Malaria testing

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Spent the afternoon at the clinic doing malaria testing. Gulp. Not that good around blood initially. But get used to it. It’s easier to collect blood from babies, nice and coagulated, whereas adult blood just smears. I comment to Haz that I had to prick some of the adult patients a couple of times so to collect enough blood, and she wasn’t happy. But technique takes time to develop I say!

Volleyball in the afternoon with Palo, Ed and Haz. I’m less dire. But we don’t have a reserve so I’m gasping most of the time... luckily we’re distracted by a couple of huge elephants on the opposite bank taking their leisurely time crossing. I would say they would have been about 200 meters away once they crossed. But they were hilarious to watch. The 2nd elephant, decided to slide it’s butt down bank into the Luangwa river and ungainly flopped and rolled the last few meters ending with it’s head and shoulders underwater, just its trunk peeking out so it could breathe. Stayed like that for a good 10 minutes before resolving to get moving again. The water is fairly shallow so we could watch them walk across. Later a third elephant, much smaller so it likely needed to swim a bit, joined them on the other side. Conveniently coincided with the end of last our volleyball match and the sunset.

Dinner with a few long term residents, Ollie in particular is great. His parents, I believe, setup a sponsorship program called Dreike Trust for locals to get them through schooling. The trust, like many charities have generally sponsored children till the end of year 12. But they’re recognising now that there are really no jobs for these kids, so they’re continuing the sponsorship till university so they become professionals.
Haz is sponsoring one of the clinic volunteers, Helen, through her year 12 exams. She’s about 27 and has a husband that works at Luwi and several kids. The plan is for Ollie's to take over the sponsorship so she can go to nursing school after passing all her entry exams.

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