Wednesday, June 30, 2010
you should've seen your face! classic!
today at the hosptial we got some serious hands on experience. we arrive in the labor ward on time, waited around for the doc for about 30 minutes and when he finally arrived it was the same boring rounds. I heard screeming coming from the other side of the ward so i wandered over just in time to see a laboring mother give birth. the baby's head was crowning as i walked up and it was only a few minutes before the baby was delivered and the nurse was delivering the placenta. as we're standing there, watching the protocol for delivery (which doesn't consist of much) amy and i turn around because we hear moaning from the bed behind us. there an unattended mother is grimacing in pain and, yes, we can see the head of the baby crowning. luckily dr. ishmael, a visiting doctor we had just met, was there and he tells us to put on gloves. we do as we're told, but amy's glove breaks so she can only stand and watch as I proceed to deliver this baby with his verbal guidance. it was... awesome! the delivery went very smooth. we'd wait for contraction then tell her to push "sukuma!!" and soon the head was cleared, shortly after the body, and then, the third stage of delivery, i delivered the placenta. all went well except for a small tear which dr. ishmael was going to have us repair but decided to do himself because he had never repaired an episiotomy before. come again? yes, he says, i am only an intern and i never did an ob/gyn rotation. so basically some medical intern just talked me through a delivery that i did solo and he, himself, didn't have much idea what he was doing... wow. it gets better too but i dont have time to blog about it now. it is a different world here! wait until you hear thu's stories about the cesarian sections!! miss you all!
let’s play a little game called find the bleeding artery
i’ve got good news and i’ve got bad news. the good news is that I’ve got the swahili greeting down pretty well, the bad news is that when you greet with slang taught to you by a local, people assume you know swahili, and then, once you run out phrases you know, you get stuck trying to explain in english that you don’t actually know swahili… take today for example, amy and thu needed to get their phones registered (luckily I have molly’s phone from her recent visit and it seems to be working fine, so I sat on the sidewalk outside the busy shop for over an hour while they jumped through hoops to get their phones working). such good people watching, and it was sunny and warm this afternoon, so I was relaxing after a crazy day at the hospital (more on that later), and enjoying the local scene. people come greet me, just to say hi and to try to sell me things. I’ve found that if you smile and say no thank you in swahili, as long as you’re making eye contact, it usually only takes two “hapana asante”s before they smile back and leave you alone. chatted with a few fellow tourists as well. It’s so easy to pick out the english speakers, what is with that? you don’t even have to ask, you can just begin speaking to them in English and you’re always right. Anyway, so this guy pulls up on a motor bike right in front of me, (im sitting on the curb of the sidewalk), and he says jambo so I say jambo, and he says mambo so I say poa, as I’ve been taught (which means, cool, as in, I’m cool), and we end at that. but he’s so close to me and I keep trying to avoid looking at him but every time I do he’s just studying me. So I finally look up and say “habari”(which means how are you?) and he smiles, looks a little surprised, and says “nzuri” and so, as I’ve been trained by roger, I say “mzuka” and now he’s really amused because that is a slang type of greeting like “what up” in the U.S. and he says “sana tu” just as I’ve been taught to respond when people say “mzuka”. but at that point I have run out of casual greetings and when he speaks next I have no idea what he says. Luckily I have my fallback sentence “my name is Lindsay” that I can say in Swahili (though I don’t think I can spell it) and also, when he tells me his name, I can say “ni me furahi kuku tana nwewe” back, which means basically I’m pleased to meet you. And at that point his buddy returns and I’m thankful they’re leaving because the rest of the Swahili I know is pretty much related to the hospital and medicine. The language is cool, and I’m excited to learn more, but it’s challenging and they speak so quickly!
k team, here’s the deal, this blog is going to get intense... like, don’t read on an empty stomach, or for that matter too full of a stomach, intense. intense like, if you have any heart problems, if you are pregnant (im talking to you lily cox, with your adorable ellie belly!!) or breast feeding, or if you have a family history of high blood pressure, maybe skip to the next blog entry when it comes. intense like, please read while sitting down if you decide to proceed, intense. have I made myself clear?
here we go…
day 2 at mt meru regional hospital:
the reason I put a disclaimer on this blog is because I saw my first amputation today, and I intend to give you a pretty detailed idea of what surgery is like at this hospital. we caught dr. lee just as he was headed into the surgery and asked if we could observe, of course he obliged, he's awesome. we filed into the tiny operating theater, as they call it here, and the smell was overwhelming. I pinched my face mask tightly over my nose trying to block out the odor. the room was hot and I realized that there were heat laps on the ceiling and the far wall. dr. lee was scrubbed in… sort of… if you count scrubs, a plastic apron, and huge rain boots as scrubbing in. big pots of autoclaved supplies were sitting on a far counter and the nurse was removing the wrapped surgical tools and placing them on the “sterile field”, except that sterile here does not equal sterile in the U.S. we watched one nurse drop something from her hand onto the sterile area and just pick it up. one of the tanzanian medical students scrubbing in with dr. lee did such a poor job of gloving I will be surprised if the patient avoids infection. the patient was on the table, and dr. lee was starting to drape. the amputation was necessary because the patient had a gangrenous foot. I don’t think I’ve seen gangrene in person before, the toes of the foot were jet black and shriveled, it looked surreal. this was going to be a below the knee amputation. the patient was old, but what looks old here is probably only 50’s, (though the patient looked in her 70’s to me). it wasn’t until part way into the surgery that I realized she was awake. excuse me?! you’re amputating this patient’s leg and she is going to be awake through the procedure?! the “anesthesiologist ” was a woman who answered her ringing cell phone several times throughout the duration of the surgery, left the theater without a word for a good 30 minutes mid-procedure, and was monitoring the patient’s vitals with a blood pressure cuff that I’m fairly certain did not work. I do not know exactly how they numb the patient for the surgery but I do know there was no oxygen in the room, no one monitoring RR or HR, and no blood if a transfusion where needed. the patient was receiving fluids during the surgery, and her wrinkled, grey face did not show signs of distress, but she lay there, eyes open, listening to every word and watching each surgical instrument get passed by, including the saw they used to cut though the bone of her leg. yes, a crooked, painfully (no pun intended) dull, 12 inch long metal saw that dr. lee used to cut through the tibia and then the fibula. he made his meticulous incision in order to have enough skin to close off the amputation at the end, then cut though muscle and down to bone, tying off larger arteries as he went. sawing through the tibia was not an easy task, particularly with such a dull instrument, and he was sweating through his scrub cap by the time he got through the tibia, using his hands to break the last bit and free the foot. unfortunately, he made a bit of a miscalculation, and needed to saw off another inch of bone in order to close the skin flaps fully, and when he tried sawing through the tibia again it was an even worse struggle. the students were not much help, he had to keep asking them to concentrate please, and at one point he was almost begging them to stop talking. it took a while to find all of the bleeding arteries and tie them off individually. dr. lee had started the procedure with a huge tourniquet that was definitely limiting blood loss but also making it more difficult to find the arteries that would spurt blood once the tourniquet was removed. maybe two hours later the final suture was being tied. a foot/leg, severed mid calf, lay on the floor next to thu and I (amy was struggling with the smell and heat and opted to sit this one out about 10 minutes into the surgery). they cleaned the incision area with saline, I think, then dressed it with gauze. I should mention, that when dr. lee was scrubbing for the surgery he went to wash his hands in the small and very filthy looking sink in the corner of the room and there was no soap, so the nurse brought over a bottle of this purple liquid, which was in a reused water bottle by the way, and she dumped it over his hands. sterile? the same purple liquid was squirted on needles before they were used to start a line in the patient, and also was used to clean the leg before the start of the procedure. can you say contaminated?! it’s no wonder the infection rate is through the roof here. we’ll just have to hope the patient does well. amputation was the only option with gangrene, especially that severe, and dr. lee did a great job with the resources available to him.
Queasy yet? Here’s some more if you aren’t - about the first part of our day… this gets a little long winded so fyi, the really interesting stuff was already covered, this next part is mostly depressing… We meet for morning rounds with some of the local doctors. We start in the obstetrics ward. The doc grabs the chart at the end of each bed, talks to the patient, jots a few notes in English, and then moves onto the next bed. Doesn’t seem like he does much; he certainly doesn’t touch the patient. The charge nurse, or I’m not really sure who she is, but she seems important (and she demanded when we leave that we give her one of our stethoscopes, which we most likely will, but it was still odd when she verbally claimed amy’s), goes around pressing on the women’s pregnant bellies until they grimace with pain. She goes from bed to bed and after seeing several women in a row who had come in complaining of pain and contractions but who are actually not due for a couple weeks (and are currently having no signs of contractions), she stands up and starts announcing to the women, in Swahili, that if they come in here it should be a maximum of 12 hours until they deliver. This is not a place to come and spend 3 days, and then she proceeds to discharge most of them. She is a frighteningly intimidating woman.
We got some stories about the women, they are all a bit disturbing. For example, about prolonged labors with so many vaginal exams that infection is pretty much inevitable. there was a septic woman there from a situation like that. we saw a woman on her 7th pregnancy who wants more children because only 3 are still alive. We saw a woman pregnant for the 5th time, desperately wanting a bilateral tubal ligation after delivery. the place smells strongly of urine, and the women are two to three to a bed. At least there are blankets on the beds, even if they are stained and frayed, that’s more than I can say for the beds at the hospital in the Philippines. All the mosquito nets are knotted above the patients, I suppose they use them at night? While we were rounding I noticed a mosquito perched on one of the nets above a sleeping patient, I found it ironic.
We had heard that the pelvic exams are terrible, but today I got to witness why this is said. A woman was brought into this small space, shielded by a blue piece of cloth, with hardly enough room for the exam table, the doctor and me. He cannot even do the exam from the foot of the bed because of the way it is wedged against the wall. He does not tell the patient what he is doing as he presses roughly on her stomach, though it is obvious she is in a lot of pain. I never saw anything like this in the Philippines, it seems so unnecessary. The mother winces, in agony with every touch, and it only gets worse when he begins the pelvic exam to see how dilated and soft her cervix is. I know this sounds wild, but they seem to use the same disinfectant for everything. Whether they are cleaning the floor, sterilizing a needle before a blood draw, or cleaning this woman before the exam, they use this toxic smelling cleaning liquid that I am certain was not designed to contact skin. They use sterile gloves for the exam, a precaution we do not take in the US because it is unnecessary. Here, the rate of infection is so high they believe it reduces the risk, but their idea of sterile is so distorted that I really believe it makes no difference, especially not when you’re using that foggy, toxic, and im sure contaminated, fluid to clean the area before the exam. The doctor is rough with no regard for her comfort or well being. The idea of ‘talk before touch’ is non-existent here. Today was only a preview, from what the British students had to say, it gets a lot worse.
We did learn where on the patient’s card they identify if they are HIV + or HIV -, so that is good. But we were also warned it is best just to assume all patients are positive to be safe. So many interesting things about the way the hospital works here in contrast to in America… for one, everything is late and slow. When we met the doc this morning he said, we meet for rounds at 8, but sometimes you sleep in or are tired so really we meet more at 8:30 or 9. Riiiggghhhttt. Also, as we followed him from the ob ward to the gyn ward (they are currently on opposite sides of the hospital because of a renovation), he saunters… no, leisurely strolls… that might not even depict how slowly he moves. Even the last doc I shadowed at OHSU, though about a foot shorter than me, was near impossible to keep up with as she hurried from patient room to patient room. Here, I was doing everything I could not to give this tall doc a flat tire as we made our way to finish rounds. Side note: Pretty sure I saw a woman with chagas too, she definitely had romana’s sign.
I would say what I saw on our first set of rounds was disturbing enough, but it’s about to get worse. In the gynecology ward there are 23 beds in a long narrow building. The gray metal frames are all chipped and rusty, and the thin mattresses sink between the broken springs. Each bed has one or two women in it, and the only thing that stands out when we enter is a rolling screen curved around the foot of one of the beds, as if for privacy, except that it only extends a foot or two on either side of the bed, leaving the rest of the bed exposed. It isn’t until we follow the doctor over there that I realize there is a body in the bed, covered from head to toe in the grey wool blanket that patients at the hospital are given. The doctor tells us that this woman had a spontaneous abortion (a miscarriage) and that the fetus was not expelled, instead, it stayed inside of her, they’re not sure for how long, but by the time she came to the hospital complaining of stomach pain it was too late, she was severely septic and though they evacuated the aborted fetus, the doctor said, she expired within a few days. He told us they did all they could… it didn’t exactly look that way. Her dead body was left there, under the blanket, between two occupied patient beds, im not sure how long it had been there. They were waiting for the mortuary to come take her away. When we rounded on the patients we initially skipped her bed, until the nurse said something, brought a stethoscope to the doctor, and he abandoned his charting to listen to the woman’s heart, to be certain she’s dead, I suppose. He took maybe 3 seconds to listen with the stethoscope pressed to her chest, then decided that was enough to confirm the death. They wrote her name, Dorah, born in 1978, on a piece of paper and left it on her bed. When the men finally came to collect the body there was banter back and fourth with the nurse in the room and a lot of laughter. It was confusing and hard to deal with. No family was there, it looked like no effort had been made to help her, or at least ease her pain, I was thankful we were not here to witness the death.
