Thanksgiving in Malawi

Last night we celebrated Thanksgiving. We didn't have the actual day off so we put off the cooking until the weekend. Probably a good thing since about 40 something people showed up. I said I would make mashed sweet potatoes, one of my favorite tgiving dishes. Unfortunately sweet potatoes recently went out of season. I heard that they might be at the central market so we went to check it out. After scouring the market, I took a chance and bought some yams that people said were sweet. They weren't. They were African yams (not the sweet potato kind, just like regular potatoes). I attempted to mash them and though they were good, they looked really weird.

Sonali setting up the buffet

Since I said that Thanksgiving is my all time favorite holiday, I somehow ended up responsible for cooking the turkey (frozen and from North Carolina!). With some instruction and help from friends, the turkey came out pretty good!! That in addition to the mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce ($10/can!?), casseroles, veggies, rolls, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, apple pie, wine, mojitos, and good company made for a fantastic Thanksgiving celebration.

the turkey i made! a little singed on top but was really good

now on to the next thing

Today I officially finished my work on the early infant HIV diagnosis study, otherwise known as the PDHIV study. After 4 months of database tinkering, data entry, data supervision, and data merging/cleaning (aka way too much data), I am excited to take a breather from looking at numbers and Microsoft access. Although I know for sure that data management is not what I am looking to do in my future career, I guess you have to start somewhere and I have definitely learned a lot from the process. For example, a well-structured and functioning database is crucial for easy but accurate entry and therefore solid data sets and good analysis. This somewhat boring data stuff, however, was not all that I was doing (thank god). I also got loads of clinical experience - I can do induced sputums, gastric aspirates, set up and change IVs (not put them in), order labs, take sats among other measurements, and be mistaken for a doctor by people in the hospital including expats (I find this incredibly entertaining). I (re)learned that I liked being in the hospital (I guess taking the MCAT wasn't for nothing), and that working in resource-limited settings and in broken systems can be frustrating for everyone - patients, guardians, nurses, clinicians, Malawian or not - yet incredibly rewarding.

tuckaways

view from the chalet

To celebrate the culmination of the past 4 months of this work, I went to Cape Maclear for the weekend with some friends who work at Baylor (the peds HIV clinic). After spending several hours there a couple weekends ago, I was itching to get back but for longer. Friday night, I hung out at Leah and Jared's house (2 of the friends) eating Indian food, playing Mario Kart, and watching Freaks and Geeks (I fell asleep 1.5 episodes in at about 9 with their cat sleeping on top of me). We woke up bright and early Saturday morning, literally at the crack of dawn, picked up the other friend Ally, and arrived at our lodging mid-morning. We stayed at this place called Tuckaways, a group of 5 reed chalets right on the beach with shared bathrooms/showers. It's beautiful, clean, and totally affordable at a whopping $32/person/night. AND you could pay with a Visa! A weird thing when living in a cash-based economy. The day we got there, Saturday, we just chilled on the beach, went swimming, dove off moored rowboats, and generally enjoyed escaping from Lilongwe, the heat, and the petrol shortage. The resorts at Cape Maclear are situated right in the town/village along the coast so there are plenty of cute (obviously targeted at the tourists) restaurants, bars, and socially places to go with great food and drinks beyond the [insert alcohol+soda] combos, beer and wine. Plus, they had tonic.

yum! fish!

On Sunday we woke up early for breakfast. I had a veggie omelette with CHEESE! cheese is an expensive commodity. We then hired a boat to take us out to Thumbi island. When we arrived, we immediately jumped in and went snorkeling with the cichlids (those colorful, aquarium fish). You could get them to swarm and eat out of your hands by throwing/holding pieces of bread, providing endless entertainment. While we were swimming around, our boat guy, Harry, was making us lunch. He cooked us up some fresh lake fish, rice, and tomato/potato sauce. After eating, we hung out on the rocks for a couple hours and I finally got in some solid reading time. We then headed back to the shore, had some drinks and dinner, and later went night swimming. It was nice to enjoy the water without fear of rip tides, sharks, crabs, or sepsis like I do in the Atlantic and Chesapeake Bay. At 3:45 Monday morning, we woke up, packed up, and headed back to LLW just in time for work. I'm still recovering from that early morning and my sunburn that I got despite multiple applications of sunscreen. Parents, you should be proud - for some reason I really want to go sailing. I haven't found a boat to rent out yet, but it's going to happen at some point.

