Moni nonse! (hello everyone! in Chichewa). In case you did not know, Chichewa is the most commonly spoken of the many languages in Malawi.

I’m back! From Lilongwe 🙂 We returned last Wednesday and after a pretty long trip, we resumed a more regular internship schedule at MUBAS on Thursday. That day we had the first of our two workshops for the week: a review of the Engineering Design Process. We went over the key steps of what an engineer should do when it comes to taking on a new project and we ended the day with low-fidelity prototyping. For this workshop, we were given the assignment as a mock project of designing a low cost, easy-to-use and portable handwashing station to be used in Malawi with a particular focus on preventing recontamination of the hands. Sanjay worked with Tatyana, and I worked with Ranken. I don’t believe I have introduced them yet! Sanjay is my fellow Rice360 intern from Rice, and Ranken and Tatyana are the interns from MUBAS. Below are some pictures of us with our cool prototypes!

On Friday, we then had a workshop on Intellectual Property. There are no prototypes for this one, but it did open some interesting discussions! We also got introduced to our site projects: Tatyana and Sanjay will be working on a low-cost forearm range of motion (ROM) measurement device, and Ranken and I will be working on a low-cost deep venous thrombosis (DVT) compression therapy device.

After a busy week, we also got the chance to meet on Sunday and start to check out what Blantyre has for us. We visited the Blantyre Market (although we will need to pay at least one more visit as it was Sunday and most places were closed). We did get to see, for example, some handmade baskets, as well as some woodwork and paintings closeby. Below is a picture of a painting I got! We also went to the Museum of Malawi, visited the MUBAS Chichiri campus, and more!

Before I go, I want to tell you one more thing! Yesterday (besides working on the projects) we visited the Rice360 office here in Blantyre for the first time! We had the chance of hearing about some of the challenges faced as well as some possible future work that could improve newborn and maternal care. It was a great opportunity, and we were also able to get a glimpse of the neonatal care facility.

I am very excited to see where this internship will take me next!

¡Hasta pronto!