Pictures: Around the Hospital

 Cookout @ the Guesthouse, notice NFumu in the background.

 Amblessed in front of the UNC Project building, the Tiziwe Center

 Women hanging out breastfeeding (yeah!)

 Some hospital buildings

 In front of "casualty" aka the ER

 In front of the Ethel Mutharika Maternity Ward

 Open hospital corridor

 Adult Medical and Surgical Wards

 Families Waiting

 Children's Ward B, the Pediatric Oncology/ Burkitt's Lymphoma Ward

 My Malawian drink of choice, Pineapple Fanta

 Adorable Girls, Zione and Patricia on the Burkitt's Lymphoma ward.  Z is the mascot of the whole unit!

Dr. Charles is here with us now.  We just went to the market and collected some supplies for dinner tonight (including plaintains for frying!).  We have had a busy day in the OR, and we are now looking forward to a relaxing evening doing some cooking and research.  Amblessed an I are helping to gather data on the number and type of pediatric surgery cases at the hospital, and I must say that it is amazing how many pediatric surgeries are completed here and what percentage are for congential anomalies.  It seems like a really serious question and I hope that someone decides to research the cause of the high incidence rate of anomalies.

In other news, this past weekend I sent out an email to several surgical supply/manufacturing companies asking for donations of skin graft knife blades- and two companies have written me back.  One has decided to donate 10 boxes of 10 blades each.  Big thanks to Chris Taylor at Swann-Morton Limited in the UK!

Tomorrow we are going to Bwaila Hospital, where there is a public maternity ward and a fistula clinic (fistula is a congenital or obstetric complication where the vaginal are connected, either congenitally or through obstetrical trauma, to either the bladder or rectum or both.  There is a UNC OB/GYN who is a full-time Lilongwe resident who runs the fistula clinic at Bwaila.

I finally feel like I have learned most people's names here and have really settled in.  I even feel pretty normal driving on the left side of the road. I do miss you all though!