Sam was away all week travelling around to the hospitals with MK. While she was away, I stayed in Blantyre and continued to work on the new bCPAPs with Pelham. We took out the tubing of all of them and replaced them with new ones. I continued data collection at QECH as well this week.

In the upcoming weeks we are going to start training! This means that the other hospitals around Malawi are going to send people to be trained on how to use bCPAP. And then after they are trained we are going to be introducing the deivces to the hospitals for the very first time. So in order to prepare for that, we needed to decide how much supplies each hospital should get and pack it all up! These were the supplies that Sam and I brought over to Malawi in a dozen suitcases. Last night we each chose a hospital, blasted some Kesha, and started packing up the supplies. With eight people (the St. Gabe’s interns are also here visiting for the weekend), it took under 2 hours to finish it all.

Around Blantyre

Kentucky Fried Chicken

KFC is a big deal here. They recently opened one up and it is very fancy. We went there for lunch the other day and it was quite exciting. There are really no other American fast food chains here, which is surprising since it seems like McDonald’s has managed to touch every corner of the world. Fun fact: apparently, saying that you work at KFC is a good way to pick up girls here.

Taxis

Although friendly and nice, taxi drivers here are not the most reliable people. It is definitely not uncommon for a taxi driver to run out of fuel in the middle of the highway and ask you to push their car to the nearest gas station. Thankfully, I have not experienced this.

I miss Betty Crocker

We found Betty Crocker here! Except…. it costs almost $10 for a box of cake mix. Nevermind.

The Lion King

We went to a production of the Lion King produced by a couple of British and German volunteers. It was quite good. Disney has epic music.