Blantyre & Mulanje

View of Blantyre from the hotel

This weekend I went to Blantyre and Mt. Mulanje with Amy. Amy used to work in Blantyre and is helping out at a pediatric cardiology clinic down there so I decided to tag along. We left on Saturday and after a 4.5 hour drive without getting stopped by police officers (!), we arrived in Blantyre. We stayed at a lodge and were supposed to each have our own room with shared bath, but they lost our reservation so we ended up sharing a much nicer room with a private bath for the same price. 

At Likhubula falls

Mulanje and the tea estates

That night we did a sort of pub crawl. Blantyre is a lot more like a city than Lilongwe and has a bunch of chill bars to hang out at. Amazingly, at one of said bars I met a recent Duke grad!! And I thought I was the only one… The next day Amy, her friend Tinu, and I ventured out to Mt. Mulanje. Mulanje is a mountain about an hour outside the city and either already is or will be an UNESCO World Heritage Site. The drive there cuts through tea plantations and is beautiful. After grabbing a quick pizza, we decided to do the quick 45 minute walk/hike to the Likhubula waterfall. Once we got there, we spent the next 2 hours swimming in the (freezing) pools, jumping off of rocks, and taking in the scenery. Definitely an awesome day and I really want to go back to hike Mulanje plateau and the peaks. Monday and Tuesday I went with Amy to cardiology clinic at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (the main hospital in Blantyre). On Tuesday we saw and echo-d over 20 kids. Amy says I won’t know what a normal heart looks or sounds like by the time I get home since nearly all the kids she sees have some sort of pathology. We then made the drive back to Lilongwe and celebrated our housemate Sylvia’s birthday with home-cooked Indian food! 

Mulanje

Today, Wednesday (9/21), there are supposedly more protests so it looks like I will be spending the day entering data. Almost 100 down!!