Liwonde

In the lab I continue to trouble-shoot our molecular assay, working with Godfrey, Jomo, and Thoko. It is steadily improving, but we are going to continue to fine-tune next week. We are also starting our experiments to evaluate malaria rapid diagnostic tests as a source of parasite genetic material.

My roommate, Maria, arrived and is super lovely. We were both busy this week and Maria wasn’t feeling well, but I’m looking forward to getting to know her better over the next few months. On Tuesday it was my friend Shannon’s birthday, which we celebrated with dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, Hong Kong. It felt like the set of a 1970s crime movie with delicious veggie noodles.

Over the weekend it was also my friend Camille’s birthday. Camille is a med student from the Netherlands and is here working on her master’s at the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme. To celebrate, Fran, Sara, Camille, Isobel (PhD from Australia), and I went to Liwonde, a town north of Blantyre that is known for its national park. Fran found a rental through Airbnb right on the Shire River. The hippos were so loud it sounded like they were in the backyard!

On Saturday Camille, Isobel, and I woke up at 5:30am to go for a game drive with a local lodge. Our safari driver, Gift, was very knowledgeable about the animals and luckily for us had super sharp eyes. We were able to watch three elephants hanging out, munching on leaves, and spraying themselves with dirt as a natural insect repellent. Gift brought us very close, which felt a bit risky, but we stayed quiet, and the elephants did not get upset. It was incredible to watch them eat and walk around, they are colossal animals.

Liwonde National Park is gorgeous. Driving through it in the open-air safari vehicle was an amazing experience. We saw lots of other animals—impala, water bucks, jackals, more elephants, tons of birds, hippos, and Kudu, a white striped antelope. Towards the end of the game drive, we happened to cross paths with a ranger who told Gift that she had recently seen a male lion as well as a female cheetah with two cubs, but that the cheetah family had crossed over into an untraversable section of the park. So, we went searching for the lion.

After looking for about fifteen minutes, Gift was able to spot him through the trees, about 100 meters from the vehicle. He turned off the engine and we got out our binoculars. Looking intently for the lion, eventually he got up and moved so Gift adjusted the position of the truck. Looking again there were in fact three adult lions, two females and the male mentioned by the ranger! As we sat and watched them, one of the females watched us intently as well. We soon realized that she had two baby lion cubs with her! Through the binoculars we could see the two babies playing at the feet of their dad while their parents protectively scanned the bush around them for danger. It was incredible.

Later that afternoon, we went for a boat ride on the Shire River with a local company. The vibe was bad from the start, and in the first twenty minutes they had taken us so close to a group of hippos that they ran over them and one of the hippos rocked our boat out of territorial aggression. It was both dangerous and bad for the hippos. We were clear in expressing our concerns, but it remains to be seen if they will change their practices. The desire to get a good photo op that motivates most tourists puts pressure on guides to bring their customers increasingly close to animals, which is not safe for them or for us.

On the way back from Liwonde on Sunday, we hit some potholes in the road pretty hard and the car started to overheat. Pulling into the nearest gas station, it was all hands-on deck to try to trouble-shoot the problem. Fran noticed that the top of the coolant container was missing, so Isobel was able to melt the top of a juice bottle we had in the car using a lighter so it would fit the coolant container. That fix was enough to get us to the Italian restaurant in Zomba for Camille’s birthday lunch and back to Blantyre. After truly delicious pasta we had homemade ice cream—a great end to a weekend full of adventures.