Birthday in the Field

This is my first birthday since winning the Edinburgh Fringe First award that I have been out of the USA. I've travelled nonstop for 4 years now, but somehow I always made it back for my birthday. Not Christmas or Thanksgiving or Flag Day. But my birthday, yes.

I think it has more to do with the coincidental timing of my birthday with the peak of 'fringe season' in Philadelphia: the busiest and most hectic time of preparation for one of the nation's largest new-work nonprofit theater festivals.  I always made a point to be back for Fringe.

But not this year. Instead, I'm in the middle of a six-month mission for MSF. Not a bad place to turn 26.

Life in Africa: Moving a Tent

We have 5 tents. We don't need 5 tents.

So we're getting rid of 3. Which means hauling, pushing, and sweating. Thanks to the help of some drivers ("wait, I can't use my car?") and everyone else in the area, the job was easy.

The Glamorous Life of a Base Log: Keys

The log manager is on vacation, and I forgot to open his office at the end of the day. All of the drivers handed me their vehicle keys. 16 sets of keys do fit on one hand.

Plus all of my normal keys...

And yes, I do know what each of them does.

Well, almost.

Life in Africa: Livestock

Today's experience won.

I was walking (hiking) along the path (trail) to the office this morning, a Saturday (in a skirt), and looked up to find a full grown momma pig rooting in the dirt not two meters away.

"Hi Momma."

She looks up, but her ears fall in front of her eyes, so she peers blindly around, looking for the source of the disturbance. Nothing seems amiss, so she goes back to turning up the dirt in front of her.

She, like most livestock around here, is unrestrained. There's a small herd of goats that hang out in the bend of the road going up to our house. They never wander off.  Every house has a few chickens scratching around.

I have seen cattle being herded, but I haven't seen any marks of identification or ownership on any other species. Animals just hang out, and the community seems to keep it straight.

The Glamorous Life of a Base Log: A Broken Microscope

My idea of putting the microscope at the health center on a UPS worked. The microscope runs off battery and they can use it all day. I made an elaborate system of charging and replacing the batteries, and set it all in place.

Today I learned that the microscope is broken.

Since June.

I had the microscope brought back and started testing. It has been a long time since 6th grade science, but I'm pretty sure this microscope is fine. I head to the pharmacy for a second opinion.

The verdict comes back that one eyepiece won't focus, but the other eyepiece is fine (it's a binocular model). I send it back taped up.

We'll see what other problem comes up. Maybe the next problem will have gone unreported since January....

Life in Africa: A Visit to a Health Center

Today marked my first journey out to the concentration of this project: the health centers. I'm the base log, so I'm in charge of everything at the office and warehouse, not the health centers. But today's trip had two purposes.

I'm the fleet manager, in charge of all the cars and the drivers, so I wanted to do supervision of a driver and to better learn the routes they are driving.

Also, the electricity at the health center has been broken for a few months and the microscope for running some lab tests won't work. I'm going to try to put it on a UPS and run it off battery until we can fix the power.

Life in Africa: Critters

The crickets and other insects are extremely loud from where I'm sitting. I guess that's because there are a few camped out in my office, next to my desk...

But there are creepy crawlies everywhere around here, and the mosquitoes have sent out a few scouts as predecessors to the swarms. Just today we spotted the largest non-tarantula spider I had ever seen. We are hoping to recruit it to help with our rat problem.

We share our offices, our cars and our bathrooms with plenty of critters. We are hoping to cut down on the mice, but the wild cat that tears through every so often should help with that.

The Glamorous Life of a Base Log: Walking to the Hospital

Today I walked over to the district hospital due to a computer problem in the lab. It's a short walk down the tarmac road to get to the hospital. Plenty of people are walking up and down the road, since there are no sidewalks or secondary streets. I'm the only mazungu in sight, though, and almost every local stares at me as I pass. The children usually bolster their courage and shout "HALLO" as I pass, and I wave a greeting.