So many women in the gynecology ward are there for either an ectopic pregnancy and complications associated with that, or for complications associated with abortions, spontaneous, or those they electively have induced by means outside of the hospital. the doctor says they find a way to induce an abortion, but when it gets complicated (for instance the fetus or placenta is not expelled properly) they come to the hospital seeking care. There was also a 13 year old girl who was there because she had been raped. That was a challenge to stomach. And the doctor did not do anything for her, did not even touch her chart, he told us it was someone else’s responsibility to get her tested for HIV and other STI’s and to give her the urine pregnancy test. I saw her walking around later that day, realized I was looking at her with a distraught and terribly sad face, so forced a smile. She smiled back.
I get so tired of the fluorescent lights and the bad smells. At least when the sun comes out and there’s a breeze it helps things. I’m going to stop giving the grated, screen-less windows a hard time because the gyn ward smelled worse than the obs ward and I welcomed the breezed that would, every-so-often, come in through the open windows and offer just a little bit of relief from the stench. We took vitals, listened to the doctor report on each of the patients, though we couldn’t always understand what he told us. We saw a patient with malaria who had an altered mental status and they said all they could do was observe her. Another patient, HIV+, had an opportunistic infection of some sort. From what we learned about in Biological Basis of Disease, take your pick of any of dozens of infections that HIV+ patients are prone to. This particular patient had, what they thought was an abscess behind her right eye. The orbit was bulging out substantially and she had foggy, pus like drainage coming from both her eyes and nose. It looked bad, and I swear during the time that we were there she was deteriorating. She was having trouble articulating, it was difficult to wake her, and she seemed to have AMS as well. We saw so many other disturbing cases, but that is an idea of what we’re dealing with here.
Try not to get too down, we see good things too... I'll share more in my next blog.
k team, here’s the deal, this blog is going to get intense... like, don’t read on an empty stomach, or for that matter too full of a stomach, intense. intense like, if you have any heart problems, if you are pregnant (im talking to you lily cox, with your adorable ellie belly!!) or breast feeding, or if you have a family history of high blood pressure, maybe skip to the next blog entry when it comes. intense like, please read while sitting down if you decide to proceed, intense. have I made myself clear?
here we go…
day 2 at mt meru regional hospital:
the reason I put a disclaimer on this blog is because I saw my first amputation today, and I intend to give you a pretty detailed idea of what surgery is like at this hospital. we caught dr. lee just as he was headed into the surgery and asked if we could observe, of course he obliged, he's awesome. we filed into the tiny operating theater, as they call it here, and the smell was overwhelming. I pinched my face mask tightly over my nose trying to block out the odor. the room was hot and I realized that there were heat laps on the ceiling and the far wall. dr. lee was scrubbed in… sort of… if you count scrubs, a plastic apron, and huge rain boots as scrubbing in. big pots of autoclaved supplies were sitting on a far counter and the nurse was removing the wrapped surgical tools and placing them on the “sterile field”, except that sterile here does not equal sterile in the U.S. we watched one nurse drop something from her hand onto the sterile area and just pick it up. one of the tanzanian medical students scrubbing in with dr. lee did such a poor job of gloving I will be surprised if the patient avoids infection. the patient was on the table, and dr. lee was starting to drape. the amputation was necessary because the patient had a gangrenous foot. I don’t think I’ve seen gangrene in person before, the toes of the foot were jet black and shriveled, it looked surreal. this was going to be a below the knee amputation. the patient was old, but what looks old here is probably only 50’s, (though the patient looked in her 70’s to me). it wasn’t until part way into the surgery that I realized she was awake. excuse me?! you’re amputating this patient’s leg and she is going to be awake through the procedure?! the “anesthesiologist ” was a woman who answered her ringing cell phone several times throughout the duration of the surgery, left the theater without a word for a good 30 minutes mid-procedure, and was monitoring the patient’s vitals with a blood pressure cuff that I’m fairly certain did not work. I do not know exactly how they numb the patient for the surgery but I do know there was no oxygen in the room, no one monitoring RR or HR, and no blood if a transfusion where needed. the patient was receiving fluids during the surgery, and her wrinkled, grey face did not show signs of distress, but she lay there, eyes open, listening to every word and watching each surgical instrument get passed by, including the saw they used to cut though the bone of her leg. yes, a crooked, painfully (no pun intended) dull, 12 inch long metal saw that dr. lee used to cut through the tibia and then the fibula. he made his meticulous incision in order to have enough skin to close off the amputation at the end, then cut though muscle and down to bone, tying off larger arteries as he went. sawing through the tibia was not an easy task, particularly with such a dull instrument, and he was sweating through his scrub cap by the time he got through the tibia, using his hands to break the last bit and free the foot. unfortunately, he made a bit of a miscalculation, and needed to saw off another inch of bone in order to close the skin flaps fully, and when he tried sawing through the tibia again it was an even worse struggle. the students were not much help, he had to keep asking them to concentrate please, and at one point he was almost begging them to stop talking. it took a while to find all of the bleeding arteries and tie them off individually. dr. lee had started the procedure with a huge tourniquet that was definitely limiting blood loss but also making it more difficult to find the arteries that would spurt blood once the tourniquet was removed. maybe two hours later the final suture was being tied. a foot/leg, severed mid calf, lay on the floor next to thu and I (amy was struggling with the smell and heat and opted to sit this one out about 10 minutes into the surgery). they cleaned the incision area with saline, I think, then dressed it with gauze. I should mention, that when dr. lee was scrubbing for the surgery he went to wash his hands in the small and very filthy looking sink in the corner of the room and there was no soap, so the nurse brought over a bottle of this purple liquid, which was in a reused water bottle by the way, and she dumped it over his hands. sterile? the same purple liquid was squirted on needles before they were used to start a line in the patient, and also was used to clean the leg before the start of the procedure. can you say contaminated?! it’s no wonder the infection rate is through the roof here. we’ll just have to hope the patient does well. amputation was the only option with gangrene, especially that severe, and dr. lee did a great job with the resources available to him.
Queasy yet? Here’s some more if you aren’t - about the first part of our day… this gets a little long winded so fyi, the really interesting stuff was already covered, this next part is mostly depressing… We meet for morning rounds with some of the local doctors. We start in the obstetrics ward. The doc grabs the chart at the end of each bed, talks to the patient, jots a few notes in English, and then moves onto the next bed. Doesn’t seem like he does much; he certainly doesn’t touch the patient. The charge nurse, or I’m not really sure who she is, but she seems important (and she demanded when we leave that we give her one of our stethoscopes, which we most likely will, but it was still odd when she verbally claimed amy’s), goes around pressing on the women’s pregnant bellies until they grimace with pain. She goes from bed to bed and after seeing several women in a row who had come in complaining of pain and contractions but who are actually not due for a couple weeks (and are currently having no signs of contractions), she stands up and starts announcing to the women, in Swahili, that if they come in here it should be a maximum of 12 hours until they deliver. This is not a place to come and spend 3 days, and then she proceeds to discharge most of them. She is a frighteningly intimidating woman.
We got some stories about the women, they are all a bit disturbing. For example, about prolonged labors with so many vaginal exams that infection is pretty much inevitable. there was a septic woman there from a situation like that. we saw a woman on her 7th pregnancy who wants more children because only 3 are still alive. We saw a woman pregnant for the 5th time, desperately wanting a bilateral tubal ligation after delivery. the place smells strongly of urine, and the women are two to three to a bed. At least there are blankets on the beds, even if they are stained and frayed, that’s more than I can say for the beds at the hospital in the Philippines. All the mosquito nets are knotted above the patients, I suppose they use them at night? While we were rounding I noticed a mosquito perched on one of the nets above a sleeping patient, I found it ironic.
We had heard that the pelvic exams are terrible, but today I got to witness why this is said. A woman was brought into this small space, shielded by a blue piece of cloth, with hardly enough room for the exam table, the doctor and me. He cannot even do the exam from the foot of the bed because of the way it is wedged against the wall. He does not tell the patient what he is doing as he presses roughly on her stomach, though it is obvious she is in a lot of pain. I never saw anything like this in the Philippines, it seems so unnecessary. The mother winces, in agony with every touch, and it only gets worse when he begins the pelvic exam to see how dilated and soft her cervix is. I know this sounds wild, but they seem to use the same disinfectant for everything. Whether they are cleaning the floor, sterilizing a needle before a blood draw, or cleaning this woman before the exam, they use this toxic smelling cleaning liquid that I am certain was not designed to contact skin. They use sterile gloves for the exam, a precaution we do not take in the US because it is unnecessary. Here, the rate of infection is so high they believe it reduces the risk, but their idea of sterile is so distorted that I really believe it makes no difference, especially not when you’re using that foggy, toxic, and im sure contaminated, fluid to clean the area before the exam. The doctor is rough with no regard for her comfort or well being. The idea of ‘talk before touch’ is non-existent here. Today was only a preview, from what the British students had to say, it gets a lot worse.
We did learn where on the patient’s card they identify if they are HIV + or HIV -, so that is good. But we were also warned it is best just to assume all patients are positive to be safe. So many interesting things about the way the hospital works here in contrast to in America… for one, everything is late and slow. When we met the doc this morning he said, we meet for rounds at 8, but sometimes you sleep in or are tired so really we meet more at 8:30 or 9. Riiiggghhhttt. Also, as we followed him from the ob ward to the gyn ward (they are currently on opposite sides of the hospital because of a renovation), he saunters… no, leisurely strolls… that might not even depict how slowly he moves. Even the last doc I shadowed at OHSU, though about a foot shorter than me, was near impossible to keep up with as she hurried from patient room to patient room. Here, I was doing everything I could not to give this tall doc a flat tire as we made our way to finish rounds. Side note: Pretty sure I saw a woman with chagas too, she definitely had romana’s sign.
I would say what I saw on our first set of rounds was disturbing enough, but it’s about to get worse. In the gynecology ward there are 23 beds in a long narrow building. The gray metal frames are all chipped and rusty, and the thin mattresses sink between the broken springs. Each bed has one or two women in it, and the only thing that stands out when we enter is a rolling screen curved around the foot of one of the beds, as if for privacy, except that it only extends a foot or two on either side of the bed, leaving the rest of the bed exposed. It isn’t until we follow the doctor over there that I realize there is a body in the bed, covered from head to toe in the grey wool blanket that patients at the hospital are given. The doctor tells us that this woman had a spontaneous abortion (a miscarriage) and that the fetus was not expelled, instead, it stayed inside of her, they’re not sure for how long, but by the time she came to the hospital complaining of stomach pain it was too late, she was severely septic and though they evacuated the aborted fetus, the doctor said, she expired within a few days. He told us they did all they could… it didn’t exactly look that way. Her dead body was left there, under the blanket, between two occupied patient beds, im not sure how long it had been there. They were waiting for the mortuary to come take her away. When we rounded on the patients we initially skipped her bed, until the nurse said something, brought a stethoscope to the doctor, and he abandoned his charting to listen to the woman’s heart, to be certain she’s dead, I suppose. He took maybe 3 seconds to listen with the stethoscope pressed to her chest, then decided that was enough to confirm the death. They wrote her name, Dorah, born in 1978, on a piece of paper and left it on her bed. When the men finally came to collect the body there was banter back and fourth with the nurse in the room and a lot of laughter. It was confusing and hard to deal with. No family was there, it looked like no effort had been made to help her, or at least ease her pain, I was thankful we were not here to witness the death.
So many women in the gynecology ward are there for either an ectopic pregnancy and complications associated with that, or for complications associated with abortions, spontaneous, or those they electively have induced by means outside of the hospital. the doctor says they find a way to induce an abortion, but when it gets complicated (for instance the fetus or placenta is not expelled properly) they come to the hospital seeking care. There was also a 13 year old girl who was there because she had been raped. That was a challenge to stomach. And the doctor did not do anything for her, did not even touch her chart, he told us it was someone else’s responsibility to get her tested for HIV and other STI’s and to give her the urine pregnancy test. I saw her walking around later that day, realized I was looking at her with a distraught and terribly sad face, so forced a smile. She smiled back.
I get so tired of the fluorescent lights and the bad smells. At least when the sun comes out and there’s a breeze it helps things. I’m going to stop giving the grated, screen-less windows a hard time because the gyn ward smelled worse than the obs ward and I welcomed the breezed that would, every-so-often, come in through the open windows and offer just a little bit of relief from the stench. We took vitals, listened to the doctor report on each of the patients, though we couldn’t always understand what he told us. We saw a patient with malaria who had an altered mental status and they said all they could do was observe her. Another patient, HIV+, had an opportunistic infection of some sort. From what we learned about in Biological Basis of Disease, take your pick of any of dozens of infections that HIV+ patients are prone to. This particular patient had, what they thought was an abscess behind her right eye. The orbit was bulging out substantially and she had foggy, pus like drainage coming from both her eyes and nose. It looked bad, and I swear during the time that we were there she was deteriorating. She was having trouble articulating, it was difficult to wake her, and she seemed to have AMS as well. We saw so many other disturbing cases, but that is an idea of what we’re dealing with here.
