Research, Africa Edition

This week, we started doing our research on solar drying. My Honors thesis has two parts to it: a technical part and a more sociological part. Right now, we’re working on the technical part. 

Here’s the long and short of the technical part: one of the food science professors has developed a solar dryer for use in communities in developing countries. We’re evaluating why this solar dryer is even important. Why it would be worth it for developing communities to make the investment in a solar dryer, when air-drying might seem to work perfectly well. We’re drying various Vitamin A-rich vegetables (Malawians are often deficient in Vitamin A) and are measuring drying rates, water activity, moisture loss, and the like. We’ll also be doing some sensory research here on final product. We’re taking samples back with us to BYU to do some nutrient and color analysis, as well as hopefully getting some moisture sorption isotherms. We’re doing several different brine pretreatments and are comparing samples from the different pretreatments as well as making a comparison between the solar-dried product versus the air-dried product.

This week, we did a practice run with sweet potatoes.

It was a blatant reminder that this is a third-world country.

We take so many things for granted in the labs at BYU. Little things. Things like rubber gloves, a scale that goes to the hundredth of a gram. Clean surfaces. Sharp knives, scientific equipment. Space.

I think it all came to a head as Renee, Whitney, and I sat in an empty bedroom in a hostel at 8:00 at night, trying to take water activity of all the samples.

The knives and peeler we had bought in Lilongwe had been complete and utter crap. So we had spent the day cutting and peeling sweet potatoes with a three-inch pocket knife on a square foot space that we’d cleared on a table in the cooking area (hopefully it was clean?). No mandoline or slicer, so we did our best with the pocket knife and ruler we jacked from an office to make even 5mm slices. To put it generously, we were mildly successful. We tried to boil water on an electric hot plate that refused to get hot enough. We ran out of sugar, and there was no store to get more. The solar dryer’s chimney fell off, the door wouldn’t close all the way, and some of the zip ties broke on the drying racks. We tried to fix it, but we didn’t have tools. Our scale only goes to the nearest gram, and somehow, we were supposed to calculate total moisture loss from that. We had to move our solar operation due to our original location getting overtaken by goats trying to graze on our front lawn (it’s more of a sand space with the occasional weed, dumb goats). Dogs ate some of our air-drying samples anyways.

The day had been a comical disaster.

So it was 8:00, we needed to take water activity, and the kitchen we had used earlier was locked.

We hijacked an empty room that we’d placed the air-drying samples in for the night.

We had nothing to cut the samples on. Nothing to clean the area with. So we cut sweet potato slices with the pocket knife on a dirty bed frame, while insects buzzed above us, constantly hitting the fluorescent lightbulb before they would divebomb us.

Renee started laughing and looked at me, “Emily, what are we doing?”

And I said, “I don’t know,” because here we were, trying to do scientific research, and this was perhaps the least science-y I had ever felt. Nothing would be accurate, and nothing would be precise. How was this supposed to be scientific when we had nothing remotely scientific to work with?

We’ve refined our protocol now. It’s much better, and our data should be much more accurate next week. It is such a good thing we did a practice run. I don’t know why I thought it would go smoothly, when research rarely turns out the first time, even in a well-equipped lab.

I hope I don’t seem like I’m complaining. Quite frankly, doing research in Africa is frustrating at times. It’s comical, funny. It’s also great and rewarding.

I am rather enjoying the ingenuity and creativity that comes out of working on a project like this. I like the challenge. I like the subject matter. I couldn’t have asked to be here with a better group of fellow food science interns. They are truly great, and ever so knowledgeable and helpful. Everybody has such different strengths. In terms of this project, I am extremely eager to work with them to explore ways to get around the obstacles here in order to get good data.

This research. It excites me. It really does.

Here are a couple photos of the area around where I live at SAFI. 

This is just a little bit down on the road I live on in Mtalimanja.

Malawi is such a beautiful place. 

Music Firsts

The first real CD I ever owned was a Hillary Duff CD. 

