July 18

Today can only be described as a whirlwind. We left our homestays near Usa River this morning and went our separate ways to the hospitals where we will be spending the second month of our visit. Leaving was bitter sweet. We are all excited to begin working but know we will miss seeing each other every day at our beautiful school.

Things to be missed: Mama Glory and my incredible Tanzanian family, great friends, hearing Danish every day, the awesome facilities at TCDC, cold beer and volleyball every day, late night dance parties in the classroom, constantly laughing until my “abs” hurt, running into Ericki every morning on our walk to school, Mt. Meru “backdropping” our walk home, swapping homestay stories, Mama Glory’s delicious food, group sing-alongs.

Yes, we are now realizing that we have definitely been spoiled for the past month.

Connie, Juwan, and I are living with Dr. Kway, the mganga mkuu (head doctor) of St. Elizabeth hospital, and his family in Arusha Town. We are only a five minute walk from St. Elizabeth. It’s really strange moving to the city after living in the country side for so long. Busy streets, shops, people and cars. It’s all a bit over-stimulating. I’m going to miss the rice fields and banana farms. It’s like we’re still reading the same book, just a completely different chapter. It can be pretty thrilling at times, the three of us walking around the city on our own time. We will definitely have gained a new sense of independence by the time we return home.

St. Elizabeth is a medium-sized hospital sponsored by a German church. We met Jonas, the hospital’s lead (and only) technician, this morning. His office is a repurposed freight container on the back of the property near storage and laundry. We are under the impression that we will be working with him almost every day. Occasionally we will do a bit of work at Ithnaasheri, a smaller hospital. More on that later. Jonas seemed quite impressed with our ability to understand and speak Swahili, no matter how meager. He took us to all of the wards and introduced us to almost the entire staff-- pharmacists, nurses, doctors, record keepers. Everyone got a kick out of our very rehearsed introductions and I’m positive a few harmless jokes were made (in Swahili) at our expense. St. Elizabeth has a lot of wards – medical, surgery (upasuaji), opthalmics (macho), dental (meno), obstetrics, HIV (CTC). Every hospital has an HIV ward. We [think we are required to] go to church every morning at 8 am. Our daily schedule may look something like:

7-8: wake up, get ready, head to work

8-10: work – take inventory, interview staff about equipment needed, repair broken equipment

10-10.30: tea (chai)

10.30-13: work – today we didn’t have much time to work after introductions. We repaired two chairs and were stumped by an oxygen concentrator, incubator, and an automated blood pressure cuff.

13-13.30: lunch – the hospital has a cantina and there are some nice local restaurants. We ate at Losika House today. Ordered meat and rice. The food was great expect for the fact that I think we ate cow intestine. Juwan has a knowledge of mystery meat, stemming from Korean barbeques. I may become a near vegetarian for the next month. The vegetables here are amazing.

13.30-16.30: work then head home

Our homestay is composed of various rooms surrounding a gated courtyard. A large swarm of little children lives on our street. On our way home from the hospital they came running at us from a block away, screaming. They grabbed our hands and legs and walked/skipped home with us. “How are you? Pipi?” They always want candy. One even spotted Juwan’s Mento’s through his grocery bag. We live with a completely insane 2 year old, Glory, and a 6 year old, Angel, who speaks incredible English. She wants to be a doctor, just like her Grandfather.

We have taken to entertaining ourselves with Connie’s electrified, mosquito-killing “tennis racket”.

Things to look forward to: meeting another family and seeing Tanzania through their eyes, actually fixing equipment, learning from Jonas, assessing hospital needs and using it to guide my Master’s project.

Tata for now. Hopefully some technical updates to come.