Ndasangalala! My new favorite chichewa word, which means "I am happy!" I have officially been on the African continent for about a week now, and remembering my promise I will attempt to fill you all in on my adventures thus far.
I began with a flight from Detroit to Amsterdam sitting next to a church group headed to Cape Town for some mission work (and the guy sitting next to me actually was from Michigan and knew where Wayland was!), where I didn't have much of a layover and headed to Cape Town. Before long on my second flight I began to piece together that the guys sitting next to me on my flight actually happened to be the camera men/ divers that produce SHARK WEEK! So excited, they gave me their business card when I mentioned I had visited quite a few places in SA that the were going to shoot and said they would let me know when the footage aired. So my trip was off to an excellent start meeting quite a few interesting people on the commute :)
I stayed in Hout Bay, Cape Town for the next three days with Rob, a very good friend I had met before while living there. He was gracious enough to act as our driver and social events organizer while crashing in his cool mini apartment (used to be a horse stable) off of his parents house. Was able to catch up with coworkers in the city center to check out their new office space, show my cousin Sajel around town, see some friends at the Hout Bay market, but most importantly, get some quality time running in the mountains! On Saturday JT and I woke up before dawn to get a jump on the day with a 3.5 hour run starting from East Fort and heading over the mountain. I felt as if I hadn't ever left, all the life and energy returning. I am fairly certain I had a grin plastered across my face the whole way.
After Cape Town, I headed to Lilongwe, Malawi via Johannesburg. The plan was to catch a bus for the 5 hr ride to Blantyre that day, but customs took ridiculously long and I missed the bus, meaning I had to book a room at a guest house and find transport in the morning. Fortunately I made friends with an Engineers Without Borders volunteer who helped me find a place to stay and a sim card for my phone so that I could get word out to my office here that I would be coming the following day. In an act of serendipity, I met a woman from Massachusetts who had hired a car to take her to Blantyre the next day and offered to give me a ride! So I was able to ride (relatively) hassle free in a stuffed full car across the country (on the way I found out that when our driver stopped to drop off some food for a family friend we were introduced to a woman who was one of the first social activists in Malawi!) and finally arrived in Blantyre Monday night . Terrie Taylor, the lead on the ICEMR project here, invited me and a few others for dinner at her house that night to welcome and introduce me to some other researchers working here. It was an amazing experience to be able to sit down with such a legend in the Malaria field, I feel extremely privileged to have had the chance to interact with her on a personal level.
As of now I have been on the job only two days, but feel optimistic about the work that I will be doing. I feel like it will take a whole post in itself to describe the project and my part in it, so I will save that for later. Until then, know that I am settling in well and can't wait to sit down and write more about the place I will be calling home for the next two months :)
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| Hout Bay at last :) |
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| Saturday morning run in the mountains |
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| Village on the way from Lilongwe to Blantyre |
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| Sunset on Lion's Head overlooking Cape Town city center |
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| Produce in Malawi |
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| Sunset from the guest house in Blantyre |