My first concert was an outdoors Boys Like Girls concert.

Hillary Duff and Boys Like Girls are not who I really want to talk about.

Firsts don’t really matter, unless you were actually in love.

So the first CD I ever fell in love with was Jack Johnson’s “Sleep Through the Static.”

A close friend in high school gave me a copy.

That was probably the CD that made my CD player give up the ghost. It was too much.

I didn’t even know music could be that good. I listened it when I was doing homework, when I was eating, when I was folding laundry, when I was cleaning, when I was doing nothing at all.

It’s still one of my favorite albums. People tell me his earlier stuff was better. I don’t care.

I have his earlier stuff, and I like it.

But nothing comes close to “Sleep Through the Static.” It was my first.

I didn’t start getting into live music until a couple of years ago. The Boys Like Girls was kind of a one-time deal during my high school years. But there was this one time I went to the Minneapolis Basilica Block Party last summer. I watched The Head and the Heart. This concert. I’ve liked live music for as long as I’ve been into it, but man. This concert. I fell in LOVE. I’m telling you, love.

Oh, people make fun of indie folk-y music and bands like The Head and the Heart, but I don’t care. I will forever love them.

They get a “Get out of jail free” card. You don’t desert people who’ve sung straight to your soul just because the going gets tough. I will forever stand next to them unless they somehow happened to 100% lose their musical integrity—like turn their back on the Holy Ghost of music kind of lose their integrity. They would have to descend into the depths of Nickelback and Ke$ha and stay there. And that’s when I would have to sadly walk away, heartbroken.

But until they do that, I’ll be there for them.

To be fair, I’m more a sentimental appreciator of music. Not a music critic.

But then, music’s meant to touch your soul, not your mind.

Yes.

So anyways, that’s why I’m sitting in a little hostel in Lilongwe, listening to “Sleep Through the Static” and The Head and the Heart tonight. They were my firsts, and I’m still digging them.

Realization

I was walking to dinner when I walked into a group of children. Some speak a little English, most of them only speak Chichewa. We make it work.

A boy touched my arm. “What is your name?”

“My name is Emily,” I said. “What is your name?”

“My name is Johann.”

“How old are you, Johann?” Johann has this mischievous smile, and I liked him immediately.

“I’m fifteen.”

I thought he was joking. He looked like he was ten, maybe eleven. “Are you sure?” I teased. And so when he asked me how old I was, I replied with an outrageous number. He laughed.

I asked, “Wait, how old are you again?”

“I’m fifteen.”

And that’s when I glanced over at another intern and realized he wasn’t joking. He was fifteen, and he looked young because his growth had been stunted. 

He was clever, funny. Too cool to sing the ABC song with the other 6-10 year-olds. Cocky enough to think his reflexes were faster than mine. Charming enough to pull off a perpetual slightly crooked half-smile that suggested that he found us amusing. Typical 15-year-old.  So small.

Johann doesn't need my pity. He's enough without it. 

But when I thought about him later, I still felt a little sad. 

Independent Woman

When I was seven or eight, my parents were building their dream home. One day, my mom told me she was going to work on the house and that she would be taking my brother, Jon, with her. I was to stay in our small apartment and watch baby Jeremiah.

She left. I locked the door.

I sat down and began to read to myself. The baby slept and slept.

I am all by myself, I thought. I must be responsible.

That was how I eventually decided to make a meal.

I stood up on my tiptoes to reach the can of chicken noodle soup. I heated it up in a small pot on the stove. I carefully followed the instructions on the back of the jiffy muffin box. My soup was cold by the time my muffins were done, but I ate them together, alone, while the baby slept.

It’s the first meal I can remember making on my own. I remember it distinctly.

I thought, I’m an independent woman.

And I tried on my mom’s shoes, but they still didn’t fit.

1.5 weeks.

