note: Photography skills can be an asset]), and any notable quotes I hear along the way.

We’ll be living at the Polytechnic University (Poly) in Blantyre, Malawi, alongside our counterparts from the Poly itself. The main hospital we’ll be working at, Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH), is just one of a few different sites we’ll be visiting within our first week of arriving in Malawi.

Our internship actually started three weeks ago. We’ve been running around assembling six different medical device prototypes, learning about how to use line voltage monitors, learning oxygen concentrator troubleshooting techniques all in preparation for the next two-months.

Aside from adjusting to a new culture, we’ll be spending our first week repairing oxygen concentrators, learning Chichewa, and really getting a handle on the ropes of our internship. The next seven weeks, we’ll be working on the medical device prototypes, improving them through collaboration with the Poly and through surveys conducted at QECH.  Altogether, we have about six medical device prototypes that we want to get feedback on. We have another three devices that we’ll be demonstrating at QECH, and each of us will be looking to find a need that hasn’t been met at the Poly or at QECH and work towards designing/implementing a solution for that need.

I’d like to thank Rice 360, the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, and my sponsors – Judy and Mike Koehl, for giving me the opportunity to learn more about engineering, global health, and the role that I can play in a global setting.