Hello and welcome back to my blog! On our last episode, we had just returned from a long weekend in Zanzibar, followed by some great progress on our travel incubator and rapid prototyping for the syringe pump.

In the last week, we’ve continued working on the incubator. Andy worked with Albert and Alu, 2 DIT students who have been instrumental in the incubator design process, to design the PCB, and we are currently working on soldering the electrical components onto it. We also got the new box for the incubator cut, so I worked on putting that together.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on SolidWorks recently, designing pieces for the incubator, like the

housing for our display and buttons, and a place to keep our sensors inside the incubator. It’s a slow process, with multiple iterations and additions, but it’s rewarding when it all comes together. Before this internship, I used to hate SolidWorks, and it would nearly bring me to tears every time I had to use it, but now it’s actually kind of fun. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still annoying, but now it’s more like a fun little challenge.

Keeping with the SolidWorks theme, I’ve also been drawing a lot of pieces for the syringe pump project. I think we’re nearly done with that project, after several iterations of a holder that can fit multiple syringe sizes, pictured below. It was a really fun project to visualize and draw out, and it was super gratifying to see our ideas actually work.

We’ve also been taking a couple field trips during work. Last Friday we went to Aga Khan hospital, a private hospital super close to DIT, to meet with a neonatologist. We showed him our travel incubator and the gastro-bag, both of which he wasn’t really sold on. He said that people are moving towards Kangaroo Mother Care so there isn’t much use for the travel incubator, and that the gastro-bag can be imported quite cheaply. He did give us some valuable insights that we can take into account while prototyping and he showed us the state-of-the-art travel incubator that they use. It was really cool seeing it in real life and learning about its features.

Then today we went to Saba Saba, the annual trade fair here in Dar. It’s a big deal, DIT is closed next Monday because of it. First we went to DIT’s tent and learned about a lot of different projects that DIT is working on. They do SO much here, we’ve seen such a small part of their work. There were some medical devices like a phototherapy machine, but they also had things like leather, satellites, bathroom cleaners and so much more. It was really cool. Then we walked around looking at other companies, but it was so huge. It was like the size of the Houston Rodeo but probably more crowded than that. We got hungry after a bit of that so we found a place to eat and I had to try to get the wali na maharage (but it wasn’t as good as Galito’s).

 

Last weekend we didn’t travel anywhere but we did go to some cafes here. They were so cute and had really good food, and I was also able to get some work done! There are a lot more cafes in Dar than I expected, but I’m not complaining, studying in cafes is one of my favorite things to do in Houston. There was a giant art collective really close to one of the cafes with the coolest paintings. I did cave and buy some things but I think they’re very valid purchases.

Now, you may have noticed that I am posting this blog a little earlier than usual, that’s because tomorrow at this time we will be in the Serengeti! We have a 5am flight out of Dar and we will be spending 4 days on a safari. In order to prepare for the early rise I’ve been trying to wake up at “safari time” so that I won’t fall asleep in the middle of the safari and miss seeing any lions. Have I been successful with safari time? No. But I’m hoping adrenaline and excitement will carry.

As always, thank you for reading this far and see you next time!

Hadi wakati mwingine,
Shreya ♡