Africa. That word. It's surrounded by so much feeling and emotion and I want to write about it, because there's so much to say that's so close to my heart. So I'm working on that. In the meantime, here's an update on what I've been up to the past week and a half!

For family that might not know, I'm the student facilitator of the Malawi International Development Internship, so that's why I'm in Malawi this summer. Basically, I'm the in-country director of the program. I oversee the research that happens with the interns, manage the budget, and plan all the excursions. Basically, I just make sure that the program runs smoothly and doesn't fall apart. 

The group I'm with is wonderful. I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity I have to live in Malawi for three months--and get paid for it! It's great, and I love being here. That being said, it can be stressful at times. I tend to be a rather happy-go-lucky traveller at times, which doesn't always work as well when you're supposed to know what you're doing at all (or even most) times. 

Like today. Our driver dropped us off at Korea Garden Lodge, which is where we were spending the night. I knew where the general direction of the town center lay, but I had no idea of the exact roads to take to get there. So I asked the guard which road would point me in the right direction and started walking. I wasn't really worried about whether I'd get there or not because I knew I'd find it eventually, even if I had to backtrack a couple times. Then I realized that I was with a group of people who might not be quite as happy to find our way to Lilongwe's town center via trial and error. So I stopped and got some better directions from some people alongside the road and we arrived in Lilongwe with no backtracking necessary (even though we still got there the long, err, scenic route).

Another example: I've never been super concerned with reservations. I figure I can sleep anywhere, and before, I only had my own bank account to contend with. Anyways, we got here to KGL this afternoon, and I realized that I had messed up big time. I had sent a couple emails to the hotel owner, informing him of our summer plans and that we would like to stay here over the weekends from __period of time to ___period of time. I never made "official" reservations over the website though, so what we'd planned never got marked down. Anyways, KGL didn't have enough of the rooms we wanted for us. That was stressful because instead of just me trying to figure it out on my own time (which would not have been that stressful), I was thinking about the six tired, hot people waiting outside for me to fix this. We came up with something, although it was way more expensive than I had originally been planning. Dang it. I'm going to have to do some finagling with the budget after this. Anyways, lesson learned. Today is the last time I plan on winging it to actually work with this many people. Can't afford to do that wishy washy nonsense no more. 

Anyways, during the week we live in Mtalimanja on the SAFI campus. We love it there. Mtalimanja is in a stunning location. The first couple days I was there felt almost unreal. We live in dorm style accommodations We all have our own rooms with our own beds. The bed is the only piece of furniture in the cement room, but I suppose that's all you really need. I stole a desk and chair from another room (shh jk)--I don't use it much though. There's toilets and showers in the back. They work 50% of the time--whenever the water happens to be working. We take cold showers. It's shocking for about the first two minutes, and then it's fine. Almost refreshing, in fact. On the weekends, we're staying in Lilongwe, Malawi's capitol. 

Anyways, as interns, we're primarily working with these two organizations: SAFI, which stands for School of Agriculture for Family Independence, and BFI, which stands for Brighter Future Initiative. SAFI is such a wonderful organization. It's basically a campus. Farmers live there for a year and are taught new farming techniques, nutrition, food preservation and preparation, livestock, rotational gardening, and so many other things. Although SAFI is great, it's also extremely expensive to run and as it only teaches up to 30-35 families a year (I believe?), its expanse appears to be rather small in the grand scheme of things. That's where BFI comes in. Using SAFI resources and partnering with the Malawian government and Bunda College, BFI is trying to spread the knowledge that SAFI is giving farmers on a much larger scale using a pre-determined network of farmers. This year is its pilot year and even in the short time we've been here, we've seen so much progress. It's exciting stuff. The food science interns are working primarily with SAFI (and helping out with some BFI projects). The sociology/anthropology interns are working primarily with BFI.

The work we're doing is extremely fulfilling. I'm not sure how much you all know about Malawi, but a large portion of the population survives via subsistence farming. They often go hungry those last final months before harvest. That's why these programs are so important. Once farmers learn these simple techniques and life lessons, they have more crops. They and their children are healthier. They survive. They can start to sell extra produce. They have a plan. They become self-reliant. 

