Change of scenery...

Hello all! I'm writing you now from that paragon of metropolitan living...Malawi's biggest city, Blantyre. Ok, so Blantyre probably isn't the mecca of anything, except maybe Chibuku shake-shake. I'm here for a week to work on my project with Dr. Bill Miller. He's an epi professor (and also an infectious disease doc) from UNC who comes to Malawi for a couple weeks every summer to teach a class of Malawian MPH students.

I was able to catch a ride here from Lilongwe with a new friend, Bryce, who works for Feed The Children. Good - I didn't have to ride a scary bus and instead rode shotgun in his swanky Land Rover. Not so good - he had to make a 9am meeting in Blantyre...4-5 hours away from Lilongwe...so we left around 4am. Unfortunately the sky was a bit overcast, but it was still a BEAUTIFUL drive through the Rift Valley, and we watched the most gorgeous sunrise that I've ever seen. I finally got a couple of decent shots with my little camera...but they're such a joke compared to what we actually saw, I'm ashamed to even post them, it would be an insult to the sun.

We also drove through several little villages - shacks built up right alongside the road, mostly. It was interesting to see these places and the people in them slowly waking up, lighting fires, women carrying huge galvanized tin buckets of water on their heads. We saw children walking along in uniform, to schools which we remembered seeing MILES back. Peddlers strapping massive bags of charcoal or rice to rickety bicycles and pedaling or pushing them alongside the road. Vendors sitting in the dirt alongside the road, arranging precarious piles of tangerines or tomatoes in pyramids. Lots of walkers and bicyclists carrying all manner of things and people - I wouldn't have thought it possible to fill a bicycle with live chickens, until I saw it...

In general, very few Malawians actually drive or have cars to drive, especially in rural villages. So there are pretty much people all over the road...and even if you come along behind them in a vehicle very slowly and blow your horn, they're most likely to turn around and look at you like you're crazy, obviously the road is for walking, you impolite azungu, you.

Here in Blantyre I'm staying at the College of Medicine guest house (UNC project guesthouse roomies - it doesn't even COMPARE.) Its comfortable enough, and my bathroom is en-suite, although the water in the shower is barely a trickle. Theres nobody here besides me, Bill, and a student in Bill's class from Tanzania - who just informed us that he has malaria and is going home. Long story short - lonely week of databasing. There's no internet at the guesthouse so pretty much the highlight of my day is getting here to the College (about a 15 minute walk) to check email and feel connected.

Oh, on Wednesday I had written a long long post with pictures about the day Emily and I spent in Bwaila Hospital (another hospital in Lilongwe). The internet then went out and I lost it. So I'll rewrite the short version here.

Bryce (from Feed the Children) let us know he was bringing in 84 kids from all over Malawi - kids with orthopedic and cleft palate disabilities - for surgical consults. So we high-tailed it over to the hospital where the British orthopedic surgeon (probably the only one in Malawi) got those kids in and out like an assembly line. We saw some amazing cases - kids with club feet, congenital hip dysplasia, fused limbs after crush or burn injuries, a kid who had complete breaks of both femurs after a fall, a baby girl with TAR (thrombocytopenia-absent-radius syndrome...crazy). It was a bit overwhelming, not only these kids but the many others with neurological impairments, fulminantly infected wounds. The kids who the doc deemed to be surgical get brought to Blantyre, operated on, cared for, and 3 wks of rehabilitation, free of charge.

I'll try to attach photos soon! I'm feeling very far away, right now, but trying to keep busy.

Yendani bwino,
mj