1st week in Ntcheu... together

Today I will add a twist to this latest entry as I have in my company a guest appearance by the name of Janeti! She will hopefully confirm such concepts as the “sound of Ntcheu” and “public transport” for you here but also provide a very fresh insight into life and work in Ntcheu, with her original views.
So here I am, and I has perfectly become we again, which is just great! We are sitting here together eating Lilongwe strawberries from today’s tour around the city’s market, in the best room in the VSO guesthouse. We’re preparing for our epic trip to the North which starts tomorrow, after a lot of organising from the well connected and diligent husband. So to take things backwards first, perhaps you all might like to know the other half of the Doorgakant’s impressions of Malawi...
It’s fairly impossible to know where to start, and even when you do start you can only make crazy generalisations anyway, so I’ll keep to the facts- I arrived in Lilongwe after a long but smooth flight via Addis Ababa, most of which I slept through after hauling an unfeasible amount of luggage down to London and then optimistically turning up with it all at Heathrow, only to be relieved of a significant portion of it at the gate (thanks Saj!), allowing the plane to actually take-off. It seems I’m not yet Mauritian enough to be able to get all I intend on a plane!

The happiest and most brilliant bit yet then came being reunited with the husband in the airport- you can all picture him there I’m sure, standing out in his brown felt hat! You’ll all be pleased to know that he’s the same as ever- full of energy, life and enthusiasm, but with one significant change, which I’ll leave you to ponder...and challenge you to spot on proceeding photos. (something quite bizarre, that I can’t explain- he puts it down to the washout of accumulated e-numbers and oestrogenated tap water from the UK!)

Back then to Ntcheu after reuniting my tastebuds with Nsima. It’s a long town based around a main road. I’ve seen the infamous Uncle B’s, I’ve climbed up the Mt. Ntcheu telephone mast (battling [psychological] heatstroke), heard the dog chorus, admitted that ‘yes’ there is quite a lot of noise pollution in Ntcheu, tasted the homemade marmalade, and loved meeting some of the great people already mentioned in this blog.
Briefly, to stop this being a complete epic (there are other things to do than write blogs on a Saturday night!) I’ve enjoyed seeing a little of how the lab works in the hospital, after very kindly being allowed to spend most of last week shadowing the work there. There is a main multidisciplinary lab for malaria films, FBC, some biochemical tests (depending on reagent availability- also less U&Es) CD4 counts, and then a micro lab which mainly can deal with CSFs and TB smears. One of the main challenges has been dealing with Dr Ashtin’s varied output ranging from specimens in contravention of the lab acceptance policy, to trying to get samosas through the door (also against the rules of the labarotory). In only 4 days it’s really opened my eyes to the realities of work here, and I’ve also been very impressed by the standard of the staff. I’ve also made media, which is something never really done in labs in the UK now, so a good education for me. I could write very much more, and will talk very much more, but for now back to this blog’s real author.

In case you’re already conducting an internet search to find out which newspaper or TV programme my illustrious wife has appeared on, let me clarify that by media she meant this funny plastic dish full of microbes, which gets microbiologists all excited for some reason! Never made my life easier as an orthopod because the next thing is usually a diatribe of Latin and Chinese to tell us that we need to use the antibiotics we were intending to use anyway. In any case, Ntcheu only has 3 or 4 on offer!
Also to get back to the Samosa event, let me just add that after spending your lunch hour doing your second operation of the day (the first one having been a killer in its own rights), namely a hydrocoelectomy turned Orchidectomy because the booking clinician had no clue about testicles, the very thought of even thinking of sharing the only bit of food you could lay your hands on before rushing back to theatre ought to be met with better gratitude... even if the offering was made on the threshold of a microbiology lab! At least it was not inside the lab, next to the dissected testicle!
Anyway, you’ve heard it from a second source now, Ntcheu rocks, but Ntcheu also needs a certain level of decibel tolerance and Ngoni-style energy. This is the local tribe around here, who really deserve a good few paragraphs of their own. Let’s just say for now that late night partying and heavy drinking aren’t exactly alien to them. It’s really been great having the wife around to see what’s going on in the hospital too. It surely wasn’t easy to spring into the same familiarity with it all as I have developed in at least 3 months, in less than a week, but she’s done pretty well indeed. She even knows more than me about what tests can be done here now and is able to give me insider information on how to find out when they’re available!
I won’t dwell too long on this first duo-blog because there’s a big trip ahead of us, which stills needs quite a lot of fine tuning doing on the organisation. One of the good things about being in Malawi though is that last minute planning tends to be the norm. Somehow or the other things just work out... I hear Bob Marley’s lyrics... but is it me musing or is it the Lilongwe Uncle B launched for the night!?