Yesterday, we went to a lead farmer training for BFI in Kasungu. It was all in Chichewa, but it was so neat to see the excitement that was there both in the teachers and the farmers that were learning. On the way back, one of the SAFI farmers jumped in the back of the truck with us. We asked him how he liked SAFI, and he said "Oh, I love it." He was so excited about how much he had just harvested and how it was so much more than what he had harvested in previous years. Knowledge is empowering, and it's so easy to see that here. 

I will also be involved with a lot of food science/nutrition research here at Mtalimanja. I am working on my Honors thesis here, which has to do with solar drying and food preservation. I'm stoked about it, and will be writing more about it in the future. The food science interns will be helping so much with my project and I'm so grateful for their help. I feel extremely lucky with how things are shaping up in regards to my project.

I'm also helping the other food science interns to help teach the nutrition class here with the help of the nutritionist. We'll be teaching about sixty people--husband and wife couples. We taught a class last week on food safety and it was awesome. We have to have a translator, but the farmers listen so closely. It's touching to see how closely knit the families are and how eager they are to learn in order to better their situation. 

We're working closely with the nutritionist at SAFI and will be helping to take anthropometric measurements and 24-hr. food recalls of the parents and children. There are a number of other things we'd like to learn from her as well. 

In terms of BFI projects, we will most likely be helping to administer baseline surveys, as well as helping to further develop their curriculum.

If we have any free time, the food science interns and I have so many other plans. We'd like to do some product development and sensory evaluation, especially utilizing the solar dryer/solar dried products. We'll be doing some sociological work as well with solar drying and will be helping to distribute a survey measuring a wide arrange of things to do with people's perceptions towards food preservation and solar drying here. We will also most likely spend a week or so in the Vitameal plant, learning how to produce and process it. We'll also follow the Vitameal post-production into the distribution process. I'm so excited to see how everything works and to learn as much as I possibly can. 

In a nutshell, I am doing well. I'm sorry this post is rather rambling and disconnected--I'm trying to beat the battery life on my laptop. I guess to sum it all up, Africa's still in that "Oh my goodness, I still can't believe I'm really here" stage. That'll change in the future, I'm sure of it.

P.S. Just a quick afterthought. Probably the coolest thing I've done so far was to have lunch with the former first lady of Malawi, Callista, and her close friends. Super interesting conversation. 

San Diego

Friends make all the difference sometimes when you're traveling.

A really good friend of mine, Dan, was kind enough to let me crash at his place in San Diego for a week before I flew out to Malawi. It was wonderful. I got to go to the beach, see some of the sights, visit the zoo, bike to a waterfall, and eat some of the best food of my life. Being at his place also made it easier to get a lot of my work done (I had to send so many emails, get ready for Africa, and start writing a research paper). I even had enough time to watch some (or lots) of Grey's Anatomy (#guiltypleasure).

I've been copping out on my last few posts by posting lots of pictures and very little quality text.

But pictures are quicker, and I've been in Malawi for the past two weeks. I'm dying to start posting about my life here. So pictures it is.

Warning: San Diego is a beautiful place. The Asian half of me also loves taking pictures of my food (and I ate lots of food). So there are lots of pictures.

San Diego Beach.

San Diego Beach. 

Best sandwich of my life at Board and Brew. 

Beautiful drive. 

La Jolla.

Seal.

SO MANY SEALS.

La Jolla.

La Jolla.

La Jolla.

Wonderful dinner at a restaurant in  Little Italy.
This picture doesn't even include my main course: chicken parmesan with lasagna.

Hands down the best cake I've ever had.

BOBA. SO GOOD.

Korean BBQ.

San Diego Zoo.

San Diego Zoo.

 It was such a wonderful time!

Las Vegas

Laura Diebel (my roommate) and I had one goal for last year.

