3 am is a great time for reflection. A week ago, I was able to ponder the plot to season 2 of Stranger Things. This morning I looked back on all the memories we made with the interns at the Poly. It’s such a bittersweet feeling. On one hand, I’m so happy to have met all of them. Their genuine nature and good humor brightens the environment in the studio. On the other hand, I’m regretful that our time together with them was so short. When we had dinner with the interns, Dr. Gamula (Dean of Engineering at the Poly), and some of the Poly lecturers, I looked around the table at each of them and knew they were people I wanted to see for more than just two months.

Alas, each journey has an ending point. Today we’re flying out of Chileka International Airport and heading to sunny Houston. I’m really going to miss seeing all the hand painted shop names and the minibuses crowding together. Really, I’m going to miss the friends we made. There’s my team, Nafe and Isaac, who have such hardworking attitudes when it comes to every aspect of projects. They’re unafraid to try new things and have sometimes truly ingenious ideas. Isaac had ingenious ways of designing the device and would always think of new improvements. Nafe’s zeolite experimentation actually gave us the push we needed in writing our regeneration procedures.

The other interns also have a special place in my heart. There’s Alfred, who has a way of making any story a captivating adventure, and Gloria, who has the most contagious laugh I have ever heard. There’s Taonga, who’s one of those people that says hilarious things without ever meaning to, and Demobrey, who has as much music smarts as he does academic. Finally there’s Matthews, who takes care of everyone like an older brother, and Timothy, who is definitely going to be a CEO one day. As much as we were all working together, I think I learned more from the interns than I ever expected.

I’d like to think goodbyes are only temporary. The world is only as big as we try to make it. With Whatsapp and the internet, I’m sure this isn’t the last that we will hear from the Poly interns and it definitely won’t be the last time I visit Malawi. My two months in the warm heart of Africa have been truly eye-opening. I’m so thankful to have had the opportunity to do this internship and that’s largely due to the support of the Rice 360 donors who made this trip possible. I’m glad to have support from these donors as well as the Rice 360 staff who have prepped us so well.

Thank you for following my journey these few weeks. Zikomo kwambili, tionana! (Thank you, see you later!)

Time has a weird way of passing once you build up a routine. At first each day seems like an ordeal, a deep underwater dive into a new world where a day is only marked by new discoveries, not hours. Then when you break the surface and look back, what seemed like a week has somehow turned into two months. That’s only a fraction of the wonder I’m feeling at how we have adjusted to life here. While I had some expectations coming into the summer, I think it’s a given that life will throw whatever it wants at you and you just pick up the lessons along the way. So in the spirit of learning, I wanted to share some of the things I did not expect to do/learn during this summer.

• Coaxing a 3D printer: The first time I 3D printed something was during the internship training at Rice’s OEDK. Even though it was tricky trying to squeeze in your project among the others, the printing process was smooth sailing. At the design studio, they have a Prusa machine that gets quite finicky in the cold. The plastic sometimes drags and I have to watch the machine like a hawk (positive reinforcement also helps). But at the end of the day, I’ve learned so much more about the process of 3D printing and using CAD software like Solidworks.
• Making an oven: Alright, maybe it can’t be strictly classified as an “oven” but our device is resembling more and more like one everyday. In our original quest to regenerate zeolite, we found that the industry standard is to pass hot gas/air over the molecular sieves. Past teams have also used an oven to dry out the zeolite externally. While we want to push hot air through the sieve bed canisters, in the process of doing so we’ve researched a lot into household heating appliances, namely the oven. While it’s not quite at the final stage, the purpose of the box is to insulate the heat produced by the light bulbs inside, thereby warming the air above it.
• Teamwork makes the dream work: The hidden clause in being an engineering major is that you get used to working in a team for everything. Problems are no longer straightforward. Every new mind that looks at the problem is a new approach that could lead to a better solution. Communication styles differ here in Malawi compared to the States. People tend to be more indirect and lean on the more polite side. It definitely took some getting used to and our project was confused in its direction in the beginning. I feel like this has been a good practice at being a better listener and observer.

 

After many weeks of research and needs finding, we’ve finally started getting into the design process of sieve bed regeneration. Thinking about problem statements, design criteria, and Pugh matrices makes me reminiscent of Freshman engineering design class. Work at the Poly is flexible, much more than I’ve ever experienced in high school or college. It’s an interesting change of pace from the strict and timely schedule that’s the norm in most workplaces in the state.

Previous sieve bed regeneration teams have mainly focused on the research behind how zeolite and/or molecular sieves. From the start of hearing about this project, my team knew we wanted to design a device using the research from the previous team. From the brainstorming phase, we thought of several parts that could deliver heat to the zeolite. Our project centers around two elements: a heating element and an element that can push air. One thing I have definitely mastered is the art of sketching cubes, over and over and over again in an attempt to arrange tubes and light bulbs in a way that would deliver the most amount to heated air as possible to the sieve beds.

