T-2 days

By this time Saturday I'll be boarding a plane for the first of my three flights. I've presented my work to the MSH team here in Lilongwe, submitted a first draft of my report to them, and will be giving a presentation to the Reproductive Health Unit of the Ministry of Health sometime today (they haven't given us an exact time yet...), so there isn't much more to be done at this point!

Yesterday the power was out for over half the work day, which made things move a little slowly (oh- there went the power just now again!), but Maureen (the other GNU fellow) was kind enough to take me around the city a bit over a long lunch to eat up some of the down time. The city is so spread out! I bought some crafts and was so glad to have here there with me - in the eyes of the people selling, I have huge dollar signs over my head and they were literally chasing us to the car trying to get us to buy their stuff. I'm a bad bargainer to begin with, so it was extra helpful to have Maureen there to give me a sense of what things should really cost.

Turns out I won’t meet with RHU until tomorrow morning – which means I’m free to spend the rest of the day really wrapping up! Tomorrow is a half day at the office (just the morning) and then I’ll pack up and relax!

The beginning of the end...

So here I am, the last work week of my fellowship is upon me. It seems as though the time has flown by, but then again my first day in country feels like it was such a long time ago.

Yesterday I spent the whole day working on the first draft of my final report. I haven't sat down to write for that many hours since working on my thesis at Carleton! It was a long day... but the first draft is done, so now I have a good starting point for finessing the thing :)

Last night I decided to try to see more of Lilongwe and ate dinner in the "city center" neighborhood. By 7pm everything except the restaurant was closed - Lilongwe is really a sleepy town. All the office buildings are in the city itself and homes are on the outskirts, so going to the restaurant at 7:30pm I felt like I was in a cab at 3am. One of the women in the office offered to take me around town tomorrow during lunch, so hopefully I'll see more life in the city then.

Today I'll debrief the staff here (using the PowerPoint I already gave in Karonga - score for recycling!) and possibly the Ministry of Health's Reproductive Health Unit - that may be tomorrow, though. They don't have a whole lot of time booked for me, so I'm not too stressed about it - should just be introductions, key findings, and Q&A - easy enough, right?

My pictures from Karonga can be seen here (even if you aren't on facebook): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028055&l=63225&id=19100336

And pictures from Mvuu Camp can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2027632&l=5ef1f&id=19100336

Back in Lilongwe

I arrived in Lilongwe Friday evening and have had a restful weekend. Friday was a long day in the car, so I ended up just crashing when I got back to Lilongwe. Yesterday I "slept in" until 6:30am, then had a nice workout and did some work before running some errands and catching up on emails and other personal things.

Today I did a 12 mile run (which wasn't too bad - Lilongwe is cooler than Karonga, but hillier) then spent some time by the pool, which was wonderful. I did some work compiling data and starting on my report and have had a lazy day since, watching movies on TV and reading.

By the end of the day tomorrow I should have a full draft of my report pulled together - another sign that my time here is winding down! In less than a week I'll be back in Boston!

Last field day :(

I have just finished my last field visits. It’s hard to believe that my time in Karonga is virtually up, and that I’m only in Malawi for another 8 days! This afternoon I’m presenting to the District Health Officers here in Karonga, which will be my final outbriefing with them before I head back to Lilongwe tomorrow. After almost two weeks of meeting five new people every day and seeing our work first hand, it’s going to be hard to return to desk work for the next week, not to mention returning to my regular work in Boston. One thing I’ve known about myself for a while, and this trip has only confirmed, is that I like to be on the front lines – it makes me feel like I’m doing the real hands on work, and even though I know things like budgets and logistics are important, it’s harder to get excited about working in Excel for hours than it is to get excited about seeing 50 women show up to a clinic day, ready to start a family planning method. In the end, I know that field work is the direction I want to go in, and the desk work will help me get there someday.

Though I’m sad to leave the work here, I am excited to leave the heat! Lilongwe is hot, but not as hot as Karonga. I feel like I’m in a constant sweaty slime, except for the 10 minutes immediately after a shower. The return of water pressure will be good, too.

So I’ve been delinquent about posting recently – sorry! It’s been a busy few days and the internet connection has been spottier than usual – a blackout yesterday meant that the “fast” internet café wasn’t available, and I don’t want to tie up the internet at the office, which is dial up and shared by three people already – not fair of me to just surf around. Hence, the few days without any news.

