Hi everyone,

Welcome back!

This past weekend marked a much-needed breath of fresh air as we celebrated the halfway point of our internship. We took a break from the constant prototyping grind and visited Karura Forest. This forest is an oasis of green tucked into Nairobi’s busy landscape.

As we walked beneath the towering trees and listened to stories of Kenya’s “freedom fighters” from the 1960s, I couldn’t help but feel inspired. The tales of courage, sacrifice, and resilience echoed with a quiet strength, reminding me of the persistence we’ve been channeling into our projects, especially when things aren’t working quite right. We painted away after the 5km hike, and somehow, in that moment, with each brush stroke in nature, I felt a quiet reassurance: not that our prototype was perfect, but that progress was possible.

This week, we continued working in parallel on two projects. For the Pinard Horn fetal monitoring device, we’ve been exploring a wide range of signal-processing techniques. We’re aiming to amplify and extract the fetal heartbeat from background noise, using methods like band-pass filtering, wavelet transforms, and Hilbert transformation. Diving into dense signal processing literature and experimenting with code has been challenging since this isn’t a field I’ve had much exposure to before. But with each research paper, YouTube tutorial, and long debugging sessions, I’ve slowly started connecting the dots. This learning process is emblematic of something deeper I’ve been experiencing here: searching for familiarity within the unfamiliar, whether it’s in our design studio or out in Nairobi.

Speaking of the unfamiliar, we also had the chance to visit Nairobi National Park on Sunday. Riding in a 4×4 for five hours, we marveled at giraffes, rhinos, ostriches, impalas, lions, and more—all roaming freely against the backdrop of the Nairobi skyline. The roof of the vehicle was open, and although the cold wind turned my cheeks red, I couldn’t look away from the stunning sunset over the vast savannah. It was raw, breathtaking, and unlike anything I’ve seen before. Even in the discomfort of the wind and dust, I found a kind of awe. Like our technical challenges, there’s beauty in facing the unknown when you begin to make sense of it.

Back in the lab, our active cast project is also gaining momentum. This device aims to combat muscle atrophy during injury recovery by integrating electrical muscle stimulation and a sensor to track muscle engagement. After many trials and errors, we finally got our circuit to work just before the weekend. Watching the system activate with the voltage rising and dropping felt like a quiet triumph. It reminded me of the stories from Karura. Resilience doesn’t always roar; sometimes, it travels softly in wires and code.

Thank you for following along with our journey. We’re learning not just to prototype devices, but to prototype ourselves, adapting, adjusting, and growing through every challenge and adventure.

Ellena