It's a Small World Afterall

Am sitting here in room 212 at the Sunbird Lilongwe Hotel in Malawi on a Saturday afternoon. Through my open sliding glass door, I hear rain drops on the sidewalk of the hotel walkways and lush green landscape. Have NPR's “Being” podcast playing on my computer. A sink full of laundry soaking and cup of Ginger Green Tea brewing. Just another lazy Saturday afternoon on a work trip in Africa J Definitely needed after our long week.

I am always surprised at how small the world is. Last night my colleagues and I had dinner with my friend Shane Lammers who lives in Illinois but is here with a group of US Army Personnel (Africa Command). His wife Sheila and I are good friends and Sheila emailed me last week saying the Shane was in Malawi too! Shane and I got in touch over email and our two groups had dinner at the Sanctuary Lodge last night. What a treat! It was a bit of a funny site- 10 members of the US Army – 8 men, 2 women, and the four of us. But what a fun night of conversation. Shane’s group was here working with the Ministry of Defense here in Malawi to assist them in bolstering health services for military personnel- everything from dentistry to cataract surgery. I never in a million years would have expected to see Shane Lammers, a wonderful, kind, polite sweet man, who is not only a police officer in the States, but he has also served our country in tours in Germany and Afghanistan. I know that Sheila and his children Molly and Finn miss him very much. I felt very lucky to spend some time with him and hear about the great work that his team is doing here in Malawi.

As for me, I am here with two other team members (Amanda- a Kenyan who travelled from our Kenya office and Farouk a Ghanaian who travelled from Zambia where he works for our office there) supporting the Ministry of Health in Malawi in their national health commodity quantification for 2011 – 2013. We are staking out at a different hotel to host the “workshop”- which is essentially six small groups (divided by commodity group) working individually on their own commodities. We have Family Planning/Reproductive Health, X-Ray/Dental, HIV/STI/OI, Laboratory, Central Hospitals/TB, and Essential Medicines/Malaria. Each group has a separate set of commodities- some up to 300 each! We are pulling data together from different reports to determine how many commodities were used in 2010 to help estimate what will be used in 2011, 2012, and 2013. We hope to finish the exercise at the end of next week and submit estimates to the Ministry of how much product they will actually need to buy.

While the days are long and of course have their fair share of frustrating moments (and I think my eyes are going cross from staring at Excel® so much!), I just have to step back for a moment and remember what we are doing. We are helping ensure that the people of Malawi receive the medicine and treatment they need- the malaria treatments for children and adults, HIV tests, antibiotics, ARVs, medicine to treat eclampsia and post-partum hemorrhages, contraceptives, and tuberculosis medication to just name a few. It’s humbling that I get to be a part of this exercise- that in some small way- I can help.