The weekend passed well and Monday was a bit of a catch up day. I met with two HSAs, then compiled all the interview responses I had for CBDAs and HSAs and began to pull out some initial key results. I’ll be making a presentation to District Health Officers on Thursday here in Karonga and to the Ministry of Health in Lilongwe next week, so I’m glad I had a chance to start on that before too late in the week.

Yesterday I went to an under 5 clinic day (where all the children under 5 get immunizations, growth tracking, etc) with the project driver. He even got up and talked about the benefits of family planning and demonstrated how to use a female condom (it was pretty funny). Even though he’s not a technical person on staff, he still knows his stuff and wants to spread the knowledge. Pretty cool. Then we met with two CBDAs and two HSAs, and I spent some more time working on compilation in the afternoon.

Today is going to be a busy day, so I don’t know when I’ll post this… I’m going to a clinic day in the morning, then observing Norplant injections, then meeting with HSAs and 4-5 CBDAs, all before 3pm, when we’ll meet people from PSI (one of our partners on this project) to hold a focus group to pre-test a TV miniseries they are working on that deals with family planning and HIV/AIDS. Whew.

This week is a little lighter on running, which is nice. I ran 6 miles on Monday and yesterday was a day off of running in my schedule. During my run on Monday, I passed a man and two women, who all cheered when I passed by, yelling “Excellent, excellent!” It was my greatest running moment here thus far!

The water pressure here is very bad, and especially bad in the mornings and evenings (I usually want to take a shower one of these two times) so it’s been a lot of bucket bathing for me lately. I actually don’t mind it, but I never feel like I’ve gotten all the soap/shampoo/etc off when I’m bucketing. I had forgotten that I tried to turn on the water in the shower last night and forgot to turn it off, because at 3am I woke up to the water running in the shower. It was the best water pressure I’d seen in Karonga! It will be nice to get back to a better shower in Lilongwe on Friday.

Lazy Sunday

Today it is HOT out. I slept in and then went to the lake to sit on the beach, read, and enjoy lunch and a coke. It was really nice while I was in the shade, but the sand in the sun was burning hot! I don't think I got burned, which is good!

This afternoon I'm hiding inside to stay out of the sun. I did some GMAT studying and got a good start on Anna Karenina - I'm enjoying it so far.

I'm also getting over the bit of culture shock I was feeling - any time I hear mzungu I turn and wave hello or goodbye to the kids, and overall the tone of the calls in the street has been a lot more polite than in Latin America. I'll get an occasional rude comment, but for the most part people are respectful. The women here are my favorite - they generally just smile at me and wave. One woman had the most joyful laugh when she say me running - like it was the best thing she had seen in her life. The women who run the guest house I'm staying out have been wonderful, too. They are my trusted advisers on issues like where to get fruit, where to catch the best beach at the lake, and whether or not to accept an invitation to go out (last night, the answer was no - another guest was going to a bar and a club, and I was reluctant, since I didn't know him, his friends, or the places, and my gut reaction was confirmed by Tande, who said that one of the places he wanted to go was pretty rough. I went to bed at 9:30 instead :))

Not so sweet 16

So, I grudgingly did 16 miles this morning... not the best run I've had in my life. It is hot here and I ran out of water 3/4 of the way through my run, so the last bit was painful, but at least it is done.

In other bad news, I have quite the rash on my thighs and a bit of my torso. It's not painful or itchy, which is good, but annoying nonetheless.

On to good news! Obama changed the Bush "gag-rule" on abortion funding: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/23/obama.abortion/index.html.

Things are going well and the weekend has been relaxing thus far. I finished my book (Three Musketeers) and am moving on to Anna Karenina and GMAT studying - woohoo! Karonga is quiet and even though the guest house I'm at has satellite TV, I haven't really been watching, so I've had time to rest and catch up on reading and podcasts. A uranium mine has just opened here and one of the geologists for the mine is living at the guest house I'm staying at - he said the other night "You have to make your own fun here" and he's right, but I've been succeeding thus far.

I'm about half way through my time here, and I still have a lot of work to do, but feel that I have already accomplished quite a bit. This weekend I'm starting to compile information from the interviews I've done this far, and it is inspiring that the people who are working as CBDAs are so proud to be in that role. It is a leadership role in the community, but few cite that. Many have told me that they feel a responsibility to share knowledge about HIV prevention and family planning. They are confident that using FP methods will help people be healthier, better off financially, and, in some ways, happier. This is the mission that drives them, and they are happy to give their time freely to promote healthy behaviors. Only 1-2 have mentioned that it would be nice to be paid, and others have said that they would like to have more volunteers so they could have more impact or more commodities to distribute.