I stop by a sewing stall in the market outside the hospital to have some cloth napkins made. A helpful neighbor comes over to help translate my request into Chichewa, but we don't really need the help, with gestures and measuring and counting on fingers. I agree on a price and I'll be back tomorrow to pick them up.

Then it's in to the hospital and to the lab, and back.

The Glamorous Life of a Base Log: Fuel Audit

Today I finally concluded my first foray into forensic accounting.  We were tracking our buffer stock of diesel fuel for our 16 cars. Somehow, in the last 6 months, we have significantly eaten into our buffer.

That was my starting point. After that, it was up to me to find my way. I looked at fueling sheets documenting the day's fueling, logs of fillings of individual cars, organized by tank and date (we have two underground fuel storage tanks), computerized records of tank stock, and finally print outs of accounts that paid for fuel.

After the long and winding trail, and with collaboration from the coordination team in the capital, we successfully accounted for our entire buffer stock and located the departure from the projected norm.

Whew. And it was an innocent change in policy for March, concerning cost sharing between two projects, that threw us for a loop. No leaks, increased consumptions or lost records. Cool.

I feel like a detective. Insert dramatic montage of me pouring over records. How boring...

Vacation to Liwonde

Eid is a national holiday in Malawi, so we had Friday off. To make the most of our three-day weekend a group of us headed to Liwonde National Park, a couple hours' drive to the north.

The park is situated on a river originating at the huge Lake Malawi, and is a home to many different species of animals, like elephants, antelope, monkeys, baboons, hippos, crocodiles, and eagles. We spent a relaxed Saturday checking out all of these animals from a safari truck and boat, as well as from the lookout point in our camp.

The highlight of the weekend was a lunchtime visit from a herb of 10 elephants to the outskirts of our camp. They were at the closest edge of a safe distance, but they never came closer.

All in all, it was a nice, relaxing weekend with just enough adventure thrown in.

Back to work.

Life in Africa: Papaya, Bananas, and Bricks

These three things seem to be very prevalent, almost as if they all grow on trees.

When seeing a banana tree next to a papaya tree next to a pile of bricks, I couldn't help but take a picture.

Birthdays in the Field

Life goes on, just like in every other job in the world. For MSF, though, that means birthdays in the heart of Africa, continents away from friends and loved ones. But there is always Facebook, and the team in the field becomes family.

It was someone's birthday today, so we made a cake, found some candles, and had a good time.

Happy Birthday to you.

Six Months in Malawi

I read Six Months in Sudan, a book compiling blog posts from a doctor working for MSF in Sudan, in the summer of 2009. My parents had gotten me the book because I was interested in the elite humanitarian aid organization.

I remember reading stories of armed militias passing through, military checkpoints, victims of car crashes and patients with trivial illnesses as judged by first-world medicine who were nonetheless dying, all typed out with seemingly infinite patience on a satellite phone, without capital letters. I was living in a spare bedroom of friends in Philadelphia, with a mattress on the floor as my only furniture, dreaming of a life even more spare.

And now, four years later and many seas sailed and many miles traveled, many jobs held and many projects completed, I sit in the housing compound of the MSF Malawi mission, typing on my phone for an entry in my blog.

But I have capital letters.

Life in Africa: Scenery

I was not expecting and not prepared for the breathtaking scenery of Malawi.

I wake up in the morning to a landscape straight out of an illustrator's imagination. The sun slowly illuminated the plain below our mountain, highlighting the hills and bumps along the broad river valley. Mist starts to rise off the land, making islands out of the numerous volcanic mounds scattered across the plain. Behind it all, Mulanje towers, a huge massif boasting one of the tallest mountains on the continent.

The benefit of working dawn 'til dusk is the spectacular sunsets and sunrises.

In The Mist

The last few days have been cloudy. A couple days ago it burned off and the sun came out, but yesterday and today have been overcast all day. That means it's been cold and rainy here. That's right, in the middle of Africa, cold and rainy.

And when you live halfway up a mountain sticking up out of a flat expanse, that means mist.

The mist transforms the normal hike to work into an eerie experience.