The US team arrive

Third day in Malawi was a busy one. Bec and Peter were hosting a large party this evening for the all the team for the next few weeks, this was to include Dr Ingrid Mcbride and her AuD students at Arizona University, the student audiology technicians at ABC, the one ear mould making technician and the bartlett family. This ment we needed to get ingredients from the local market. It was a little market on the side of the road fresh vegetables and fruit very large and looked delicious.

After coming back from the market I joined Peter and 5 ABC students (part of the south team - whos main focus of study in ABC is mass communication) they were discussing how they could make people in malawi more aware that there was now a clinic in ABC for hearing problems. Helped with the discussion, ideas and then rebbecca got a call to say there was a walk in down at the clinic and if I could go down to see them. Was a perfect sunny day as near always in malawi and a stroll down to the clinic seemed lovely. I brought Chicondi with me one of the students to assist, watch what I did and help translate if there was a problem. It was child to be tested brought by her uncle. We did have a problem with communication due to the niece speaking one dialect and the uncle another, chicondi could not translate for the child but to the uncle. Some interesting things started to become now apparent while working on my own in a developing country, when there is a language barrier - accuracy of results can be difficult-- non organic ? or do they not understand what to do. Objective testing is vital, with tymps and with OAEs which backed up the results.

The stroll back to the house was nice just to see kids happily running around, playing tennis. The ABC did seem a wonderful place. The next task of the day was to pick up all american volunteers that were now to join us from the airport. The first glimpse of the 6 americans were they looked tired, exhausted and each were carrying "action packers" a term new to me. A large heavy case box with equipment and tools.
I was thinking these people are obviously inspired by the same spirit to be here so they must be great people.
The party was a great experience for us to all get to eachother, each international was to pair up with a malawi student and we had to then find something we had in common and then play a game to guess whos common interest matched the pair...was a good get to know you game, welldone peter. Leaving the bartlett family that evening I felt said I had felt so welcome there felt part of the family.

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We carried on to where we were all going to stay for the night - safari lodge.



our doom room that night, was quite a shock after sleeping alone the nights before.

 

Our trip the next day was an 8 hour journey up to the very north of Malawi . Very excited, could hardly sleep for the adventure ahead....