The long awaited eight weeks internship at Rice University finally began on 29th of September, as we traveled in a team of 4 students from The Polytechnic which included: Micah Baleya, Doreen Thotho, Bwanali Benesi and Myself. It was a long, tiring but a joyful trip, flying from Malawi to the United States of America and definitely an unforgettable experience for all of us as we left our motherland for the very first time to a faraway land on a definite noble quest. We arrived in Houston on Sunday the afternoon of the 30th of September and were picked from the Airport by a huge Ghanaian man who welcomed us and drove us to our American home to be. Looking outside through the window of the car everything seemed big in Houston, it felt like I was in on a different planet. Getting to our new beautiful home we were welcomed with a big hug from the ever-joyous Dr Veronica Leautaud, our American Mom, who made us feel safely at home. It was great seeing her again after 3 months. She took us out and bought us some Mexican food, Burrito, which we took home and ate together with her. It was just great getting to spend our first moment in America with Dr Leautaud, there’s no better person we would’ve rather been with. As she bid us farewell that night I couldn’t wait to get a good sleep after at least a day of abnormal plane naps.
On Monday morning, the 1st of October, Dr Leautaud was at our door by 9 o’clock to take us to work. Even though our bodies couldn’t keep up well with the humid-hot weather in Houston and the change in time zones, we were so excited to meet with the amazing team with which we’d be working with for the next two months. Upon arrival at the Bioscience Research Collaborative, BRC, Dr Leautaud introduced us to her colleagues who welcomed us with big smiles and gave us our temporary work space as they were packing up getting ready to move to the 9th flow of the humongous BRC building. We settled in quite well on the first day, meeting with a lot of people that have become family now. Later in the day we met with our project supervisors, who we had longed to meet with for a long time, they welcomed us and got us started with work. The placed us into two group and gave us a good description for projects that we would to be working on at. I was assigned to design a first stage filter for an Oxygen concentrator together with Bwanali Benesi, a project that would be supervised by Grant Belton and Jack Wang. An Oxygen concentrator is a medical device that is used in oxygen therapy. The first stage filter to be designed and attached to the concentrator would help improve its working span.
Later in the week we went to get our Identification Card for Rice university and also got ourselves registered at the Office of International Students and Scholars. Our settling in was further perfected when we met with the Rice interns who came to Malawi in June, it was just a joy getting to see them again. They took us around Houston helping us get some groceries. Later in the week they took us out for dinner to a Chinese restaurant then we had ice cream after that. They also took us to Houston’s museum of natural science on Saturday. We had just an amazing time hanging out and eating with them.