Roadtrip.

We thought about San Francisco. We pondered the Grand Canyon. We debated Seattle. We almost went with keeping it simple--Zions or Arches.

We ended up going to Las Vegas, city of sin, for President's Day weekend. No sin occurred.

We went with three boys who we knew well (but not super well). T'was a fateful trip. They would end up becoming some of our closest friends that semester. So close, in fact, that Laura is marrying one of said boys in August. As I said before, t'was fateful.

The trip was great--we got a suite in a hotel, played poker till four in the morning twice. I won once. We pulled all nighters. Ate pazookie and Mexican food. Explored the strip. Went hot tubbing and swimming. Ate at Hard Rock Cafe. Danced in the car 80% of time spent in the car. Had great conversations. Adventured it up at Valley of Fire State Park. Had a picnic under the stars.

Below continue an entourage of photos of said road trip. Quite honestly, it was delightful.

The Strip.

The Strip.

Hard Rock Cafe--The Strip

The Strip.

I love this girl. 

For the more spontaneous.

Bellagio Fountains.

Back at the hotel. Pazookie.

Right outside Hoover Dam.

Hoover Dam.

Hoover Dam.

Valley of Fire State Park.

Valley of Fire State Park.

Valley of Fire State Park.

After-dark picnic at Valley of Fire State Park.

Finishing up Chicago

People either hate Chicago or love Chicago. The people who hate Chicago either 1) hate big cities in general, or 2) have never actually been to Chicago. Or maybe Chicago is like Paris. Where the people who hate it don't really have a reason, other than it's in France. Or they hate it because they're choosing to ignore the fabulous croissants, the to-die-for nutella banana crepes, the fabulousness of the museums, and/or the wonderful organ at Notre Dame to focus on mundane things such as the lack of drinking fountains, the subway system, or snobby people. 

I digress. What I mean to say: I'm a lover of Chicago. It seems rather facetious of me to say that, especially as I spent a grand total of three days there. Nonetheless, it's been five months now since I've been to Chicago, and I can't wait till I get to go again. 

Chicago makes the great ol' Midwest seem about 85% more exciting than it would be otherwise. I tell people I'm from West Michigan, and they usually say "What's Michigan?" (very rare--usually from foreign exchange students) or "Show me on your hand," (haha if I had a dollar for every time I've heard that) or "You know, I don't really know that much about Michigan" (most common response).

But when I reply, "Oh, I live about three hours of Chicago," people's eyes light up. Everybody's heard of Chicago, even if they haven't heard of Michigan. There's a reason everybody's heard of Chicago. Good or bad, take it or leave it.

Here are a couple* photos of the adventures that took place the third day there. That last day, before I had to take the train to the O'Hare airport, board my flight, and go to Provo, UT and start school.

*By "couple," I mean "fourteen." Just felt like I should be upfront and all. If photos aren't your thing, feel free to ignore and move on. 

The Beginning.
(of the Magnificent Mile).

The Magnificent Mile

The Magnificent Mile
aka the best shopping in the world.

The Magnificent Mile.

Stopped by the Ghiradelli's on the Mile to get some of the best Salted Caramel hot chocolate of my life.

Chinatown!

I went to Chinatown, where I walked around, ate some chow mein, and took a sad, sad picture of myself in the restaurant. When I eat alone in a restaurant, I am apparently reduced to taking pictures of myself with my phone.

The chow mein was good. Now I kind of wish I had been a bit more adventurous and ordered something that I'd never tried before.

Also, I was the only non-Asian person in the restaurant. And by non-Asian, I mean 50% white.

Passed on my walk from the train stop to the Frank Lloyd Wright Home.

Ernest Hemingway Museum

Frank Lloyd Wright Home and studio.
One of the only tours I've ever actually truly enjoyed.

First Chicago dog. Delish.

Double Door--music venue (kind of like Velour, but bigger)

After the concert. Outside of Double Door.

That winds up my first trip to the Windy City!