 

 

 

 

 

This Friday was also Republic Day! We took advantage of the long three-day weekend by taking a trip to Lake Malawi. We spent some time at the beaches at Cape Maclear and ate some local fish called chambo.

There were several gray areas when our team started looking into sieve bed regeneration. One was the fact that none of us had ever focused on just the sieve bed in an oxygen concentrator before. We knew nothing of how the zeolite was packed inside, how many compartments existed inside, etc. On Monday and Tuesday we tried to solve that problem by revisiting Thyolo District Hospital and Zomba Central Hospital. We were based mainly in PAM, asking the engineers and technicians there about equipment details and examining some of the machinery for ourselves. It was actually really exciting to crack open one of the sieve beds and take apart all the components inside. We could finally start analyzing the zeolite and start experimenting with different regeneration methods. After the hospital visits, Isaac, Nafe, and sat down to brainstorm some ideas. Though the details of the design aren’t solidified yet, we’ve all agreed that an external device using hot air to dry out the moisture from the zeolite would be the best option.

On the hospital visits we went to the neonatal and pediatric wards to ask more oxygen concentrator specific questions. While speaking with the nurses at Zomba, we discovered more improvisations on oxygen distribution. The nursery has two working oxygen concentrators that over seven infants needed to use. Their solution is to increase the flowmeter from the standard 0.5-1 L (for one infant) to 4-5 L and using a splitter that could divide the main flow of oxygen from the concentrator into several streams. The issue is they couldn’t guarantee the flow rate/pressure going through each split. Since they’re using such a high pressure for their oxygen flow, the concentrators may someday accidentally cause harm to the infants by delivering too much oxygen. A good future project would be to design calibrated splitter that could control the flow rate of the split.

On another note, we invited all the interns over to have a barbecue on Saturday. Even though we only met a short while ago, it seems like we’ve all known each other for longer. It’s been so great getting to work with a group like this. It’s so different to the teams that I’ve worked in at Rice and the experience is looking to be an exciting journey.

It’s been such an exciting week! Besides visiting Majete Wilderness Reserve and seeing some elephants up close, we finally met the six other interns from the Polytechnic who we will be working with over the next month. Most of them are electrical engineering majors with a few mechanical and telecommunications majors in the mix. They’re such a friendly bunch of people and they have some really interesting projects. One was converting wind energy from moving automobiles into electrical energy. There was even one project with a mechanical self-flushing toilet.

Much of this week was spent as an introduction course to the skills we will be needing in the next few weeks. We spent quite a bit time going through the function of the oxygen concentrator and suction machine. Both devices are quite complicated with many parts but breaking down the functions into the individual parts helped me understand what we were working with. We also reviewed Arduinos and basic programming skills.

We were also introduced to the different projects that we will be working on. I’ve been assigned to work on sieve bed regeneration for oxygen concentrators. The two sieve beds in oxygen concentrators work to trap the nitrogen from the pressurized air that passes through, leaving behind around 90% oxygen that goes to the patient. However, due to moisture that may enter the oxygen concentrator, the sieve beds become damaged and need to be completely taken out and replaced. Spare parts take a long time to wait for which makes regeneration of the zeolite in the sieve beds necessary. There are a few possible designs that may work, both mechanical and electrical. I’m excited to try and figure them out with the two other interns on the team, Nafe and Isaac.

“Eventful” doesn’t even begin to describe this week. On Sunday night we had dinner with Dean DesRoches, some of the Rice 360 team, and the Malawian interns who will be coming to Houston in September. It was such a great opportunity to meet some of the engineering students from the Polytechnic and compare their projects and interests with ours. What seemed even more amazing was hearing about the various projects that have been going through the design studio. Everything from an infant monitoring device to an autonomous drone was presented on Monday. The students’ ingenuity and work ethic were so admirable, and I felt that I learned an incredible amount from hearing about their design process.

Our focus this week revolved around needs finding at the big district hospitals. Our stops included Zomba Central Hospital, Mulanje District Hospital, and Thyolo District Hospital. Within each hospital, we went to the maternity ward, nursery, and labor ward to speak with the nurses and discuss some of the current issues they face daily. The wards were a completely new experience to me, something that I could not have truly imagined. The concept of “limited resources” has never been as clearly encapsulated as seeing three infants huddled together under one radiant warmer, trying to escape the all too real threat of hypothermia. Often the hospitals had one or two heaters for the entire room but no way of monitoring or controlling the temperature consistently. Even getting constant electricity is a struggle. The hospitals have to depend on solar power and backup generators, and when those sources of power fail many processes come to an unwilling halt.

