Hello from Blantyre!

Hi from Malawi! I arrived in Blantyre, in the southern region of Malawi, on Sunday with four out of five checked bags. Unfortunately, the cooler full of dry ice I checked with the chemical reagents I need for our molecular biology studies were detained in Johannesburg and did not arrive until Tuesday. Sadly, they were no longer at their optimal temperature. We are going to assess their performance next week in the lab—fingers-crossed!

I have been settling into life here in Blantyre: running to the hardware store (called “Game Store”) for a mosquito net, visiting Airtel for a local SIM card and personal wifi device (which you carry around in your pocket here if you want to use the internet on your smartphone), and checking out the grocery store, called Chipiku. Not a whole lot of produce but tons of Indian inspired spice-packets, snacks, and sauces, so I will be eating a lot of Indian-flavored food. Luckily, my apartment complex also has a restaurant—the power went out this week in the middle of making dinner, café to the rescue!

My apartment is a ten-minute walk from the hospital and lab where I work. There is a Mosque at the end of my street that issues calls for prayer five times a day at all hours! The first few nights it did not wake me up as I was already awake with jetlag 🙂 I’ve since learned to sleep through it. My roommate, Maria, is an MD/PhD from Norway arriving in two weeks.

After dropping off the supplies I brought for our lab studies, I went for a tour of the lab space where I will be working at Kamuzu University of Health Sciences, the only medical school in Malawi. Godfrey, a Malawian master’s in medical laboratory sciences whom I will be working with on our project, showed me around and helped me get oriented. Like pretty much every Malawian I have met (the slogan of Malawi is ‘the warm heart of Africa’), Godfrey is very kind.

There are several ex-pat communities here: lots of researchers at the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme (MLW) from the UK, a group of medical students from Michigan State University, and several other independent researchers/clinicians from around the world. Overall, Blantyre is a quiet place. A late night is 10 or 11pm, and almost everyone is in bed before midnight. There are few paved roads and lots of verdant foliage. It is currently the rainy season—most afternoons there is a heavy downpour with thunder and lightning, which cools the temperatures nicely. It has been in the high to mid 80s every day and there is sparse air conditioning, so I am perpetually sweating !

Next week, I am starting lessons in Chichewa, a local language, with a tutor, Fanny. I’m curious about the poetic nature of Chichewa that comes through in translations to English. For example, I was discussing whether there would be another cyclone this year with my driver, Collins. He said hopefully there will just be a storm that “will come quickly and then run away” indicating it would be a short storm. I’m excited to learn more about this at my lessons.

Dr. Nicole O’Brien, a neuro-intensivist from Ohio who I work with at the hospital is also my neighbor. I went by her house this week–she returned to Blantyre to find the cat she thought was a boy was actually a girl who now has four kittens just a few weeks old! They are adorable and my mom has already been cautioning me against adoption…Nicole said I’d be welcome to help domesticate them so that might be an after-work project…I’ll keep you posted.