Keep on keeping on!

The road to Chikwawa district clinics - I call it the Shenandoah of Malawi

Today I saw two exceptionally random bumper stickers; here they are for you:

1.      "Every problem has an expiry date."

2.     "Delay is not denial."

Not really sure how they tie in to anything else here, expect maybe to say that although I’ve been very much 'delayed' in posting on here I’m not in denial of it. Ha, who knows.

 

touring the PPB factory

mix that Chiponde!

I ended up with a foreign travel stomach bug for a good part of last week, but I still managed to pack a lot into the time I had! Last Monday, we all suited up in PPB lab coats for a tour of the Chiponde factory. The factory manager told us about a currently vacant position, and I told them that really, if I didn’t have to go back to school in the fall to graduate, I would have applied in an instant. How fun would it be to work in a peanut butter scented factory?!

Later last week, we went to the Malawi v Namibia World Cup Qualifying match. It was a GREAT game, very well played by the Malawi Flames, even in if ended with a 0-0 draw. We play again on Wednesday, and if we beat Kenya, we’ll be in the running for World Cup 2014. There are way more people selling things at football matches here than anywhere else I’ve ever been….during the game people walked past us selling Coke, lollipops, samoosas, cellphone minutes, hardboiled eggs, mandazis, cold-ish milk (and people actually buy it!), straw hats, maheu, necklaces, apples, hand-knitted visors, pretty much everything I could possibly need at a Malawian football match. It’s great.

The football stadium! 

so much smoke!

On Saturday I escaped our house for a few hours because the neighbors were burning so much trash the smoke alarms in OUR house were going off. There isn’t trash pick-up here, so it’s a necessary evil, but it was just an unfortunate placement of their trash heap. Although it was somewhat comical, it had been going on since Friday, so I was ready for a respit. I ended up at our favorite spot to get tea and internet and met a fantastic group of British med students - it was fun to hear about their work here and discuss the many challenges of improving health systems...as well as talk about England. Because let's be real, I'm about as crazy about England as I am about Africa, and all the Brits I've met in Africa have become fast friends :)

The gorgeous view from our favorite cafe

As far as my research goes, my proposal unfortunately has to wait on ethical approval here for another month. In the meantime, I’ll keep on keeping on - enjoying my daily work in the clinics, helping with other PPB studies, and my many other African adventures! 

...Like seeing a baby monkey run across my street when I was walking home from church yesterday!