Yesterday we started our last run. It’s a little
sad to start cleaning up our makeshift lab and see it turn back into its
intended purpose, a classroom. I also started packing up all of my clothes. I’m
really excited to go home but I’m going to miss my adventures here. We have all
grown so close as a group during out time waiting for our driver, sometimes for
hours and we have all had our hard times and have had to life each other up.
This place and these people will always have a special place in my heart.
Since
we still don’t have much to do in between taking measurements, I decided that I
would start analyzing data from the last run because I knew it would probably
take me a while. The first thing I have to do is convert the time we took the
water activity each day into how long the samples have been drying. Since we
took water activity 120 times, that meant a ton of calculations and I have yet
to find a calculator that will do it for me so that means we’re doing it by
hand! Don’t worry; I split it up so we all got to have some fun. After I put
everything into the spreadsheet, I realized that some of the numbers were
wrong. It was by chance that I even noticed really but that got me to check all
the others. Most of them were wrong but there was only one mistake that messed
up the whole thing. I screwed up the most. I don’t know how or where I went
wrong on mine; I just know they were really wrong. So I went through the ones
the other interns did and fixed them. When I got to mine my brain was fried and
I just couldn’t fix them. I went through one a second time and double checked
it and it was still wrong! I gave the last two to Whitney to fix. She did a
wonderful job despite her lack of confidence from her previous missteps. It was
all really simple math too. We just had to figure out how long it was between
two times like 8:23am and 12:11pm for example. Here’s the BYU Food Science
Department’s finest and we can’t do arithmetic. At least we caught it.
Today
the power was out for most of the day which makes it really hard to do
anything. We were really bored. I went into cleaning mode because I figured we
would have to clean the lab up tomorrow anyway so I swept the floor. The broom
we have doesn’t have a handle so you have to bend over to use it. I made sure
to get underneath all the desks and in the corners and behind all the stuff in
the room so make it really clean since we didn’t have anything to do anyway. It
was some hard work and I had to take a break halfway through. I did get it all
done eventually though. Then the power still wasn’t on so we still couldn’t
really do anything except take water activity ever two hours. Just before our
last set of samples before lunch, I wiped down all of the desks because they
were really dusty and dirty. After lunch the power came back on so life is good
again.
Tomorrow
morning we’re going to Lilongwe and early Tuesday morning we leave for Zambia
to go to Victoria Falls in Livingston. It’ll be an adventure. We get back on
Sunday and take a break on Monday. Then on Tuesday we go to Nkhata Bay and we’ll
kayak there for a couple of days. We’ll get back on Monday (the 5th)
and pick up all our stuff from SAFI and spend the rest of our time here in
Lilongwe. Then we fly into New York and spend the day there and then I’ll be
home. I’m not sure I’ll have my computer in Zambia or Nkhata Bay but I will be
able to fit in an update between the two trips and then after Nkhata Bay I’ll
be good to go. If you don’t hear from me for a few days don’t freak out. Expect
updates on Mondays. I’m doing my best to stay safe and healthy. Don’t worry
about me.
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