I honestly don’t even know where to begin with describing the technology. Much of the equipment around the hospitals was donated, which in theory seems beneficial. However, the models of the donated machines are completely different. When a machine breaks, the Physical Assets Management (PAM) has to face sometimes more than ten different models of the same equipment and figure how to fix them. The wait for spare parts is even worse because they often come from overseas and may take several days to arrive.

One example we saw of this was in the oxygen concentrators. Each hospital had at least five different models, with each requiring differently shaped filters. Expecting technicians to understand all these machines from user manuals and be able to fix them is an impossibility, but one that many hospitals must have to keep operations running.

The nurses at the hospitals are some of the most dedicated people I have ever met, considering their work load and environment. Regardless of day or night shifts, the staff is stretched thinly over several patients and even several wards. While the tangible difficulties facing district hospitals is overwhelming, there seems to be underlying about personnel. The incentive to study and work as a nurse in Malawi seems low. That’s why I’m even more glad to see the level of care the nurses have when taking care of the infants and mothers.

 

 

At a dinner recently, Dr. Leautaud posed a question to us: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” In theory this should be simple to answer. From the time we’re in kindergarten, we think about the time when we will be adults. I used to be stuck at this question, knowing my interests but unsure of why I was interested. After this week, however, when I think about what I want to do “when I grow up” I think less in terms of jobs or roles. Instead, I think of the nurses and doctors at the hospitals, of the student innovators and the lecturers who support them, of the researchers studying disease prevention. It’s their dedication to their work that I want to remember and embody.

Mental preparation pales in the face of actual experience, a lesson that I have become very familiar with in my first week in Malawi. It’s a beautiful mountainous country and the people here are some of the friendliest people I have ever met. There have already been challenges from getting settled in but I, along with the other interns, are already adjusting to the tempo of the country. We couldn’t have done it ourselves, of course. Enock and Francisco, doctors at Queen Elizabeth, have done so much to help us settle in and get around the city. I’m forever thankful for the kindness and selfless nature of the people here.

During the first few days, we toured our bases of operation: the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the Polytechnic Institute. At the hospital we met the Rice 360 Malawi staff and headed off to the neonatal ward. Most of the babies in the ward suffer from some sort of condition, usually being premature. Prince, a nurse working at the QE and our knowledgeable guide, gave us incredible insight into the technologies and systems of the hospital. The nursery’s system has been improving and seems to be effective, reducing the number of infant and mother deaths to less than three in that past six months. There is equipment in place that works well within their system of operations: hot cots to keep the infants warm and heaters to keep the room at ambient temperatures. But Prince also mentioned several areas that could benefit from improvement. Complicated technology (like incubators) that are given to the hospital have a hard time replacing the simplistic design of devices like hot cots (wooden boxes with switches to control the heat) because it seems too time intensive to learn the technology and incorporate it into their operations. Temperature control in the ward is difficult when there is no way of keeping the temperature constant. Staff is spread thin, taking care of over 60 babies and their mothers. I think we need to develop a deeper understanding of the hospital administration and how they truly operate. It’s only then that the ideas and prototypes we develop can become useful for the nurses and doctors.

We also went to the design studio inside the Polytechnic Institute. It truly feels like an OEDK transported to Malawi. We got to meet Francis and Andrew, the two who keep the design studio running, and took a look at our devices to make sure they survived the transport here. Thankfully our models made it through the plane ride in tact and ready to go. On Monday we will be presenting our projects to Dean DesRoches, the Rice University Dean of Engineering.

Thankfully we’ve also done fun activities and seen some of the sights in Malawi. We visited Satemwa Tea and Coffee Estate to taste different types of teas. We’ve also found amazing food for a very affordable price ($2 for lunch!) and tried nsima, a staple dish here in Malawi made from maize flour.

22 hours on a plane can take you far. While normally the idea of sitting in one position for hours on end doesn’t seem appealing, I couldn’t be more thrilled. In less than two day, six of us will be leaving sunny Houston, making a quick stop in Frankfurt, then landing in the warm heart of Africa. The fact that I’ll be in Malawi in just a few days surprisingly still hasn’t hit. This summer will definitely test me as a student and traveler, but after downloading the complete Harry Potter book collection, I would say I’m feeling much more optimistic about the plane trip.

While we will be taking in a lot of the wonderful culture that Malawi has to offer, our main task as interns encompasses research and design of different health technologies. From Rice University we are bringing prototypes solutions for medical concerns from hospitals in Malawi. These prototypes include a cervical cancer education model, BiliSpec testing strips to detect jaundice in newborns, ostomy bags, maternal temperature monitors, and syringe pump modifications. I’m excited to see how these devices will be perceived and if they can actually be viable solutions. We will also be doing needs finding research at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital and hopefully working on exciting new projects with students from the Malawi Polytechnic. I’m excited to get to know the staff at the hospital as well as the other engineers at the university.

I’m really looking forward to the next few weeks and the new experiences this summer will bring!