Day 34
So funny thing. We took out our device, measured ambient temperature, and it was all good. It seemed like correct temperature readings (it’s 19 degrees in Blantyre, and that was what our device was measuring). But then Timothy wanted to see if our device would go off when someone had a fever. Of course, no one around us had a fever (I don’t think…I hope not anyways). So Matthews brought over our soldering iron and held it next to our thermistor. And the temperature DROPPED to 9 degrees Celsius. Ya…I don’t think our soldering iron is that cold considering how many times I’ve burnt myself with it. Apparently, something in our code was making our device read a drop in temperature when there was actually a rise in temperature. Our device reads the correct voltage changes when we tested with the multimeter, but we had a bug in our code that was converting the voltage values to the wrong temperature readings. I’m glad there was some trend in the error because if our device was just outputting the wrong temperature readings, I don’t know how we were going to fix that (and I definitely did NOT want to solder all over again).
Timothy and I did some research and found a revised code and equation we could use. After uploading this code, our device was reading the correct temperature and was reading an increase in temperature when the ambient temperature was also increasing. Yayyyy!
Day 35
I had lunch today with a girl I met at the presentations a while ago. Her name is Yvonne and she’s from Zomba (an hour or so away from Blantyre). She’s a third year studying civil engineering, and the crazy thing is she’s only 18 YEARS OLD. She started school really REALLY early which is crazy! We were talking about a lot of things like the school system in Malawi, jobs, day-to-day life and I’m always so amazed by how different life is here compared to the US.
Day 36
My awesome team fixing our somewhat working project.
Day 37
Gloria who is wonderful invited the interns to her house off campus for dinner. We rode the minibus after work (my first time, it was so cool) to her neighborhood five or so minutes away from the Poly. We got to her house and we met her roommate, some of her housemates, and her other friends. I got to see how nsima is made, and I got to talk to some other students who got to the Poly. It was really awesome to see how the students live their day to day lives. And Gloria made really great food for all of us.
Day 38
Women In STEM, a global organization promoting girls to pursue STEM, invited me and Sajel to visit some secondary schools in Thyolo and talk to the girls about our experiences in STEM. The Thyolo Secondary School was so pretty and I got to each lunch with some of the girls there! They told me about their favorite music and what they do in school, and they taught me a few more phrases in Chichewa. After lunch, myself, Sajel, a few girls from the Poly, Faith (who led our trip to Thyolo), and Dr. Teresa (the former dean of engineering of the Poly) spoke to the girls and we had such an awesome time! The girls were tasked with building a tower with uncooked spaghetti and balancing a marshmallow on top. And I have to say they are very talented. I had to do that challenge last semester and our tower collapsed.
Day 39
We left early this morning to go hiking Mt. Mulanje. And I was TERRIFIED. Why were we hiking so much in two days our legs are going to be LITERAL JELLY. We were supposed to hike all the way up to Sapitwa (the peak of the mountain), but we changed our plans and chose to hike up the second tallest peak, Chambe, instead. We stayed at a cabin a few hours away from the peak and it was super cool (literally, I was freezing despite the bajillion layers I was wearing). We saw the stars really well (for a few minutes before the clouds came in), and we had a fire place so we ate a really good dinner.
Day 40
We woke up early and set off to Chambe Peak. It took a few hours and honestly the SCARIEST thing I’ve ever done. We had to scramble up a really steep slope and if I looked down, I definitely would have fallen off. It was horrifying. But we made it to the top and it was so breath taking. I honestly didn’t realize how high up we were it was crazy. Kristoffer and Franklin wanted to go higher so those two set off to scale another treacherous part of the mountain while Sajel and I watched from a distance, eating our cookies and chips. We hiked back down (which was way easier than going up haha), said goodbye to our guide Davys and his team, climbed into our cab, and passed out from exhaustion. Would I do that again? Probably not. But I don’t regret it. It was a wild experience that’s for sure.
