The power is out again. This seems to always happen at dinner time. If there is one thing I have learned in Malawi it is to expect the unexpected and to not be afraid wen your plans change. I was hoping to come home, make banana bread, do insanity, and then cook dinner. But instead I am writing in the dark with a flashlight (interns next year bring lots of candles). I really do hope by the end of this program to be able to adapt to different circumstances. I have definitely learned to not plan things too far in advanced or get too attached to plans already made.

Sitting in this power outage, I cannot help but think about the safety measures that must go into preventing outages in hospitals. On Tuesday while Brighton and I were at Malamulo, we experienced a power outage. Typically a huge generator turns on within six seconds. Unfortunately, the generator has been malfunctioning so someone has to activate it. The power was out for about twenty minutes before the generator finally came on. That does not seem like a lot of time (especially since power outages can last anywhere from 1-4 hours) but it could be the difference between life and death for someone that is hooked up to an oxygen concentrator or if the power goes out in the middle of a birth. It’s the little things like that that make me want to do more and get me thinking about different design projects. It is one thing for me to have read about the frequent power outages here in Malawi, but it is another thing to actually experience them and see firsthand how hospitals deal with them.

Being here it is really the little things that are important. Like tonight, even with the power out we still were able to do everything (make banana bread, do insanity, cook dinner). The power did not affect us, it just pushed our schedule back a little.