Try not to get too down, we see good things too... I'll share more in my next blog.
i think it’s a spine!!
first day the hospital! woo! this is what we came here for! up bright and early for some bfast (they make us egg white fried eggs each morning. im sure they save the yoke for something, and I prefer the egg white anyway, but I still think it’s strange that our morning eggs never have the yellow). we left the hospital with so much stuff zipped in our pant pockets I had to keep one hand on my belt – BRASIL SCORES!! – to keep my pants from falling down as we walked to the hospital... did I mention im blogging while watching the brasil v chile game in a bar a few blocks from our hostel? so please excuse the interruptions with the goal updates : ) ha, no joke, as im typing this, BRASIL SCORES AGAIN!!! wow, way to start the game off right boys.
so what exactly does one fill their pockets with for a day at the hospital? this’ll give you an idea:
-gloves, lots of gloves, like a dozen gloves (that looks funny bulging out a pocket)
-hand sanitizer (contemplating just drinking this stuff and hoping it oozes out my pores)
-masks (of all shapes and size, importantly a TB mask because the TB ward is HUGE!)
-stethoscope
-notepad
-power bar (lunch)
-pen light
-swahili medical dictionary
-cell phone
-key to the apartement
-some Tz shillings in different pockets
-a copy of our passports and travel insurance cards and immunization records
…you get the idea, way more than is meant to be stuffed in normal pant pockets, especially for pants I maybe bought a size too big - good thing they’ve got a built in belt. If we usually look cool, today we looked extra cool with our overflowing pockets and white coats. mimi si daktari, mimi ni daktari mwanafunzi (I am not a doctor, I am a medical student) – see, im rocking the swahili already : ) really though, we are getting better, it’s such a cool language and the locals love when you speak to them in swahili and they know you’re making an effort to learn it, this is how we make friends.
we got to the hospital around 8:30, so pretty much before everyone else (things here move a bit more slowly than in america). we arrived feeling confused, a bit overwhelmed, and pretty much everything in between… fortunately we were approached, as we consistently are, by a curious african wanting to ask us where we come from and why we are here. turns out he is a pastor and him and his pastor friend ask us to follow them into one of the hospital buildings… pause, im going on a tangent so you can get an idea of what the hospital is like… it’s just off one of the main roads in arusha and literally in the shadow of mt meru, a towering mountain that we saw for the first time today as it is usually engulfed in the winter clouds here. you enter through the front gate and go down a short dirt road and then bam! hospital. except it doesn’t really have that effect… in fact, it doesn’t look much like a hospital so much as it resembles an abandoned warehouse. all one-story buildings scattered between cement and dirt walkways. tropical plants grow up to the open windows and you can see mosquito nets inside, behind the bars that imprison the patients. the signs to identify the different buildings are hand painted and hanging in front of them, some in english, others in swahili, and many a combination of both languages. they also typically have an arrow on them, directing you, but we’ve found that the arrows usually point to random cement walls, or in directions you do not want to go. it is infinitely simpler than OHSU’s campus, known for being a labyrinth, and yet we are definitely more lost here.
an hour or two later the deserted feeling was quickly disappearing as people, sick and not, began to overwhelm the hospital. it gets very crowded and part of me thinks people might just show up to pass the time, though I know most are here seeking much needed medical care. ok, back to the pastor. so we’re led into this large room, each wall lined with beds, almost edge to edge. we gathered around one bed with a young woman curled under a wool blanket and wearing a fleece and beanie (I was sweating in a t-shirt and my white coat, people here bundle in this weather, oregonian’s would be ready to whip out their bikinis). the pastor tells us, and im aware this doesn’t make much sense, “her sugar is high, she faints, they knew before why she fainted, she had a baby, now they don’t know why, she has water in her belly”… I mean, it was something along those lines… all we could think was a hyperglycemic woman with ascites and unexplained loss of consciousness – House episode anyone? the pastor asked us to pray and we extended our hands, hovered them over her body, bowed our heads and closed our eyes as he performed a feverish monologue I didn’t understand a word of. it was awesome. using prayer to heal, not the first experience I was expecting to have at this hospital but it seemed to do well for her, the patient, and that is what matters… offer what you can when you’re in a place like this.
at this point, after surrendering our email addresses to this man, dr. lee came to our rescue. we shadowed him the rest… BRASIL SCORES AGAIN?!!! DOMINATION!!... of the day. clinic day. saw some interesting patients. here’s a summary of the highlights:
**warning to those with weak stomachs, you might want to just skip this next part… to my classmates who might be reading this, enjoy!
-a man who was beaten when his car was stolen came in with back problems. dr. lee taught us quite a bit about that. quiz question: what muscle goes from the iliac crest to the ribs?
-a man with a huge keloid on his head after trauma and surgery to that area. quiz question: what is something that commonly causes keloid formation?
-a woman with a crooked finger called a swan neck deformity. quiz question: what are the seven criteria you use to diagnose RA and how many of those need to be present to make a diagnose?
-a younger guy who had a tib-fib open fracture and it wasn’t healing so there was this crazy gaping wound on the medial side of his ankle and all I could think was “if you can probe bone, it’s infected”
-another crazy leg wound on this guy who had been hit by a car – peds vs auto is never good. The epidermis on his leg was pretty much all dead and he had this huge, black and infected granulation-like tissue… it looked bad. quiz question: what are the layers of the epidermis (thick skin and thin skin?)
-another young boy who had lost his four fingers to a machine. dr. lee peeled off all of the dead tissue, looked sooo painful! And then squeezed the infected pus/blood out of the wounds, that was intense.
-a girl with skin webbing her pinky finger to the medial side of her hand, who was ready to miss the first month of school to have the aesthetic surgery to repair it. dr. lee said no way.
-a baby, only a day or two old, with crazy double joints. dr. lee could actually bend his knee totally backwards (not normal) and press the dorsum of his foot to his shin (apparently can be normal in infants).
-old lady with a hip fracture. quiz question: what are the two most common places hip fractures occur.
-an elbow fracture in a young boy and dr. lee handed us the xray, like he had been with all of the patients, saying “what’s the diagnosis?” and amy, thu and I would stare at it and debate and question what was normal and what we thought was wrong. it was a fun game : )
…annnndd the computer is dying, we have no converter here, and I’d like to watch the rest of the game so im out for now!
so what exactly does one fill their pockets with for a day at the hospital? this’ll give you an idea:
-gloves, lots of gloves, like a dozen gloves (that looks funny bulging out a pocket)
-hand sanitizer (contemplating just drinking this stuff and hoping it oozes out my pores)
-masks (of all shapes and size, importantly a TB mask because the TB ward is HUGE!)
-stethoscope
-notepad
-power bar (lunch)
-pen light
-swahili medical dictionary
-cell phone
-key to the apartement
-some Tz shillings in different pockets
-a copy of our passports and travel insurance cards and immunization records
…you get the idea, way more than is meant to be stuffed in normal pant pockets, especially for pants I maybe bought a size too big - good thing they’ve got a built in belt. If we usually look cool, today we looked extra cool with our overflowing pockets and white coats. mimi si daktari, mimi ni daktari mwanafunzi (I am not a doctor, I am a medical student) – see, im rocking the swahili already : ) really though, we are getting better, it’s such a cool language and the locals love when you speak to them in swahili and they know you’re making an effort to learn it, this is how we make friends.
we got to the hospital around 8:30, so pretty much before everyone else (things here move a bit more slowly than in america). we arrived feeling confused, a bit overwhelmed, and pretty much everything in between… fortunately we were approached, as we consistently are, by a curious african wanting to ask us where we come from and why we are here. turns out he is a pastor and him and his pastor friend ask us to follow them into one of the hospital buildings… pause, im going on a tangent so you can get an idea of what the hospital is like… it’s just off one of the main roads in arusha and literally in the shadow of mt meru, a towering mountain that we saw for the first time today as it is usually engulfed in the winter clouds here. you enter through the front gate and go down a short dirt road and then bam! hospital. except it doesn’t really have that effect… in fact, it doesn’t look much like a hospital so much as it resembles an abandoned warehouse. all one-story buildings scattered between cement and dirt walkways. tropical plants grow up to the open windows and you can see mosquito nets inside, behind the bars that imprison the patients. the signs to identify the different buildings are hand painted and hanging in front of them, some in english, others in swahili, and many a combination of both languages. they also typically have an arrow on them, directing you, but we’ve found that the arrows usually point to random cement walls, or in directions you do not want to go. it is infinitely simpler than OHSU’s campus, known for being a labyrinth, and yet we are definitely more lost here.
an hour or two later the deserted feeling was quickly disappearing as people, sick and not, began to overwhelm the hospital. it gets very crowded and part of me thinks people might just show up to pass the time, though I know most are here seeking much needed medical care. ok, back to the pastor. so we’re led into this large room, each wall lined with beds, almost edge to edge. we gathered around one bed with a young woman curled under a wool blanket and wearing a fleece and beanie (I was sweating in a t-shirt and my white coat, people here bundle in this weather, oregonian’s would be ready to whip out their bikinis). the pastor tells us, and im aware this doesn’t make much sense, “her sugar is high, she faints, they knew before why she fainted, she had a baby, now they don’t know why, she has water in her belly”… I mean, it was something along those lines… all we could think was a hyperglycemic woman with ascites and unexplained loss of consciousness – House episode anyone? the pastor asked us to pray and we extended our hands, hovered them over her body, bowed our heads and closed our eyes as he performed a feverish monologue I didn’t understand a word of. it was awesome. using prayer to heal, not the first experience I was expecting to have at this hospital but it seemed to do well for her, the patient, and that is what matters… offer what you can when you’re in a place like this.
at this point, after surrendering our email addresses to this man, dr. lee came to our rescue. we shadowed him the rest… BRASIL SCORES AGAIN?!!! DOMINATION!!... of the day. clinic day. saw some interesting patients. here’s a summary of the highlights:
**warning to those with weak stomachs, you might want to just skip this next part… to my classmates who might be reading this, enjoy!
-a man who was beaten when his car was stolen came in with back problems. dr. lee taught us quite a bit about that. quiz question: what muscle goes from the iliac crest to the ribs?
-a man with a huge keloid on his head after trauma and surgery to that area. quiz question: what is something that commonly causes keloid formation?
-a woman with a crooked finger called a swan neck deformity. quiz question: what are the seven criteria you use to diagnose RA and how many of those need to be present to make a diagnose?
-a younger guy who had a tib-fib open fracture and it wasn’t healing so there was this crazy gaping wound on the medial side of his ankle and all I could think was “if you can probe bone, it’s infected”
-another crazy leg wound on this guy who had been hit by a car – peds vs auto is never good. The epidermis on his leg was pretty much all dead and he had this huge, black and infected granulation-like tissue… it looked bad. quiz question: what are the layers of the epidermis (thick skin and thin skin?)
-another young boy who had lost his four fingers to a machine. dr. lee peeled off all of the dead tissue, looked sooo painful! And then squeezed the infected pus/blood out of the wounds, that was intense.
-a girl with skin webbing her pinky finger to the medial side of her hand, who was ready to miss the first month of school to have the aesthetic surgery to repair it. dr. lee said no way.
-a baby, only a day or two old, with crazy double joints. dr. lee could actually bend his knee totally backwards (not normal) and press the dorsum of his foot to his shin (apparently can be normal in infants).
-old lady with a hip fracture. quiz question: what are the two most common places hip fractures occur.
-an elbow fracture in a young boy and dr. lee handed us the xray, like he had been with all of the patients, saying “what’s the diagnosis?” and amy, thu and I would stare at it and debate and question what was normal and what we thought was wrong. it was a fun game : )
…annnndd the computer is dying, we have no converter here, and I’d like to watch the rest of the game so im out for now!
