As promised, I brought a little California flair to Africa, and taugh the kids how to “shaka”. They got a kick out of it, as well as proudly showing me how they remembered the high five and fist bump as well! I also folded a cootie catcher (I can remember after all these years?!) for one of the young girls, and she ran off to show her friends my magic paper. As always, it’s the little things!
The past few weeks have been somewhat eventful. After shopping in Limbe, the next town over from Blantyre, we came back to find the drivers side lock had been forced, and several pieces of fabric, and, worst of all, my beloved hydroflask had been stolen. Up until now I had felt relatively secure, witnessing nothing that would make me feel otherwise. But having things stolen just plan sucks, especially something that I use everyday. So now I am back to the drinking warm water and spilling water down my shirt on bumpy car rides, RIP Hydroflask 😦
Since the presidential election here is coming up, protests were rumored to be happening all over Malawi. On that day, we were on lockdown at the house, as previous protests had gotten violent. Our research coordinator decided it would be safest for us not to go to clinic, so we worked from home that day. Turns out, no one felt like protesting, and Blantyre became a ghost town. Lucky for us, we had plans to celebrate King’s Day, a Dutch holiday (explained by our Dutch volunteer). We had homemade pizza and cake, dressed up in orange/red/white/blue and playing funny games, like obstacle course spoon races and “eat th cake off the string” for example. Nothing makes you feel more like a child then trying to eat cake off a string while blindfolded and the others moving the string to cause the cake to hit you in the forehead 😅. It has been fun to learn about different English and Dutch traditions, on top of Malawian!
We experienced our first (and probably only) Malawian wedding, one of our former research assistants got married this past weekend! Very different then the weddings I am used to, she first had a church ceremony, then a few hours later had a reception at a different church hall. The couple was very serious the entire time, and the experience consisted of a lot of repetitive music and screaming into microphones…but glad to experience it once 😆.
Clinic life has been pretty standard, but I have included some photos of a healthy baby, unhealthy baby, and what I call “mini moms”. Siblings often accompany their moms to clinic, and especially in the case of twins, the little ones often carry the babies on their back, just like mom. It is really cute to see, and we see it often because twins are SO common here! Not sure if there is a higher genetic predisposition, or we just see more twins because they have a higher chance of being malnourished, same in the case of cerebral palsy. The twins in the photo were enrolled shortly after I got to Malawi, and I have watched them improve each clinic visit. Super uplifting and rewarding! Funny addition: many of you know how much I love animals, including farm animals! One particular clinic, Makhwira, has goats EVERYWHERE. Each time I am there I restrain myself from going to pet them, because I was told they have diseases. Well, apparently the diseases they have cannot be transferred to humans (let’s hope), so one of the Health Aides, bless his heart, that helps us run clinic presented me with a baby goat because he knew how much I wanted to love on them. So I had a screaming (like SCREAMING) baby goat given to me to pet, while spreading goat hair all over my clothes. I immediately let him go free, and we all had a good laugh about it. I prefer to pet the babies when they’re calm, but I can check that one off my Malawian bucket list 😆.
Donation update: I will be setting up the GoFundMe by the end of the week so we can start raising money for Patricia. If all goes as planned, she could be attending nursing school as early as June! 🎉 Thanks for all of your support so far!
Project Postgrad 