Well, its Sunday evening, and I can't believe it...but tomorrow I'll start my 30-hour journey home to NC. I've got Rusted Root's "Send me on my way" on the iTunes, I'm packing and cleaning, and thinking.
I hope I've been pretty honest on this blog, about both the fun and the tough times here, about the incredible beauty of this country and its people, and painful ugliness of the conditions some of them are forced to live in. In any case, I'm definitely feeling nostalgic, and a little apprehensive about going back to the high-speed United States and MS2 year. Emily was on-point when she said starting classes is going to feel like jumping on a treadmill...one thats already set to 8.0 mph.
But I feel so grateful to be bringing back many new perspectives, great memories, and hopefully a few new skills. I remember back in the winter, working on grant applications with Irving Hoffman - my boss in the ID department back home, and writing a phrase like "to gain experience of how a large Infectious Disease clinical research facility operates in a resource-poor setting." I guess I didn't think much of it when I wrote that - I didn't see why research in Malawi would necessarily be conducted differently than in a resource-rich setting. Maybe not as many hand sanitizers on the wall or computerized medical records software, right?
What I didn't fully realize is that "resources" are way more than computer technology and medical supplies. Resources are employees, and the training that enables them to stay current in the field. Space is a resource, office space, clinic space, parking space. Vehicles are a resource. Phone cards are a resource. Electrical power and clean water, obviously, are resources that we take for granted at home. Government support is a resource. I think about how much less research and clinical care would get done at UNC-CH if any one of these things were lacking, and then I think twice before expressing my frustration about the realities of research at the UNC Project Malawi. The clinical staff and research staff are all doing a phenomenal job and I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to contribute in a small way and learn in a BIG way.
Speaking of my itty-bitty contribution, a few things have been accomplished that I'm excited about/proud of:
- The Community Department is now using exclusively the form I designed to collect patient information when they go on tracing visits. The new form will tell the Project much more about patient demographics, and about why patients are missing study visits.
- The Data Department is transitioning to the new tracing database, which will simplify the work of the CD, reduce data entry error, and facilitate quick and useful analysis of trends in patient retention. (I owe Bill Miller about a million cappuccinos for his help in designing this!)
I'd like to think I'll be coming back to Malawi - its a great place to be for both infectious disease medicine and research, of course, but also a genuinely friendly, beautiful, and relatively safe country. Not speaking Chichewa is the biggest road-block for me, and post-colonial tensions notwithstanding, I don't think I'd be comfortable long-term without more of the language just because its what my co-workers use to converse. What I notice is not so much a lack of literal understanding, but the dearth of that emotional understanding that comes when people speak the same language.
A long rambly post with no pictures...but maybe this entry is more for me than you :)
My flight tomorrow leaves Lilongwe (God willing) at 2:45 pm, and my looooong flight leaves Jo'burg, SA at 7:10 pm. After 18 hours I hope to arrive at JFK Int'l at 7 am EST, where I shall make a beeline for a venti Starbucks iced coffee and a vapid magazine. Old habits die hard. Plus I've got 5 hours to kill before my flight to RDU.
(You may or may not appreciate the Megan-ness of the moment last Friday, when I suddenly realized I had scheduled this last leg of the flight for June 29, and not July 29. Obviously I missed that flight, a month ago. Whereupon I called my parents in a panic, forgetting that a) it was 4am their time, and b) getting a flight from JFK-->RDU was not going to be very hard. Thanks mom and dad :)
I can't wait to see everyone back home, thanks for all the emails and comments, and again, thanks for reading.
Basi. Ndapita.
("Thats it. I'm outta here!")
No comments:
Post a Comment