it is officially the hot season

Daily temps in the 90s, super strong sun, and 0% chance of rain...

Mangochi & Cape Maclear

Cape Maclear

Mangochi

Another amazing lake weekend! For the past 3 months, I have been working on a study database and entering 300 files of data. I finally finished last week and started supervising the second entry process. I was really ready for a nice break, so after sending another friend off back to the US and a Zanzi night on Friday, I headed to the lake with one of my friends. Her friend has a lake house in Mangochi so we attempted to leave bright and early Saturday (aka 11am) to make it for the weekend. For some odd reason I woke up at 6am, probably due to the bright and very hot early morning sun, so I caught up on some tv shows. We spent the day hanging out at the house and waiting for lunch, which we ended up eating at like 4 (and dinner at about 12am), and swimming in the lake.

Cichlids

On Sunday, we headed off to Cape Maclear, a beach in a national park, about 30-40 minutes away. This place is absolutely amazing and since its protected, totally pristine. There are a bunch of lodges amidst the town/village right along the water's edge, so there seems to be a lot to do and very vibrant. Upon arrival, we organized a boat to go snorkeling and grabbed some drinks while we waited. We then headed out to an island off the coast and snorkeled to check out the cichlids. Cichlids are protected fish in these waters. They are really cool looking - they are tiny striped fish (sort of like aquarium fish-sized) but come in a variety of bright colors ranging from black, brown to blue, purple, and yellow. After snorkeling, we saw some big fish-eagles feed, then headed back to shore to chill on the beach for a bit. Finally, we went back to Mangochi for a dinner of chambo, a white fish (tilapia) found in the Lake, guacamole, casserole, and brownies.

sunset on saturday

Today (Monday), we ate breakfast and enjoyed the beach for a couple more hours before heading back to LLW. Overall a fantastic weekend, cant wait to get back. Perhaps I will even be tan come December...

malaria no more?

UNC Project was one of the sites for this trial (MAVAC)!

Experimental malaria vaccine protects many children, study shows

fuel crisis?

Line for the Petroda, it goes around the block

For the past 2 weeks or so there has been little to no fuel - diesel or petrol - in the entire city maybe even the whole country. In July, this was supposedly due to the lack of foreign currency so the government couldn't purchase fuel. This time, Malawi was hosting some international conference. The government decided that it would be embarrassing for there to be queues for fuel, so they didn't let any fuel trucks deliver to the stations in Lilongwe. This meant that much of the city had to shut down - people couldn't get to work since the minibuses weren't able to function, transport prices skyrocketed, there was no tonic left in the city. Today, once the foreign Heads of States left, the trucks delivered fuel to the stations. Every gas station had a ridiculous line of cars going down the street and crowds of people with jerricans hoping for fuel. Complete mayhem. It is also very frustrating to not be able to leave the city and have a break when you can't be sure you can get back or even get out of town.

The Crossroads station is ambushed by thirsty vehicles

Senga Bay

I just got back from an amazing weekend to Senga Bay on the beautiful Lake Malawi with 2 friends - Laura and Alex. It was a 3 day weekend for Mother's Day. We were planning on going Saturday but the fuel situation is bad again and we didn't want to stay for the music festival that was happening there (a mini Lake of Stars). This was a little stressful so instead we chilled by a pool and went out to dinner. The next morning we woke up early, caught a ride to Steps (the campsite) from a friend, set up our tent, then headed next door to the Sunbird hotel for lunch and a relaxing beach day. That night we met up with 2 other friends and chilled on the beach listening to music. This morning we woke up bright and early yet again (mostly because the sun came up at like 5 and people started blaring music at 5:30, not appreciated). We caught a bus to Salima then a minibus back to Lilongwe. I have heard horror stories about minibus rides outside of the city so I was very apprehensive about it, but it was fine. I guess we had a good driver. On the way back, we took off on a side dirt road, turns out the driver was buying black market fuel. We finally got back to Lilongwe, went to the market, then home. All in all a great weekend!! To think Senga is the "convenient" lake spot and not close to the best...

A view of Lizard Island at Senga Bay

Lake of Stars

Last weekend my friends and I went to the event of the year - Lake of Stars. LOS is an international music festival started by some guy in the UK to raise awareness of Malawian culture and improve tourism. The festival originally rotated locations around Lake Malawi, but now occurs annually in Mangochi (Nkopola to be exact) on the beach. There were 3 stages, all along the water's edge. It was a beautiful location, though incredibly hot during the day. Thankfully the group I went with chose to stay at a hotel rather than camp (I appreciate air conditioning...). There were bands from all over - South Africa, Malawi, and the UK. Some of note were Freshlyground and Malawi's own Lucius Banda. I would recommend checking out Freshlyground - great band from SA, featured in that Waka Waka song from the World Cup. My housemate Sonali's band, Thatch Roof Carousel, played as well. They were great! LOS definitely lived up to the hype and was loads of fun, I think I saw almost everyone I know there. Here are some pics!

Thatch Roof Carousel

Lucius!

A view of the lake and festival site

Challenges for admitted patients

In my time here, we have had a fair number of enrolled babies die. Or at least it seems like a lot to me, granted this is a skewed population - sick and admitted to the hospital as well as HIV exposed (if the mothers are sick, the babies will probably be sick too). Here are some challenges I have noticed thus far for admitted pediatric patients, their families, and the clinicians trying to practice medicine and get them well:

1)    There are constant drug and supply shortages at the hospital, including basic medicines, so patients can’t receive necessary treatment

2)    A lot of times kids won’t be given proper dosages of medicines or prescribed medicines at all. There could be a lot of reasons for this: nurses are overworked, there are a lot of patients and many to a single bed making it difficult to see all patients or have a highly functional system, caregivers and the patients are outside and not in the ward at time of drug dispensing, lack of health literacy among parents so they don’t understand what, when or how much of the meds their children should receive, etc

3)    The hospital is dirty so kids will oftentimes come down with hospital-borne illnesses that could drastically delay their recovery or kill them

4)    The guardian must stay (basically live) with the admitted child in the ward, which is not the most pleasant place. This means that someone must bring them food, guardians (the vast majority are women) must leave their other children and responsibilities at home. It’s a huge hardship on the family so many patients abscond.

5)    Misdiagnosis