Monday, June 28, 2010
turn it into a run
i forgot to say please ignore the terrible punctuation and grammar and spelling, and writing in general, these things are not important when the internet is so spotty it's a miracle i'm able to post anything at all... onto a great adventure:
today was a day! ready for this adventure? roger’s been talking to us about hiking to ‘the waterfall’ since the first day we arrived, so at breakfast we decided, why not?(also, the length of this blog is probably some indication that we have some serious time to kill as we are hostel-bound as soon as it gets darks here between 6 and 7, so get ready for a novel)...
while applying bug spray in the hall in preparation for the hike I made friends with a new neighbor, a canadian guy traveling with a buddy. they’ve been traveling since september of last year and they’ve got a few months still to go. apparently they’re petroleum engineers and their european country went under, so they decided to forget work and go experience the world. Their advice for here in arusha is that a taxi pretty much anywhere in town will cost you 3,000/- (tanzanian shillings, obviously), and do NOT go out after dark, even for a stroll down the street in front of the hostel. everyone has emphasized how important it is to stay in after dark or take a taxi, so far we’ve had no trouble abiding by this advice (except tonight, we’re hungry but under house arrest as usual, so a cliff bar for dinner it is).
our bags packed with power bars and water, slathered in bug spray, and camera in hand, we met roger in front of the hostel and started walking. it was 10:30am – we had gotten a late start waiting for daaimah (a girl my age staying at the hostel and working for her friend’s non-profit he started at their college, ASU), who had gone to church with a local and was not back as early as she had expected. we ended up leaving without her, but she did the hike last weekend so it was hakuna matata (no problem : ) the lion king has taught me so much about swahili, who knew?! we walked past the clock tower, an important landmark we’ve become very familiar with, then down past the hospital and on to the outskirts of town. we used the crosswalk at one of arusha’s two whole traffic lights, and then it was all dirt road from there. but not the kind of flat dirt road they sing about in country songs, more like the bumpiest, pot hole filled, rock covered, garbage ridden road ever… it looks impossible to drive on but they do… I struggled enough walking on it. decided to title this blog “turn it into a run” after ashley’s valuable advice that if you trip or slip you should just turn it into a run and no one will know : ) there was a lot of that today. .. annnddd I think we just blew out the fuse in the wall despite using a power converter – what the heck?!
roger and I had an interesting conversation about HIV as we walked. I’m not sure how we got on the subject, we talked about a lot of things on our hike today. we’ve decided that in exchange for the swahili lessons he gives us we’ll teach him french and spanish, both of which he wants to learn. now when we speak it is a mix of four languages and often make believe words I use because learning languages is not my niche. I even spent a while telling roger about my dog, dakota, and the tricks he used to do. roger was getting a serious kick out of it, he laughs at me a lot, I think because he likes to kid and I kid back. I tried to teach him that phrase today, to kid a kidder, because when we were almost back he stopped and goes “I think I left my phone at the waterfall, we have to go back” and I was like “ok, let’s go!” and immediately turned around and started walking as thu and amy stood there mouths open hoping he was joking. he thinks it’s funny I joke back. but wait, I was talking about HIV and I got off topic, amy says I write how I talk and think, very stream of consciousness and constantly getting distracted, this is very true. so roger is telling me about all of the education that goes on about HIV in africa because it is such and big killer, along with malaria, the top two killers, he tells me. but he says that people don’t want to hear about it, even with the doctors and volunteers and radios and televisions talking about it, people just don’t want to hear about HIV. here was some interesting insight from this local: he says drinking is the problem, or at least a contributing factor… that you drink too much and the girl is there and you forget to use a condom, it simply doesn’t cross your mind. his english is pretty good and he is mostly easy to understand but every once in a while we get confused. that is what I gathered from his rambling as we hiked passed stray dogs, women selling peanuts and children in their sunday’s best. he thinks it’s funny that I get so excited about these things, about everything we see. plants, animals, people, I think everything is interesting and he doesn’t understand, just laughs at my amazement.
interestingly, or maybe not, the farther we get from the city the safer it feels. as we make our way up between mud huts and fields of crops, we are gaining altitude fast and I’m not sure if it’s that im out of shape, or that arusha is at nearly 4,00oft above sea level that explains my heavy breathing. we finally turn, sweaty and panting, to see an incredible view of all of the city. I’ve got pictures, don’t you worry. (did you know that the potatoes they grow here have purple flowers? really beautiful. and they do some polycultures, which is cool, and environmentally sustainable : ) we even learned a little about crop rotation and the timber they grow and harvest and replant. I miss my envi sci classes.)
after an hour or so we make it to roger’s house, a circular mud hut with a thatched roof and a view that any american would pay millions for. so simple: corn kernels out drying in the yard, grandma doing laundry and draping it over bushes to dry, mom cooking inside the hut. our legs are tired so we sit. a little boy approaches us. he is very hesitant. some of the kids are that way, others come running up and grab your hands. some smile and wave, others remain stoic (those are the ones I usually make funny faces at, it sometimes gets a smile out of them). I pat the ground next to me and the little boy comes over and sits. I stick my tongue out at him, he does the same to me. I curl my tongue like a taco, he copies. I do fish lips, he tries and fails (i love winning... no im kidding! we werent competeing... we continue this game for a while. he points at a bug on my shirt and I try to flick it away, it lands on my pants and as im trying to flick it again, trying not to squeal, he reaches over and picks it up and saves me from the bug. I was grateful, im pretty sure if he could speak english he would have said something along the lines of “stupid girl, afraid of bugs”. thu got out some peanut m&ms and gave them to him as a thank you. we were pretty much best buds after that.
speaking of candy, such terrible teeth here! we need to get the OHSU dental school coming on missions or something, because I’ve never seen so many black teeth and caries in my entire life! we hike more and the next surprise we hear before we see – singing! beautiful voices echoing across a huge field up on this hillside, church! it’s sunday after all. the church is small, and on the edge of the hill, with a view like you wouldn’t believe, and a simple green cross over the door that matches the faded and chipping green paint around the windows. just as we get near, people begin to flood out of the church, still singing. the women in their dresses and head wraps of colorful fabrics and prints gather on one side of the field, the men in their slacks and dress shirts that don't fit quite right on the other, and in the middle a singing choir of both women and men. we listen and they soon finish, then church is over and everyone shakes hands and the men turn around because we already caught their attention when we approached and they want to shake our hand or give us a pound (which thu much prefers as it seems less germy : )and ask us where we’re from. one boy even pulls out a map so we are able to point to portland, OR! home sweet home, so far from this hillside village somewhere outside of arusha, tanzania.
we pass a hut covered in corrugated metal sheets, bob marley echoes from inside “every little thing is gonna be alright” – we all sing along as we hike on, further up the hill, toward the jungle… we’re joined by two men for a stretch, they want us to tell everyone back in America hello when we return, and tell them how nice it is up in the hillside. we promised we would, I think im following up on that.
Two random things, roger says the dogs here love avocados and they will sit under the trees waiting for the fruit to fall, i found this amusing. also, saw a little girl, maybe 4 years old (though who knows, she might have been older and just small for her age from what we’re used to in the US), carrying the most giant load of corn stalks on her head, it literally looked three times her size and she was just making her away along like it was nothing. everyone carries stuff on their head here, there’s obviously something they know that we don’t and I think I might practice so that I can carry my book bags to lecture this way once I get back.
so eventually we make it to the jungle, hike down for far too long, make it to a steep muddy trail that roger danced down while we struggled to stay on our feet. I’m thankful I was doing some rockclimbing before I left, my hands feel stronger and I would grab onto little cracks in rocks and knots on tree trunks and use them to catch myself and we slid down the slippery mud. not the best hike when you have a bum ankle, but it did alright considering. we saw blue monkeys on our way down, flying from tree to tree and making crazy monkey noises. lucky us! finally made it to the valley floor where we found the river we planned to hike to get to waterfall. roger left us there alone, in the middle of the jungle, with an ambiguous explanation of where he was going and when he would be back. we chilled, had lunch (also known as a clif bar) and tried to avoid getting bit by the HUGE ants that swarm in paths across the trail (and have a fairly painful bite judging from amy’s screams). at this moment i pretty much wanted a hammock, or google earth so that I could zoom out on our position in the world... wild.
20 plus minutes later roger was back and the hike up the river began. this was like oneotna (a hike in the gorge) on steroid, plus serious growth hormones, and then like times 1000. we were trudging through the water, weaving our way back and fourth trying to find the best path, and coming upon waterfalls and huge plants... super-size me plants!! - why is everything bigger in tropical places? leaves as big as mattresses, ferns taller than buildings, and im guessing some big ole bugs, which luckily we did not encounter. not sure how long we hiked up the river, i was in jaw dropping awe the whole time, feeling miniscule among the jungle surrounding us. we finally made it to the huge waterfall, shooting out from cliffs hundreds of feet above. the water plummeted into the hole in the jungle where we stood and apparently the mist from the waterfall shoots above the trees and looks like a permanent cloud over the jungle so they call it cloud waterfall - original ;) it was incredible.
the hike back out we went a different way. as we were walking a trail, just recovering after possibly the steepest, longest, muddiest, slipperiest trail I have ever climbed (i never exaggerate), we encountered a group of young girls walking the other way. one approached me, more bold than most women here, and shook my hand and got in my personal space and asked my name. her english was excellent and she was delighted when I told her this. the catch is, she was carrying a foot long machete, (probably longer), and she was pointing it at me, then amy, then thu as she asked us our names in turn. it was… terrifying? naw, but I’ve never had a knife that big and rusty so close to my guts.
good news is we’re getting better at the standard greeting here, a sort of banter of words back and forth with appropriate responses depending on which greetings are used. it is so strange to me that so many of the people we see stop what they’re doing to stare. they want to come shake our hands and talk to us, and they use us to make their babies stop crying… no really, this small child was crying today and his dad sees us and turns him around and he just stops, staring at us… I smiled and waved, I think that kid may never cry again. I had asked roger at the beginning of the hike what people think of us… do they think our skin is a weird color? because everyone seems to have something to yell at us, or to yell to him about us… he said we’re all people and I agreed. I asked if they thought our clothes are funny and he said people can pretty much wear what they want. I appreciated all of this, but despite his reassurance, during the hike, as we would approach, the young children would scatter, peering out from around trees and from behind fences as we walk by, and then reappearing once we pass to follow us for a while or just stare.
post-hike we’re tired and so happy to have a warm shower (did I mention we get warm water? well, at least some of the time, if you flip the switch by the shower on and wait like 30 minutes, and if you’re the only one showering, otherwise the shower on the left steals the hot water, I think). roger refers to thu as chai now because we call her “t”, like the letter, a nickname, so when she gets introduced to people here as t, they say “like chai?”, and we say yes, and so roger has taken to calling her chai, it’s pretty cute. after yesterday and today amy has earned the nickname pigpen because no matter what we do she seems to get substantially dirtier than both thu and I. and apparently leading our workout two days ago, the run yesterday, and the hike today has earned me the nickname coach. I’m thinking a few more weeks together and we might have some other nicknames for each other as well ; ) no no, we’ve been getting along well and plan to keep it up. now it’s not even 8pm and we’re exhausted, ready to sleep, but should probably stay up a bit longer. tomorrow is our first day at the hospital and while today was physically draining, I think tomorrow will take a toll on the emotions more than anything. stay tuned. miss you all!
today was a day! ready for this adventure? roger’s been talking to us about hiking to ‘the waterfall’ since the first day we arrived, so at breakfast we decided, why not?(also, the length of this blog is probably some indication that we have some serious time to kill as we are hostel-bound as soon as it gets darks here between 6 and 7, so get ready for a novel)...
while applying bug spray in the hall in preparation for the hike I made friends with a new neighbor, a canadian guy traveling with a buddy. they’ve been traveling since september of last year and they’ve got a few months still to go. apparently they’re petroleum engineers and their european country went under, so they decided to forget work and go experience the world. Their advice for here in arusha is that a taxi pretty much anywhere in town will cost you 3,000/- (tanzanian shillings, obviously), and do NOT go out after dark, even for a stroll down the street in front of the hostel. everyone has emphasized how important it is to stay in after dark or take a taxi, so far we’ve had no trouble abiding by this advice (except tonight, we’re hungry but under house arrest as usual, so a cliff bar for dinner it is).
our bags packed with power bars and water, slathered in bug spray, and camera in hand, we met roger in front of the hostel and started walking. it was 10:30am – we had gotten a late start waiting for daaimah (a girl my age staying at the hostel and working for her friend’s non-profit he started at their college, ASU), who had gone to church with a local and was not back as early as she had expected. we ended up leaving without her, but she did the hike last weekend so it was hakuna matata (no problem : ) the lion king has taught me so much about swahili, who knew?! we walked past the clock tower, an important landmark we’ve become very familiar with, then down past the hospital and on to the outskirts of town. we used the crosswalk at one of arusha’s two whole traffic lights, and then it was all dirt road from there. but not the kind of flat dirt road they sing about in country songs, more like the bumpiest, pot hole filled, rock covered, garbage ridden road ever… it looks impossible to drive on but they do… I struggled enough walking on it. decided to title this blog “turn it into a run” after ashley’s valuable advice that if you trip or slip you should just turn it into a run and no one will know : ) there was a lot of that today. .. annnddd I think we just blew out the fuse in the wall despite using a power converter – what the heck?!