kids fishing with mosquito nets. guess things i learned in class do happen

Now, I'm back in Lilongwe in between projects and refreshed. I've been working on my PMTCT secondary analysis and figuring out Stata, which I had put off for a solid 2 months. I crunched some numbers and now need to figure out the statistical tests and find some GIS data. As for the next project(s)? I will be a study coordinator for a reproductive health study at Lighthouse (the adult HIV clinic) that is looking at sexual behavior, practices and beliefs of HIV+ men and women and will compare those who are on vs off ART. I'm excited to put my culanth major to work and to have a little more responsibility on a project, though reticent to be waking up a full hour earlier for morning meetings. I'm not sure when this study will be starting, which is why I may also do some more clinical stuff on two pediatric studies (run by my housemates): one looking at TB prevalence among inpatient malnourished kids using a geneXpert (a machine, not a person), and the other looking at cardiac function of HIV+ children with a fancy echo machine and 6-minute walk tests.

For now, I'm just really really excited for my all time favorite holiday - Thanksgiving. Although I'm bummed I won't be home (just 5 more weeks?!), I suppose skype will suffice, and my attempts at cooking and finding necessary items should be pretty funny.

despite its issues, gotta love malawi

The current state of Malawi

Below is an article that briefly describes what is going on in this place right now.  In short: no aid money and poor exports means no dollars which leads to no fuel, failing businesses, increasing prices, power outages, water shut offs, and most importantly, no tonic or minerals. Malawi is on the verge of paralysis (UNC transports fuel supply apparently dried up!). The fuel shortage doesn't just affect those with cars - it affects public transportation and transport of goods (no more tomatoes at the market?), for example. There are a variety of ways to get fuel: 1) Wait for hours at the petrol station (imagine sitting in the heat of the day for 6 hours to be told the fuel dried up). 2) pay someone to take your car or jerrycan and wait in line (however, it takes gas to find gas). 3) Forget the hassle and buy fuel on the black market sold at twice the price and you don't know what's in it.  Gas is already expensive at the pump (290MK/L = $7/gallon) so on the black market it is about $14/gallon!! And yes, the black market is actually a place - its a bunch of guys sketchily standing in the Game parking lot (they pay off the police) and they give a much better rate for the kwacha (220/$ vs 165/$, thats 5,500 more kwacha per $100).

Many of my friends have had their water shut off for 1 or more days at a time and no power. With it being the hot season, that's not good. It's still in the 80s-ish at night - without a fan it's difficult to sleep. I've started sleeping with a wet chitenje (cloth) draped over me to keep cool. I've also gained an appreciation for why people hate to use mosquito nets - its like sleeping in a un-airconditioned attic crawl space with no air circulation - I swear it increases the temperature by about 10 degrees.

The situation is probably not going to improve for another month+ since the president went on vacation to Australia (on Malawi's dime, according to the Nyasa times he requested or got $500,000?!). This isn't very promising for getting countries and banks to give aid money, which comprises about or more than 50% of the annual budget. I wouldn't be surprised if more demonstrations occurred.

Well, thank god my friend found some petrol... off to the lake this weekend it is! Hopefully we find gas to get back... or not, I wouldn't mind being stuck in Mangochi.

World Bank tells Malawi: Address concerns to get aid

The aid freeze started earlier this year with a diplomatic spat with Britain, Malawi’s biggest donor, caused by a leaked diplomatic cable that labelled Mutharika “autocratic and intolerant of criticism”.

Washington joined in after the July violence, suspending a $350m project to upgrade the impoverished, land-locked state’s decrepit electricity grid.

Combined with a collapse in revenues from tobacco, Malawi’s main foreign exchange earner, the aid embargo has triggered an acute dollar shortage, putting pressure on the kwacha currency and hitting imports of basics such as food and fuel.

Petrol stations are frequently dry, and when they do have fuel, motorists are forced to queue for hours to fill up.

The hardship in evidence on the streets is in stark contrast to the official statistics, which suggest which suggest that Malawi has been among the world’s fastest-growing economies in the last six years.

Much of that performance has been based on a fertiliser subsidy scheme for farmers, although the aid freeze has also thrown that programme into doubt.