jambo portland, eh?

you better bet when germany played spain we were there cheering our hearts out for espana. then again, im not exactly sure why we chose spain over germany, but our crowd of travelers and locals overtook the loft seating at the empire bar (any place with a photo of tupac and bob marley on the wall is fine by me) and had a great time yelling down at all the people rooting for germany. one guy had the vuvuzela (sp?) from the world cup that he was obnoxiously blowing the entire game. by half time I would say about 95% of the bar was ready to break the thing over his head and the other 5% must have suffered hearing loss at some point in their life. so the second half rolls around and we’re all caught up in spain dominating the game (no offense germany fans) when we hear massive commotion downstairs. from our vantage point we see a serious fight break out over, of all things, the horn. this is not your run of the mill drunk guy trying to assert authority fight, this is an all out, punches being thrown and face contact made, fight. relieved we were safe in the loft, we all just peered down to see how things played out. about five guys were trying to hold back the one dude, another half a dozen were on the vuvuzela guy and everyone around was scattering to get away from the brawl. in the middle of the action the horn was dropped and one of the germany supporters snatched it up and hid it slyly behind his chair. we were thrilled. and even more excited when spain scored for the ultimate win. great game.

fitting seven in a small cab, not a problem here. since andrew’s been here and we’ve got deepaul and daaimah around, we are six and we’ve been like a little arusha family (we’ll adopt pretty much any hostel guest as well and sebastian is our latest member), making dinner, going out to dinner, watching world cup, and exploring the city more… except the more time we spend here the more you realize arusha is pretty small. we see our rafiki wearing a santa hat and riding his bike almost every morning. also, when we were walking to the hospital today I was telling andrew about the albino african we’ve seen and then she walked right past us! small town, eh? yes, we took andrew with us to the hospital, and yes, he started feeling woosy in the labor ward and had to leave. have I mentioned that spending so much time with laboring mothers just reinforces how much stronger women are than men :) no hard feelings all you boys out there but you go spend a week on the labor ward in arusha and there’s no way you’ll disagree.

labor ward was chaos as always (though nothing compared to monday), and we had a primi gravidae mom so reminiscent of monday’s woman that we are really stressing. worried we’d see a repeat of that situation, especially when the mother had again been laboring for so long and the nurse mentioned getting the resuscitation kit ready, we were on the nurses and docs like crazy making sure they were aware of the situation and doing what they could to help her. fortunately all went well (if you count the nurse performing a huge episiotomy and forcefully shoving the fetus from the mother’s stomach well), and the baby came out wailing. the mom might have named that baby happy. we’ve also had mothers named happy, or better than that, the ever-common happiness, gladness, joyness, or, get this, lightness. and today in the peds ward one of the boys was definitely named goodluck. they get real creative with the naming around here. on another upbeat note, since I’m sharing all of these uplifting names, we handed out a few scrub caps made by the wonderful michelle, one of the girls who traveled here last summer. the nurses love, LOVE, the scrub caps. well they love all gifts and half the time when we’re giving them donations I feel like we’re bribing them to like us, but every good doctor knows you have to do what it takes to keep your nurses happy and we’re definitely doing what we can to keep them happy. I think giving them the hand-sewn scrub caps will be a turning point in our relationship with the nurses. I even had one of the woman talk me through starting an IV today and it went well, I started my first IV!… think I’ve got the hang of it. speaking of learning new skills, dr. lace is finally here, a peds doc from salem, and he said we’d hopefully be learning how to perform BTL (bilateral tubal ligations) so that when we head out the villages we can help dr. temple (another doc from salem who comes here in late july) perform them under local for a bunch of the woman who are done with the whole childbirth business. I cannot wait!! more women around here need access to this form of contraception. we’ve been handing out more condoms, using them to bargain at the market which just cracks me up. the problem is we had this great idea to hand them out to the women but everyone we’ve talked to about this says it will be a waste because it is not the woman’s choice to use protection, which is why we need to hand them out the men and hope they’re complacent condom users. after what we saw last night at the via via bar/club we go to on thursdays, I hope that it is catching on here.

on a different note, finally tried legit local cuisine and I could not have been more into it. one of my favorite things about traveling is trying the local food and so far we hadn’t had much of the street food aside from chipati, which we all love. so we go to this little restaurant, only two tables and a few stools and food so unfamiliar I could not identify a single thing in the display case or on the menu. we got some ugali to split. ugali is maize flower and water and it’s made into this past that looks like mashed potatoes but it is harder than that, still soft but you can tear off pieces and dunk it in this steamed cabbage stuff and beans. you eat it all with your hands, even though it’s super messy. I felt like a little kid making such a mess and grabbing food (that was farrrr from finger food) with our hands. we also had this strange chick pea mush ball thing with maybe some green stuff mixed in, don’t remember what it was called but I liked it, and also chipati maji which was a lot like a crepe. finally this rice flour fried thing that was pretty much like tanzania’s version of a donut. such odd food but I was loving it!! not sure the girls were as into it as I was but, more for me, right? :) it got me really excited to try more of the local food.

headed off to visit the canadians in their hillside village today where they do hospital and dental stuff. it’ll be cool to see where they work, and fridays at the hospital are ridiculously dull so we let dr lace know and he didn’t seem to concerned. I’ll let you know how it goes, eh?