roger and I had an interesting conversation about HIV as we walked. I’m not sure how we got on the subject, we talked about a lot of things on our hike today. we’ve decided that in exchange for the swahili lessons he gives us we’ll teach him french and spanish, both of which he wants to learn. now when we speak it is a mix of four languages and often make believe words I use because learning languages is not my niche. I even spent a while telling roger about my dog, dakota, and the tricks he used to do. roger was getting a serious kick out of it, he laughs at me a lot, I think because he likes to kid and I kid back. I tried to teach him that phrase today, to kid a kidder, because when we were almost back he stopped and goes “I think I left my phone at the waterfall, we have to go back” and I was like “ok, let’s go!” and immediately turned around and started walking as thu and amy stood there mouths open hoping he was joking. he thinks it’s funny I joke back. but wait, I was talking about HIV and I got off topic, amy says I write how I talk and think, very stream of consciousness and constantly getting distracted, this is very true. so roger is telling me about all of the education that goes on about HIV in africa because it is such and big killer, along with malaria, the top two killers, he tells me. but he says that people don’t want to hear about it, even with the doctors and volunteers and radios and televisions talking about it, people just don’t want to hear about HIV. here was some interesting insight from this local: he says drinking is the problem, or at least a contributing factor… that you drink too much and the girl is there and you forget to use a condom, it simply doesn’t cross your mind. his english is pretty good and he is mostly easy to understand but every once in a while we get confused. that is what I gathered from his rambling as we hiked passed stray dogs, women selling peanuts and children in their sunday’s best. he thinks it’s funny that I get so excited about these things, about everything we see. plants, animals, people, I think everything is interesting and he doesn’t understand, just laughs at my amazement.
interestingly, or maybe not, the farther we get from the city the safer it feels. as we make our way up between mud huts and fields of crops, we are gaining altitude fast and I’m not sure if it’s that im out of shape, or that arusha is at nearly 4,00oft above sea level that explains my heavy breathing. we finally turn, sweaty and panting, to see an incredible view of all of the city. I’ve got pictures, don’t you worry. (did you know that the potatoes they grow here have purple flowers? really beautiful. and they do some polycultures, which is cool, and environmentally sustainable : ) we even learned a little about crop rotation and the timber they grow and harvest and replant. I miss my envi sci classes.)
after an hour or so we make it to roger’s house, a circular mud hut with a thatched roof and a view that any american would pay millions for. so simple: corn kernels out drying in the yard, grandma doing laundry and draping it over bushes to dry, mom cooking inside the hut. our legs are tired so we sit. a little boy approaches us. he is very hesitant. some of the kids are that way, others come running up and grab your hands. some smile and wave, others remain stoic (those are the ones I usually make funny faces at, it sometimes gets a smile out of them). I pat the ground next to me and the little boy comes over and sits. I stick my tongue out at him, he does the same to me. I curl my tongue like a taco, he copies. I do fish lips, he tries and fails (i love winning... no im kidding! we werent competeing... we continue this game for a while. he points at a bug on my shirt and I try to flick it away, it lands on my pants and as im trying to flick it again, trying not to squeal, he reaches over and picks it up and saves me from the bug. I was grateful, im pretty sure if he could speak english he would have said something along the lines of “stupid girl, afraid of bugs”. thu got out some peanut m&ms and gave them to him as a thank you. we were pretty much best buds after that.
speaking of candy, such terrible teeth here! we need to get the OHSU dental school coming on missions or something, because I’ve never seen so many black teeth and caries in my entire life! we hike more and the next surprise we hear before we see – singing! beautiful voices echoing across a huge field up on this hillside, church! it’s sunday after all. the church is small, and on the edge of the hill, with a view like you wouldn’t believe, and a simple green cross over the door that matches the faded and chipping green paint around the windows. just as we get near, people begin to flood out of the church, still singing. the women in their dresses and head wraps of colorful fabrics and prints gather on one side of the field, the men in their slacks and dress shirts that don't fit quite right on the other, and in the middle a singing choir of both women and men. we listen and they soon finish, then church is over and everyone shakes hands and the men turn around because we already caught their attention when we approached and they want to shake our hand or give us a pound (which thu much prefers as it seems less germy : )and ask us where we’re from. one boy even pulls out a map so we are able to point to portland, OR! home sweet home, so far from this hillside village somewhere outside of arusha, tanzania.
we pass a hut covered in corrugated metal sheets, bob marley echoes from inside “every little thing is gonna be alright” – we all sing along as we hike on, further up the hill, toward the jungle… we’re joined by two men for a stretch, they want us to tell everyone back in America hello when we return, and tell them how nice it is up in the hillside. we promised we would, I think im following up on that.
Two random things, roger says the dogs here love avocados and they will sit under the trees waiting for the fruit to fall, i found this amusing. also, saw a little girl, maybe 4 years old (though who knows, she might have been older and just small for her age from what we’re used to in the US), carrying the most giant load of corn stalks on her head, it literally looked three times her size and she was just making her away along like it was nothing. everyone carries stuff on their head here, there’s obviously something they know that we don’t and I think I might practice so that I can carry my book bags to lecture this way once I get back.
so eventually we make it to the jungle, hike down for far too long, make it to a steep muddy trail that roger danced down while we struggled to stay on our feet. I’m thankful I was doing some rockclimbing before I left, my hands feel stronger and I would grab onto little cracks in rocks and knots on tree trunks and use them to catch myself and we slid down the slippery mud. not the best hike when you have a bum ankle, but it did alright considering. we saw blue monkeys on our way down, flying from tree to tree and making crazy monkey noises. lucky us! finally made it to the valley floor where we found the river we planned to hike to get to waterfall. roger left us there alone, in the middle of the jungle, with an ambiguous explanation of where he was going and when he would be back. we chilled, had lunch (also known as a clif bar) and tried to avoid getting bit by the HUGE ants that swarm in paths across the trail (and have a fairly painful bite judging from amy’s screams). at this moment i pretty much wanted a hammock, or google earth so that I could zoom out on our position in the world... wild.
20 plus minutes later roger was back and the hike up the river began. this was like oneotna (a hike in the gorge) on steroid, plus serious growth hormones, and then like times 1000. we were trudging through the water, weaving our way back and fourth trying to find the best path, and coming upon waterfalls and huge plants... super-size me plants!! - why is everything bigger in tropical places? leaves as big as mattresses, ferns taller than buildings, and im guessing some big ole bugs, which luckily we did not encounter. not sure how long we hiked up the river, i was in jaw dropping awe the whole time, feeling miniscule among the jungle surrounding us. we finally made it to the huge waterfall, shooting out from cliffs hundreds of feet above. the water plummeted into the hole in the jungle where we stood and apparently the mist from the waterfall shoots above the trees and looks like a permanent cloud over the jungle so they call it cloud waterfall - original ;) it was incredible.
the hike back out we went a different way. as we were walking a trail, just recovering after possibly the steepest, longest, muddiest, slipperiest trail I have ever climbed (i never exaggerate), we encountered a group of young girls walking the other way. one approached me, more bold than most women here, and shook my hand and got in my personal space and asked my name. her english was excellent and she was delighted when I told her this. the catch is, she was carrying a foot long machete, (probably longer), and she was pointing it at me, then amy, then thu as she asked us our names in turn. it was… terrifying? naw, but I’ve never had a knife that big and rusty so close to my guts.
good news is we’re getting better at the standard greeting here, a sort of banter of words back and forth with appropriate responses depending on which greetings are used. it is so strange to me that so many of the people we see stop what they’re doing to stare. they want to come shake our hands and talk to us, and they use us to make their babies stop crying… no really, this small child was crying today and his dad sees us and turns him around and he just stops, staring at us… I smiled and waved, I think that kid may never cry again. I had asked roger at the beginning of the hike what people think of us… do they think our skin is a weird color? because everyone seems to have something to yell at us, or to yell to him about us… he said we’re all people and I agreed. I asked if they thought our clothes are funny and he said people can pretty much wear what they want. I appreciated all of this, but despite his reassurance, during the hike, as we would approach, the young children would scatter, peering out from around trees and from behind fences as we walk by, and then reappearing once we pass to follow us for a while or just stare.
post-hike we’re tired and so happy to have a warm shower (did I mention we get warm water? well, at least some of the time, if you flip the switch by the shower on and wait like 30 minutes, and if you’re the only one showering, otherwise the shower on the left steals the hot water, I think). roger refers to thu as chai now because we call her “t”, like the letter, a nickname, so when she gets introduced to people here as t, they say “like chai?”, and we say yes, and so roger has taken to calling her chai, it’s pretty cute. after yesterday and today amy has earned the nickname pigpen because no matter what we do she seems to get substantially dirtier than both thu and I. and apparently leading our workout two days ago, the run yesterday, and the hike today has earned me the nickname coach. I’m thinking a few more weeks together and we might have some other nicknames for each other as well ; ) no no, we’ve been getting along well and plan to keep it up. now it’s not even 8pm and we’re exhausted, ready to sleep, but should probably stay up a bit longer. tomorrow is our first day at the hospital and while today was physically draining, I think tomorrow will take a toll on the emotions more than anything. stay tuned. miss you all!
party in the usa…
or maybe not so much today...
hi friends, here’s the deal, paragraph 1-4 is pretty much to keep my parents updated on the details of my travel, so I’d skip down to paragraph 5 world cup stuff, the scene starts in a bar here with the song “party in the USA” by miley cirus playing…
Why do we toast bread? This morning we came down for breakfast: bread, tea and fried eggs, pretty standard. I toasted my bread, spread on some butter and jam and started to eat just as a man across the table, Father Thomas from New Orleans, asks me why I toasted my bread. What would you say? I went with “because I like the crunch”...? Thu said because it’s nice to have warm bread…? He wanted to know if it changed how easy the toast is to digest. All of us decided it did not, but no one could really explain our motivation behind toasting bread. He opted against toasting, and the next morning, so did I.
On to more pressing matters: we pretty much did Arusha by foot today with Roger as our guide. We walked around from about 10a.m. to 2p.m. learning the ins and outs of the city. Shoe and clothing outdoor markets, food markets with many unfamiliar fruits and vegetables, and fabric stores galore! Also, unique to Africa compared to other places I’ve traveled, lots of dried sardines, seriously infinite dried little fishes that stink, and beans of every color in different sized bags that made for some pretty sweet pics. Also, spent a good amount of time being pestered at the outdoor craft market where you can find pretty much every souvenir you could ever want, and many that you definitely do not want (full sized maasai spears – I guess some people might want those – and knives and animal hide shields and huge statues – which would be cool to bring home but impossible to pack). So many beaded things and carvings and kelli, you would be in paradise, the giraffe everything is amazing!
I’m getting a little tired of being called “white person” – mzungu in Swahili, a word that greets us far more frequently than the “rafiki” hello I prefer (meaning friend : ) Oh, and also, got called Barbie today, so that pretty much sums up a low point in my life. In other news we saw our first dogs today, we’ve been surprised not to see dogs running around and the two we saw today were, gasp, on leashes! Seemed very unusual for an area like this. We also found out when we returned late tonight that there are apparently dogs that live here at the hostel. Four big, but quite emaciated looking, dogs who greeted us with wagging tails when we were let in through the front gate. Leashes and wagging tails are not something I associate with dogs in places like arusha, but I’m ok with it. If anything the dogs here are just little too friendly (amy may or may not have gotten a love nibble right on her ass) and as much as I want to pet them (or bring one home) I promise, for my parent’s peace of mind, that I won’t : ) I think…
We figured out we can run here today! There’s a nice loop just outside the hostel, part dirt road past these huge fields with soccer goals, except no nets, and not really lines or grass to run on but there were some serious soccer matches going on there yesterday and I think we were grounds for calling a time out as we walked by. The loop we ran today is probably about a mile and it’s a quiet road in terms of cars but with loads of foot traffic, which means lots of staring, like “is there something in my teeth? because everyone’s looking at me funny” staring… or actually more like “did I remember to put pants on? because everyone’s looking at me very confused” kind of staring. As if we don’t draw enough attention with our winter-lasted-until-summer pale Oregon skin, running definitely makes us even more of a spectacle. Glad we can entertain the locals.
