Clinic and cows

Mark, Christina, Julie, and Ellen braiing at Kabula!

After a lovely weekend that ended with a fun braii with the PPB crew (I didn’t remember that it was Memorial Day weekend, but I guess we could say we were celebrating!), I headed to my second clinic today. I went with Ellen, our 2 nurses, and our stellar driver Horris out to Nkhati, one of our smaller clinics, tucked away at the Nkhati Health Post off the main (dirt) road that makes up the hub for market stall and shops in this rural, rice-and-bean-farming part of the country. The nurses thought that some mothers wouldn’t bring their kids today because it’s harvest/planting season and they are all very busy in the fields, but we were able to see all the returning kids and even enroll a number of new kids this morning! One Granny even brought her grandchild to clinic since the child’s mother was harvesting. I was impressed.

After getting the MUAC (middle-upper arm circumference, it’s a measure for child malnutrition) for the kids as they came in, I helped with a few squirmers at the baby scale. One rather chubby kid kept climbing off the scale and crying, but I managed to calm her down :) Thankfully I managed to not be manning the scale when one tiny baby laid down and just peed everywhere.

The last mother at clinic finishes feeding her child Chiponde before heading home

Once all the kids were seen, we packed up and headed back towards Blantyre. Not only did we get to drive through a river (Oregon Trail throwback!), we also got stuck in rural traffic – a herd of cattle that clearly had the right of way. Definitely makes the ride home worth staying awake for!

Gridlock on the way home from work...

This afternoon, after a nap (moquitoes buzzing incessantly inside my mosquito net and trains lurching through the city late last night meant a nap was definitely in order today), a run, and some data entry (my 5-minute attention span could use some serious endurance training for data entry. Each measurement has to be recorded in a database – for every single visit the child made to the clinic – and then double-entered into another database), I had the exciting task of helping pack stool and urine samples from a past study. The glamours of public health work!

Here are a couple pictures from the football match on Saturday!

Malawi v Zimbabwe!

Chrtistina, Julie, Alex, Emron, and Mark at the match!

OH! One other thing. I’d like to teach our gardener/housekeeper here how to compost so that we don’t throw all of our food waste into the burning trash heap….anyone have pointers on how to do it? I remember that citrus shouldn’t go in and eggs shells can…but any other advice/creative ideas for how to get it started would be great!