Monthly Archives: December 2010

Magnificent, joyful music

As I stated a few posts ago, I had the opportunity to sit in with a band in Malawi at the goat roast. The bandleader is named James Msalakwa and the band was named Jirere. You can see the band name on the drums. Sitting in with Jirere. The drummer was impressive. His hi-hat was [...]

On connectedness and obligation

On our last day in Malawi, we went to the Dzama village outside of town. It was the kind of place you know must exist, but until you see it in person, it’s hard to imagine what it’s like. At the Dzama well. The only running water was from a well, and there was no [...]

Listening in Lilongwe: music to my ears

What a day in Lilongwe. We started at the Bwaila antenatal clinic. This is where UNC led a famous study called BAN, which determined the best course for treating HIV-positive mothers to prevent transmission of the virus to their children. Thanks to the work of our researchers, the rate of transmission of HIV to babies [...]

Malawi report: mixing medicine and music

This afternoon we landed in Lilongwe, Malawi. The flight from Johannesburg was about 2 hours. After checking into Wendels Guest House,  where we had a decent internet connection (and the Sunday NY Times), we went over to the UNC Project buildings to hear from the researchers working there. My cousin, John, from OB-GYN is on [...]

Building a physician-scientist pipeline

On the way to Malawi, I saw that the UNC presence in Africa was apparent from the second we got off the plane in Johannesburg: there were two other UNC HIV researchers on the flight over with us who were off to rural Africa to work on clinical trials! On Friday, I had the chance [...]

@chanthorp is the real thing

As is now relatively well known, over the weekend, I decided to set up a twitter account, @chanthorp.  I have been looking at twitter for a long time, but if you don’t have an account, you have to type in all of the people you want to read.  I got tired of doing this. I [...]

Wingardium Leviosa!

Like most people with kids the same age as mine, our house was a big Harry Potter place. John read all the books the second they came out and we saw the first movie on the first day it was out. The DTH recently did a great story about how our students are now part [...]