I’ve just been rambling, wasting time because we got home and there is apparently a wedding across the small river from our hostel that is still going on (after midnight) and the music is so loud for a moment we were convinced the party was in our room. It’s way too loud to sleep, the karaoke or drunk guy who took over the microphone, is incredibly obnoxious, and you’ll soon learn I can sleep in some noisy situations, so yes, this is quite bad. So I’ve saved the best for last, and the best goes like this – we were picked up by dr lee today at 5 and he took us to a sports bar not far from the hostel. Pretty empty, but lots of tv’s and the world cup playing on every one. We went to support N. Korea as they lost to Uruguay. Poor dr lee, from S. Korea, but sad about the loss just the same... It was a decent game to watch, nothing like the US playing Algeria during our flight here, where every passenger had their individual TV on ESPN and the plane was cheering for the US’s win 1-0 in stoppage time. I’ve never been on a plane that sounded so much like a bar… but back to tonight... The game ends and we find out (yes, we’re very out of touch with everything), that the US plays Ghana at 8:30!! So we hang out for an hour or so and as we do people start trickling into this place. By the start of the game the bar is packed and there are more Americans than I’d like to admit. A group of UN interns or something (I didn’t hear exactly what the girl said) were gathering near us in a mass so obnoxious it took me about 2 second after their arrival to figure out they were American, givin’ us US citizens a bad name with their strapless tops and drunken dance moves and loud voices… they were entertaining to watch, but it’s a little embarrassing to know you’re associated with that, and also, a handful of them were chain smoking <- not awesome. It’s been so long since I’ve been in a place where smoking is allowed and Thu, Amy and I all got home complaining of raw throats and watering eyes. Not sure why anyone would electively inhale that carcinogen… So aside from the annoying Americans (I’m only kidding… mostly), the other half was a combo of foreigners from other places and locals, so the celebration when either team would score was equally boisterous. Great game, incredible game… sad loss… but edge-of-your-seat kind of game!! (did I mention I slept through the first half?), yeah, I think jet lag finally caught up with me and there was nothing I could do to keep my eyes open. We were on a couch dead center in front of the big screen and as soon as I slouched down it was all over. Luckily I woke up for the important stuff… Thu’s pretty much in lust with #10, and Donovan did score the only US goal, so you’ve got to give him that. Amy’s claimed 3, and I’m a little jealous because Bocanegra is a babe. So I’m at a toss-up over Dempsey and Feilhaber, what’d you think? 22 or 8? I’m open to suggestion, unless you’re crushing another player, in which case we’d like to hear from you too : ) It was pretty sweet watching the game, which is taking place at night, when we’re here in the dark too, it’s seems, well it is, so much closer and real. And the energy in the bar tonight was insane!!
Alright, joy to the world, the music has finally stopped, and it’s just after 1a.m. so I guess that’s not bad. I need some shut eye. More adventures tomorrow I hope! Bye for now!
hi friends, here’s the deal, paragraph 1-4 is pretty much to keep my parents updated on the details of my travel, so I’d skip down to paragraph 5 world cup stuff, the scene starts in a bar here with the song “party in the USA” by miley cirus playing…
Why do we toast bread? This morning we came down for breakfast: bread, tea and fried eggs, pretty standard. I toasted my bread, spread on some butter and jam and started to eat just as a man across the table, Father Thomas from New Orleans, asks me why I toasted my bread. What would you say? I went with “because I like the crunch”...? Thu said because it’s nice to have warm bread…? He wanted to know if it changed how easy the toast is to digest. All of us decided it did not, but no one could really explain our motivation behind toasting bread. He opted against toasting, and the next morning, so did I.
On to more pressing matters: we pretty much did Arusha by foot today with Roger as our guide. We walked around from about 10a.m. to 2p.m. learning the ins and outs of the city. Shoe and clothing outdoor markets, food markets with many unfamiliar fruits and vegetables, and fabric stores galore! Also, unique to Africa compared to other places I’ve traveled, lots of dried sardines, seriously infinite dried little fishes that stink, and beans of every color in different sized bags that made for some pretty sweet pics. Also, spent a good amount of time being pestered at the outdoor craft market where you can find pretty much every souvenir you could ever want, and many that you definitely do not want (full sized maasai spears – I guess some people might want those – and knives and animal hide shields and huge statues – which would be cool to bring home but impossible to pack). So many beaded things and carvings and kelli, you would be in paradise, the giraffe everything is amazing!
I’m getting a little tired of being called “white person” – mzungu in Swahili, a word that greets us far more frequently than the “rafiki” hello I prefer (meaning friend : ) Oh, and also, got called Barbie today, so that pretty much sums up a low point in my life. In other news we saw our first dogs today, we’ve been surprised not to see dogs running around and the two we saw today were, gasp, on leashes! Seemed very unusual for an area like this. We also found out when we returned late tonight that there are apparently dogs that live here at the hostel. Four big, but quite emaciated looking, dogs who greeted us with wagging tails when we were let in through the front gate. Leashes and wagging tails are not something I associate with dogs in places like arusha, but I’m ok with it. If anything the dogs here are just little too friendly (amy may or may not have gotten a love nibble right on her ass) and as much as I want to pet them (or bring one home) I promise, for my parent’s peace of mind, that I won’t : ) I think…
We figured out we can run here today! There’s a nice loop just outside the hostel, part dirt road past these huge fields with soccer goals, except no nets, and not really lines or grass to run on but there were some serious soccer matches going on there yesterday and I think we were grounds for calling a time out as we walked by. The loop we ran today is probably about a mile and it’s a quiet road in terms of cars but with loads of foot traffic, which means lots of staring, like “is there something in my teeth? because everyone’s looking at me funny” staring… or actually more like “did I remember to put pants on? because everyone’s looking at me very confused” kind of staring. As if we don’t draw enough attention with our winter-lasted-until-summer pale Oregon skin, running definitely makes us even more of a spectacle. Glad we can entertain the locals.
I’ve just been rambling, wasting time because we got home and there is apparently a wedding across the small river from our hostel that is still going on (after midnight) and the music is so loud for a moment we were convinced the party was in our room. It’s way too loud to sleep, the karaoke or drunk guy who took over the microphone, is incredibly obnoxious, and you’ll soon learn I can sleep in some noisy situations, so yes, this is quite bad. So I’ve saved the best for last, and the best goes like this – we were picked up by dr lee today at 5 and he took us to a sports bar not far from the hostel. Pretty empty, but lots of tv’s and the world cup playing on every one. We went to support N. Korea as they lost to Uruguay. Poor dr lee, from S. Korea, but sad about the loss just the same... It was a decent game to watch, nothing like the US playing Algeria during our flight here, where every passenger had their individual TV on ESPN and the plane was cheering for the US’s win 1-0 in stoppage time. I’ve never been on a plane that sounded so much like a bar… but back to tonight... The game ends and we find out (yes, we’re very out of touch with everything), that the US plays Ghana at 8:30!! So we hang out for an hour or so and as we do people start trickling into this place. By the start of the game the bar is packed and there are more Americans than I’d like to admit. A group of UN interns or something (I didn’t hear exactly what the girl said) were gathering near us in a mass so obnoxious it took me about 2 second after their arrival to figure out they were American, givin’ us US citizens a bad name with their strapless tops and drunken dance moves and loud voices… they were entertaining to watch, but it’s a little embarrassing to know you’re associated with that, and also, a handful of them were chain smoking <- not awesome. It’s been so long since I’ve been in a place where smoking is allowed and Thu, Amy and I all got home complaining of raw throats and watering eyes. Not sure why anyone would electively inhale that carcinogen… So aside from the annoying Americans (I’m only kidding… mostly), the other half was a combo of foreigners from other places and locals, so the celebration when either team would score was equally boisterous. Great game, incredible game… sad loss… but edge-of-your-seat kind of game!! (did I mention I slept through the first half?), yeah, I think jet lag finally caught up with me and there was nothing I could do to keep my eyes open. We were on a couch dead center in front of the big screen and as soon as I slouched down it was all over. Luckily I woke up for the important stuff… Thu’s pretty much in lust with #10, and Donovan did score the only US goal, so you’ve got to give him that. Amy’s claimed 3, and I’m a little jealous because Bocanegra is a babe. So I’m at a toss-up over Dempsey and Feilhaber, what’d you think? 22 or 8? I’m open to suggestion, unless you’re crushing another player, in which case we’d like to hear from you too : ) It was pretty sweet watching the game, which is taking place at night, when we’re here in the dark too, it’s seems, well it is, so much closer and real. And the energy in the bar tonight was insane!!
Alright, joy to the world, the music has finally stopped, and it’s just after 1a.m. so I guess that’s not bad. I need some shut eye. More adventures tomorrow I hope! Bye for now!
swedish fish?
so we've had some trouble finding internet around here, but we've got three computers with us and have been blogging nightly, so get ready for update overload!
word to the wise: this blog and the next are more for my records (and to keep my fam updated on the details of my trip that most people don’t care about), so if you want the good stuff skip down two entries from this and read “turn it into a run”… I’m long-winded enough as it is, might as well know where the good stuff is : )
despite all of the donated supplies that filled the suitcases we brought here, we had to find a way to make room for a few comforts from home, most importantly, treats. amy’s 2 lb bag of swedish fish, thu’s costco sized box of peanut m&m’s (yes, she brought the whole thing and yes, she decided on peanut m&m’s, not because they’re her favorite, but because she figured the peanuts would have much needed protein for us, what a planner : ) and my small gelatinous citric children, known to common folk as sour patch kids, obviously. but treats can only take us so far and when we woke this morning we needed water, so we set out, no idea where we were going, and standing out like (ash and mer, this simile is for you) parrots in a sea of penguins, or the other way around, the point is, we draw some serious attention. later in the day we did realize we weren’t the only caucasians in tanzania, but early this morning we felt that way and it wasn’t until nearly noon, and after 3 hours of wandering around town, that we first saw fellow tourists, surprisingly, sanding out more than us in their zip off pants and funny safari hats (we’ll save those outfits for the serengeti, thanks)… we found water on our own during our first outing this morning, success! but finding the hospital was another story so we solicited help from one of the guards, a maasai man we believe to be named roger, except not, we’ve had some serious issues with the names around here, it’s pronounced more like roser, we think. we’ve also been challenged with the language, despite it being phonetical, but roger did not give up on us and insisted we ask him questions about how to say things as he showed us around town (oh, oh, we saw a woman making french fries, called chips here, in a pan over an outdoor fire, awesome). we’ve got a better feel for the area now and can find our way to mt. meru hospital no problem. sooo speaking of the hospital, I don’t even know where to start… I’m not sure what I was expecting but I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the scene at this government run facility today. The reception area is packed with people, some in weathered clothes, often familiar brands from the states, and others decorated in bright fabrics, really beautiful, wrapped creatively in patterns that are anything but matching. it smelled… bad. the buildings are single story and haphazardly placed, with open barred windows and cracking cement, reminiscent of cebu city medical center. It will be interesting to see inside, interesting to compare… we start monday.
the rest of the day was pretty standard, after lunch with roger - chapati (a sort of potato fried pancake? um… flour tortilla-like thing…? well I don’t know how to describe it but it was good, anything related to a pancake is fine by me), we met up with dr. lee and headed for an internet café near our hostel. the internet is free there and appropriately slow as a result, painfully slow, but the café is beautiful and will be a nice place to spend time while waiting for the next page to download. the outdoor seating area is surrounded by huge tropical plants, there’s a big fountain in the center, and all of the furniture is covered in oversized pillows. best of all there are monkeys!! They hang out in the trees above the restaurant. oh, and did I mention they have pizza? yeah, so maybe tanzania isn’t so roughin’ it after all. we met a group of the british medical and nursing students there and got to hear about their time here. they have been here for anywhere from one week (wiki in swahili) to five in a required program that is far more organized that what we’re doing. unfortunately, it seemed, rather than welcome us, they were more concerned with trying to scare us and intimidate us about the hospital and brag about their big house, personal cook, and swahili lessons (ok, yeah, maybe something to brag about, but that’s beside the point). fact is we’re happy with our quaint hostel, aware of the dangers here, and importantly, very excited for the opportunity we have at the hospital (they sounded disdainful about the time they had to spend here and were baffled that we’d elected to come here by choice). it will be interesting to see them around the hospital, I guess nice to have fellow english speakers, and from what we’ve heard they tend to stand back and strictly observe, which leaves more room for us to get some hand’s on experience.
hey whitty! so we did a workout on the balcony today as the sun set. the locals were VERY confused and even more amused by what we were doing. I thought it went well, might even be sore tomorrow. So thanks whit, our little personal trainer!!
dinner was with dr. lee and a bunch of korean friends of his who are on vacation here and staying at the hostel. they made spicy rice and noodles and we had avocados the size of melons and apples and amazing bananas, far superior to US bananas. It was a fun meal, 12 of us sitting around the table in the hostel, all of the koreans and us and a canadian law student here for the summer. what an oddball group of people, but the food was good and the conversation was surprisingly easy, and I’m sad to know they’ll all be leaving soon.
two interesting things today:
1)saw an albino african. passed her on the street. It was intriguing, I tried not to stare.
2)dr. lee parked his car on a street, nose in parking spots, and we went to get sim cards for the cell phones. when we returned five minutes later there was a spike boot (at least that’s what I would call it, like a metal boot on the front wheel with spikes on either side) and the parking guys were telling dr. lee he had to pay a ticket to get it removed. a ticket for what? well, his back tire was parked on the line separating the parking spots. yes, he had failed to park neatly within his designated spot and as a result was being fined. no idea how much, he talked his way out of it, or bribed them to take it off, not sure which, probably that latter. very finicky about parking etiquette here and not much else it seems.
word to the wise: this blog and the next are more for my records (and to keep my fam updated on the details of my trip that most people don’t care about), so if you want the good stuff skip down two entries from this and read “turn it into a run”… I’m long-winded enough as it is, might as well know where the good stuff is : )
despite all of the donated supplies that filled the suitcases we brought here, we had to find a way to make room for a few comforts from home, most importantly, treats. amy’s 2 lb bag of swedish fish, thu’s costco sized box of peanut m&m’s (yes, she brought the whole thing and yes, she decided on peanut m&m’s, not because they’re her favorite, but because she figured the peanuts would have much needed protein for us, what a planner : ) and my small gelatinous citric children, known to common folk as sour patch kids, obviously. but treats can only take us so far and when we woke this morning we needed water, so we set out, no idea where we were going, and standing out like (ash and mer, this simile is for you) parrots in a sea of penguins, or the other way around, the point is, we draw some serious attention. later in the day we did realize we weren’t the only caucasians in tanzania, but early this morning we felt that way and it wasn’t until nearly noon, and after 3 hours of wandering around town, that we first saw fellow tourists, surprisingly, sanding out more than us in their zip off pants and funny safari hats (we’ll save those outfits for the serengeti, thanks)… we found water on our own during our first outing this morning, success! but finding the hospital was another story so we solicited help from one of the guards, a maasai man we believe to be named roger, except not, we’ve had some serious issues with the names around here, it’s pronounced more like roser, we think. we’ve also been challenged with the language, despite it being phonetical, but roger did not give up on us and insisted we ask him questions about how to say things as he showed us around town (oh, oh, we saw a woman making french fries, called chips here, in a pan over an outdoor fire, awesome). we’ve got a better feel for the area now and can find our way to mt. meru hospital no problem. sooo speaking of the hospital, I don’t even know where to start… I’m not sure what I was expecting but I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the scene at this government run facility today. The reception area is packed with people, some in weathered clothes, often familiar brands from the states, and others decorated in bright fabrics, really beautiful, wrapped creatively in patterns that are anything but matching. it smelled… bad. the buildings are single story and haphazardly placed, with open barred windows and cracking cement, reminiscent of cebu city medical center. It will be interesting to see inside, interesting to compare… we start monday.
the rest of the day was pretty standard, after lunch with roger - chapati (a sort of potato fried pancake? um… flour tortilla-like thing…? well I don’t know how to describe it but it was good, anything related to a pancake is fine by me), we met up with dr. lee and headed for an internet café near our hostel. the internet is free there and appropriately slow as a result, painfully slow, but the café is beautiful and will be a nice place to spend time while waiting for the next page to download. the outdoor seating area is surrounded by huge tropical plants, there’s a big fountain in the center, and all of the furniture is covered in oversized pillows. best of all there are monkeys!! They hang out in the trees above the restaurant. oh, and did I mention they have pizza? yeah, so maybe tanzania isn’t so roughin’ it after all. we met a group of the british medical and nursing students there and got to hear about their time here. they have been here for anywhere from one week (wiki in swahili) to five in a required program that is far more organized that what we’re doing. unfortunately, it seemed, rather than welcome us, they were more concerned with trying to scare us and intimidate us about the hospital and brag about their big house, personal cook, and swahili lessons (ok, yeah, maybe something to brag about, but that’s beside the point). fact is we’re happy with our quaint hostel, aware of the dangers here, and importantly, very excited for the opportunity we have at the hospital (they sounded disdainful about the time they had to spend here and were baffled that we’d elected to come here by choice). it will be interesting to see them around the hospital, I guess nice to have fellow english speakers, and from what we’ve heard they tend to stand back and strictly observe, which leaves more room for us to get some hand’s on experience.
hey whitty! so we did a workout on the balcony today as the sun set. the locals were VERY confused and even more amused by what we were doing. I thought it went well, might even be sore tomorrow. So thanks whit, our little personal trainer!!
dinner was with dr. lee and a bunch of korean friends of his who are on vacation here and staying at the hostel. they made spicy rice and noodles and we had avocados the size of melons and apples and amazing bananas, far superior to US bananas. It was a fun meal, 12 of us sitting around the table in the hostel, all of the koreans and us and a canadian law student here for the summer. what an oddball group of people, but the food was good and the conversation was surprisingly easy, and I’m sad to know they’ll all be leaving soon.
two interesting things today:
1)saw an albino african. passed her on the street. It was intriguing, I tried not to stare.
2)dr. lee parked his car on a street, nose in parking spots, and we went to get sim cards for the cell phones. when we returned five minutes later there was a spike boot (at least that’s what I would call it, like a metal boot on the front wheel with spikes on either side) and the parking guys were telling dr. lee he had to pay a ticket to get it removed. a ticket for what? well, his back tire was parked on the line separating the parking spots. yes, he had failed to park neatly within his designated spot and as a result was being fined. no idea how much, he talked his way out of it, or bribed them to take it off, not sure which, probably that latter. very finicky about parking etiquette here and not much else it seems.
Friday, June 25, 2010
time travelers
found it a little ironic that the movie showing on our flight from ny to amsterdam was The Time Travelers Wife, since we’re feeling a bit like time travelers ourselves. Home time I have at 11pm on the 23rd, but sitting in the airport in Amsterdam it is already the 24th and 8a.m. to boot. We landed to a beautiful sunrise of pinks and purples and the jolt of the plane touching down is what woke me… not the best alarm clock, for a moment I was fairly certain a wing had fallen off mid-flight. I felt particularly fortunate we made it in once piece seeing as we were delayed in ny for “mechanical reasons”. Pretty much my least favorite reason for delay next to lightning storms, and actually, after being on a plane hit by lightning not too long ago, I’d say the ambiguous “mechanical issues” delay is worse. What does that even mean? Does the conveyer belt to move luggage onto the plane need to be repaired? or is the engine sporadically cutting off? Because that makes a difference to me as a passenger! :) Anyway, so we’re getting pretty eager to have this travel part of the journey over and we’ve got a 1/3 of it still to go. I think at this point the main concern is that, between the 3 of us, we’ve got enough luggage to sink a small boat, we don’t know if Dr. Lee is picking us up from the airport as he had originally agreed to, and we aren’t actually certain of the address of the hostel as well as aren’t sure if there’s even a room available for us… all relevant concerns that had us a little stressed as we boarded to KJO. I slept so hard the first few hours of that flight that I missed what I’m sure was an incredible view out my window (love the window seat). I did wake at one point to take in some crazy mountainous rock formations with snow and what looked like small alpine villages, then again, I could have been dreaming. When I finally came to, my 2 neighbors actually commented on my impressive pass out. The woman was a Jamaican born Canadian citizen traveling to Africa to teach women the skill of cutting and styling hair. From what I gathered, this is her life passion and she wants to teach other women to empower them, give them a skill so that they can have an income. I thought it sounded pretty amazing. So much of what we know about developing countries and overpopulation reinforces that empowering women can be an incredible driving force in bringing down the total fertility rate and contributing to the development of a country. This woman was a crack up, she kept talking about the “luxury” of things on the plane in her awesome Jamaican accent and I definitely got a hug from her when we said our goodbyes. Next to me was a man born in Tanzania but raised in Ohio and heading to Dar Salaam for a mission… He was very sweet so I didn’t even mind that he took up a third of my seat, and when we got caramel ice cream he let me and the Jamaican woman split his and if you know me well, ice cream is definitely the way to my heart, so him and I, we were good friends after that. Anyway, he thought it was the funniest thing that I was a vegetarian (word to the wise, request a vegetarian meal on a plane and they always feed you first). I tried explaining, but as with many people I talk to about this in the US, I don’t think my point really got across. Anyway, great neighbors, both doing wonderful things, and I’d say the best company of my three flights. This flight also had the best food, and arguably the best view. Here’s the thing about the view… I slept through the cool Europe part at the beginning, then it was all ocean, and after that desert, but desert like you wouldn’t believe. Hours of nothing but beige sand in every direction; it felt like we were flying over some strange new planet. What made it interesting was the clouds. Perfect white puffy clouds with neat little shadows on the sand below. And it got better, soon there were wide circles of soft, cotton ball looking clouds, with these huge mushroom clouds exploding up above them. Just massive thunderheads billowing up toward the plane, it was awesome. And then it got EVEN better. An hour to arrival and the thunderheads looked black against the deep blue dusky sky and as I’m staring out my window looking for stars or the moon or maybe a sign of life on the ground I notice that one of the thuderheads is going wild with lighting. Just off the wing this cloud is flashing and exploding like a firework. It was like nothing I’d ever seen, hardly a second between bolts. They would come in beats, illuminating the cloud then flickering away just as the next cut through the cloud. It would have sounded so cool, a constant rumble of thunder… At this point it is nearing 8:30 pm on the 24th, our ETA. I have home time as 10:30a.m. on the 24th. we had left for the airport at 3:30am on the 23rd, which makes it easily 30 hours we’ve been traveling, 40 with the time change. Needless to say we were a bit delirious when we deboarded the plane but the smell as we walked off into the warm night air was, I can’t even describe it, the kind of smell that confirms you’re somewhere exotic, and far from home, and that this is going to be a great adventure. The smell reminded me of the Philippines, slightly different, but got my adrenaline pumping with the excitement of traveling just the same.
As for our concerns that we would be luggage-less, stranded at the airport, and clueless as to where to direct a taxi… fortunately I am a strong believer in the power of positive thought and Thu, Amy and I were all thinking some seriously good thoughts because turns out we landed early, got our visa’s no problem ($100 US), got all 6 checked bags in only mildly abused condition, and managed to juggle our 12 pieces of luggage as we walked into a crowd of people holding signs with unfamiliar names and signs for taxi companies. Miracle of all miracles, we’re approached by a small Korean man who asks my name. When I say Lindsay he says oh yes, Lindsay! I’m Dr. Lee! I was seriously so happy I hugged him, no joke, we were all so relieved to find him there, especially after my neighbor on the plane had stressed to me the importance of having someone meet us at the airport. Better yet, he grabs a bunch of our bags and leads us to his lexus suv, that, with only a minor struggle, fit all of our luggage. The 45 minute car ride to the hostel was filled with conversation about the local area, important Swahili phrases we should know (including a song he sang to us), and exchange of information about ourselves and him.
The hostel is… a bit more roughing it than I was expecting, and I wasn’t expecting much, but we’ve settled in quickly and I’m sure it will feel like home in no time. The three of us are sharing a dorm room sized space with three small beds covered in mismatched blankets we didn’t use. The mosquito nets are riddled with holes and I’m thankful Todd and Jenny leant me theirs. Our sleeping bags served us well, but we were all a little toasty. I think Dr. Lee’s warning that it would be cold here has to do with him being acclimated to a warmer climate. Fortunately the beautiful spring and start to summer that Oregon had to offer (how well can you read my sarcasm?) has prepared us for the cool-with-a-bit-of-rain weather we woke to this morning. Big bugs kept me company in the shower, and I think, had I not brought shower shoes, I would not being showering at all seeing as the bottom of the shower is covered with… Fungus? Algae? I’ll go with Aspergillus :) We’re off in search of water today… yes, we arrived last night with no water, no place to buy it, and no way to boil it. When you have no water available it makes you extra thirsty, even if you aren’t dehydrated. Bottom line: we’re here, we’re safe, we’re relatively clean after much needed showers, we’re hungry (but Thu literally brought a Costco-sized pack of M&Ms so I have faith we will survive) and we’re going exploring!!
As for our concerns that we would be luggage-less, stranded at the airport, and clueless as to where to direct a taxi… fortunately I am a strong believer in the power of positive thought and Thu, Amy and I were all thinking some seriously good thoughts because turns out we landed early, got our visa’s no problem ($100 US), got all 6 checked bags in only mildly abused condition, and managed to juggle our 12 pieces of luggage as we walked into a crowd of people holding signs with unfamiliar names and signs for taxi companies. Miracle of all miracles, we’re approached by a small Korean man who asks my name. When I say Lindsay he says oh yes, Lindsay! I’m Dr. Lee! I was seriously so happy I hugged him, no joke, we were all so relieved to find him there, especially after my neighbor on the plane had stressed to me the importance of having someone meet us at the airport. Better yet, he grabs a bunch of our bags and leads us to his lexus suv, that, with only a minor struggle, fit all of our luggage. The 45 minute car ride to the hostel was filled with conversation about the local area, important Swahili phrases we should know (including a song he sang to us), and exchange of information about ourselves and him.
The hostel is… a bit more roughing it than I was expecting, and I wasn’t expecting much, but we’ve settled in quickly and I’m sure it will feel like home in no time. The three of us are sharing a dorm room sized space with three small beds covered in mismatched blankets we didn’t use. The mosquito nets are riddled with holes and I’m thankful Todd and Jenny leant me theirs. Our sleeping bags served us well, but we were all a little toasty. I think Dr. Lee’s warning that it would be cold here has to do with him being acclimated to a warmer climate. Fortunately the beautiful spring and start to summer that Oregon had to offer (how well can you read my sarcasm?) has prepared us for the cool-with-a-bit-of-rain weather we woke to this morning. Big bugs kept me company in the shower, and I think, had I not brought shower shoes, I would not being showering at all seeing as the bottom of the shower is covered with… Fungus? Algae? I’ll go with Aspergillus :) We’re off in search of water today… yes, we arrived last night with no water, no place to buy it, and no way to boil it. When you have no water available it makes you extra thirsty, even if you aren’t dehydrated. Bottom line: we’re here, we’re safe, we’re relatively clean after much needed showers, we’re hungry (but Thu literally brought a Costco-sized pack of M&Ms so I have faith we will survive) and we’re going exploring!!
time travelers
found it a little ironic that the movie showing on our flight from ny to amsterdam was The Time Travelers Wife, since we’re feeling a bit like time travelers ourselves. Home time I have at 11pm on the 23rd, but sitting in the airport in Amsterdam it is already the 24th and 8a.m. to boot. We landed to a beautiful sunrise of pinks and purples and the jolt of the plane touching down is what woke me… not the best alarm clock, for a moment I was fairly certain a wing had fallen off mid-flight. I felt particularly fortunate we made it in once piece seeing as we were delayed in ny for “mechanical reasons”. Pretty much my least favorite reason for delay next to lightning storms, and actually, after being on a plane hit by lightning not too long ago, I’d say the ambiguous “mechanical issues” delay is worse. What does that even mean? Does the conveyer belt to move luggage onto the plane need to be repaired? or is the engine sporadically cutting off? Because that makes a difference to me as a passenger! :) Anyway, so we’re getting pretty eager to have this travel part of the journey over and we’ve got a 1/3 of it still to go. I think at this point the main concern is that, between the 3 of us, we’ve got enough luggage to sink a small boat, we don’t know if Dr. Lee is picking us up from the airport as he had originally agreed to, and we aren’t actually certain of the address of the hostel as well as aren’t sure if there’s even a room available for us… all relevant concerns that had us a little stressed as we boarded to KJO. I slept so hard the first few hours of that flight that I missed what I’m sure was an incredible view out my window (love the window seat). I did wake at one point to take in some crazy mountainous rock formations with snow and what looked like small alpine villages, then again, I could have been dreaming. When I finally came to, my 2 neighbors actually commented on my impressive pass out. The woman was a Jamaican born Canadian citizen traveling to Africa to teach women the skill of cutting and styling hair. From what I gathered, this is her life passion and she wants to teach other women to empower them, give them a skill so that they can have an income. I thought it sounded pretty amazing. So much of what we know about developing countries and overpopulation reinforces that empowering women can be an incredible driving force in bringing down the total fertility rate and contributing to the development of a country. This woman was a crack up, she kept talking about the “luxury” of things on the plane in her awesome Jamaican accent and I definitely got a hug from her when we said our goodbyes. Next to me was a man born in Tanzania but raised in Ohio and heading to Dar Salaam for a mission… He was very sweet so I didn’t even mind that he took up a third of my seat, and when we got caramel ice cream he let me and the Jamaican woman split his and if you know me well, ice cream is definitely the way to my heart, so him and I, we were good friends after that. Anyway, he thought it was the funniest thing that I was a vegetarian (word to the wise, request a vegetarian meal on a plane and they always feed you first). I tried explaining, but as with many people I talk to about this in the US, I don’t think my point really got across. Anyway, great neighbors, both doing wonderful things, and I’d say the best company of my three flights. This flight also had the best food, and arguably the best view. Here’s the thing about the view… I slept through the cool Europe part at the beginning, then it was all ocean, and after that desert, but desert like you wouldn’t believe. Hours of nothing but beige sand in every direction; it felt like we were flying over some strange new planet. What made it interesting was the clouds. Perfect white puffy clouds with neat little shadows on the sand below. And it got better, soon there were wide circles of soft, cotton ball looking clouds, with these huge mushroom clouds exploding up above them. Just massive thunderheads billowing up toward the plane, it was awesome. And then it got EVEN better. An hour to arrival and the thunderheads looked black against the deep blue dusky sky and as I’m staring out my window looking for stars or the moon or maybe a sign of life on the ground I notice that one of the thuderheads is going wild with lighting. Just off the wing this cloud is flashing and exploding like a firework. It was like nothing I’d ever seen, hardly a second between bolts. They would come in beats, illuminating the cloud then flickering away just as the next cut through the cloud. It would have sounded so cool, a constant rumble of thunder… At this point it is nearing 8:30 pm on the 24th, our ETA. I have home time as 10:30a.m. on the 24th. we had left for the airport at 3:30am on the 23rd, which makes it easily 30 hours we’ve been traveling, 40 with the time change. Needless to say we were a bit delirious when we deboarded the plane but the smell as we walked off into the warm night air was, I can’t even describe it, the kind of smell that confirms you’re somewhere exotic, and far from home, and that this is going to be a great adventure. The smell reminded me of the Philippines, slightly different, but got my adrenaline pumping with the excitement of traveling just the same.
As for our concerns that we would be luggage-less, stranded at the airport, and clueless as to where to direct a taxi… fortunately I am a strong believer in the power of positive thought and Thu, Amy and I were all thinking some seriously good thoughts because turns out we landed early, got our visa’s no problem ($100 US), got all 6 checked bags in only mildly abused condition, and managed to juggle our 12 pieces of luggage as we walked into a crowd of people holding signs with unfamiliar names and signs for taxi companies. Miracle of all miracles, we’re approached by a small Korean man who asks my name. When I say Lindsay he says oh yes, Lindsay! I’m Dr. Lee! I was seriously so happy I hugged him, no joke, we were all so relieved to find him there, especially after my neighbor on the plane had stressed to me the importance of having someone meet us at the airport. Better yet, he grabs a bunch of our bags and leads us to his lexus suv, that, with only a minor struggle, fit all of our luggage. The 45 minute car ride to the hostel was filled with conversation about the local area, important Swahili phrases we should know (including a song he sang to us), and exchange of information about ourselves and him.
The hostel is… a bit more roughing it than I was expecting, and I wasn’t expecting much, but we’ve settled in quickly and I’m sure it will feel like home in no time. The three of us are sharing a dorm room sized space with three small beds covered in mismatched blankets we didn’t use. The mosquito nets are riddled with holes and I’m thankful Todd and Jenny leant me theirs. Our sleeping bags served us well, but we were all a little toasty. I think Dr. Lee’s warning that it would be cold here has to do with him being acclimated to a warmer climate. Fortunately the beautiful spring and start to summer that Oregon had to offer (how well can you read my sarcasm?) has prepared us for the cool-with-a-bit-of-rain weather we woke to this morning. Big bugs kept me company in the shower, and I think, had I not brought shower shoes, I would not being showering at all seeing as the bottom of the shower is covered with… Fungus? Algae? I’ll go with Aspergillus :) We’re off in search of water today… yes, we arrived last night with no water, no place to buy it, and no way to boil it. When you have no water available it makes you extra thirsty, even if you aren’t dehydrated. Bottom line: we’re here, we’re safe, we’re relatively clean after much needed showers, we’re hungry (but Thu literally brought a Costco-sized pack of M&Ms so I have faith we will survive) and we’re going exploring!!
As for our concerns that we would be luggage-less, stranded at the airport, and clueless as to where to direct a taxi… fortunately I am a strong believer in the power of positive thought and Thu, Amy and I were all thinking some seriously good thoughts because turns out we landed early, got our visa’s no problem ($100 US), got all 6 checked bags in only mildly abused condition, and managed to juggle our 12 pieces of luggage as we walked into a crowd of people holding signs with unfamiliar names and signs for taxi companies. Miracle of all miracles, we’re approached by a small Korean man who asks my name. When I say Lindsay he says oh yes, Lindsay! I’m Dr. Lee! I was seriously so happy I hugged him, no joke, we were all so relieved to find him there, especially after my neighbor on the plane had stressed to me the importance of having someone meet us at the airport. Better yet, he grabs a bunch of our bags and leads us to his lexus suv, that, with only a minor struggle, fit all of our luggage. The 45 minute car ride to the hostel was filled with conversation about the local area, important Swahili phrases we should know (including a song he sang to us), and exchange of information about ourselves and him.
The hostel is… a bit more roughing it than I was expecting, and I wasn’t expecting much, but we’ve settled in quickly and I’m sure it will feel like home in no time. The three of us are sharing a dorm room sized space with three small beds covered in mismatched blankets we didn’t use. The mosquito nets are riddled with holes and I’m thankful Todd and Jenny leant me theirs. Our sleeping bags served us well, but we were all a little toasty. I think Dr. Lee’s warning that it would be cold here has to do with him being acclimated to a warmer climate. Fortunately the beautiful spring and start to summer that Oregon had to offer (how well can you read my sarcasm?) has prepared us for the cool-with-a-bit-of-rain weather we woke to this morning. Big bugs kept me company in the shower, and I think, had I not brought shower shoes, I would not being showering at all seeing as the bottom of the shower is covered with… Fungus? Algae? I’ll go with Aspergillus :) We’re off in search of water today… yes, we arrived last night with no water, no place to buy it, and no way to boil it. When you have no water available it makes you extra thirsty, even if you aren’t dehydrated. Bottom line: we’re here, we’re safe, we’re relatively clean after much needed showers, we’re hungry (but Thu literally brought a Costco-sized pack of M&Ms so I have faith we will survive) and we’re going exploring!!
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
bon voyage
t minus 10 hours and some change... annndddd i could use about that much time simply to sleep. instead i'm just back from climbing, heading to a bbq at amy's, needing to pack, to be honest, pretty much everything... and still hoping to sleep at least a few hours before leaving for the airport at 3:30 (yes a.m.). it's gonna be a whirlwind two days until our arrival at Kilimanjaro Int'l Airport on the 24th at 8:30pm. that's some serious travel-age :)
Fortunately all supplies are packed in three massive suitcases, thanks again to everyone who helped out with those donations! alright, need to get back to work, mom is pestering me to register with the embassy in case... im not gonna go there. moving on, only excitement and a little bit of stress for now. and i need a big ole american cheeseburger (the veggie variety to be specific) right now please!
saying goodbyes are no fun but im happy to say the next time you hear from me it'll be from an internet cafe in arusha!! wish us safe travels...
Fortunately all supplies are packed in three massive suitcases, thanks again to everyone who helped out with those donations! alright, need to get back to work, mom is pestering me to register with the embassy in case... im not gonna go there. moving on, only excitement and a little bit of stress for now. and i need a big ole american cheeseburger (the veggie variety to be specific) right now please!
saying goodbyes are no fun but im happy to say the next time you hear from me it'll be from an internet cafe in arusha!! wish us safe travels...
Sunday, June 13, 2010
glory reborn
Have to give a shout out to my last travel adventure... There's a link to my blog from my SE Asia trip to the left. Here's a video that pretty much summarizes the amazing people Lauren and I worked with in the Philippines. Hilary, David and Father Heinz, you are all an inspiration! Thanks for an incredible experience and hopefully I'll be back sometime in the future :)
http://dekeyserandfriends.org/world/mediaproject2010
http://dekeyserandfriends.org/world/mediaproject2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
procrastinating
figured i'd get this thing set up before i leave, and when better to do it than during prime study time on a thursday afternoon.
the plan is to keep updates of this adventure during the two months i'm gone. interesting or not, i can guarantee i'll have a following of at least three (i'm talking about you fam, yes, you're bound by genetic relation to read this).
so the details are as follows:
etd - 23 june 2010 (that's less than two weeks away!)
eta - 24 june 2010 in Arusha, Tanzania.
travel companions - Amy Harlow, Thu Pham.
itinerary - working at Mt. Meru Hospital as medical student volunteers.
many hoops to jump through before we leave:
-get vaccines and updated immunizations
-collecting donations of medical supplies
-call visa and tell them of travel plans
-arrange a subleaser for the summer
-move stuff out of the apt
-study and take final test of first year of medical school
-figure out housing while we're there
-pack... what to pack?!
-should probably read up on Tanzania a little before we go as well...
guess that's all for now... wish me luck this last week and a half! i could go for a few days of oregon summer weather before i leave too, so im crossing my fingers for some sun this weekend :) thanks to all who have donated/helped me out to make this trip possible!!
the plan is to keep updates of this adventure during the two months i'm gone. interesting or not, i can guarantee i'll have a following of at least three (i'm talking about you fam, yes, you're bound by genetic relation to read this).
so the details are as follows:
etd - 23 june 2010 (that's less than two weeks away!)
eta - 24 june 2010 in Arusha, Tanzania.
travel companions - Amy Harlow, Thu Pham.
itinerary - working at Mt. Meru Hospital as medical student volunteers.
many hoops to jump through before we leave:
-get vaccines and updated immunizations
-collecting donations of medical supplies
-call visa and tell them of travel plans
-arrange a subleaser for the summer
-move stuff out of the apt
-study and take final test of first year of medical school
-figure out housing while we're there
-pack... what to pack?!
-should probably read up on Tanzania a little before we go as well...
guess that's all for now... wish me luck this last week and a half! i could go for a few days of oregon summer weather before i leave too, so im crossing my fingers for some sun this weekend :) thanks to all who have donated/helped me out to make this trip possible!!
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