Mambo!

I have safely arrived in Africa! I arrived very early Sunday morning in Arusha- 4:30 am Arusha time. Once we arrived I went straight to bed and woke up Sunday morning when I met all of the other medical student and nurses that were living in the house. We had a pretty lazy day and went down to a local sports bar/pool/gym and spent the day lounging and swimming.

Monday we had our orientation to Arusha town center. In order to get into town we walk 20mins to the dala dala stand. A dala dala is a type of taxi bus. There are enough seats for about 16 people, however that has yet to be the case for any of our rides in the dala dala. My record so far is 26 people- on that ride I was standing next to Val trying to hold onto anything I could so I didn't fall onto Val who then would have fallen onto a woman's lap. The record for the house is 28 people and two chickens. Once we finished with the 20 min dala dala ride we walked to the hospital so we would know where to go once we were on our own. After that we went to lunch at small place with traditional food. We had rice, beans, cooked cassava leaves, and barbecued chicken. To finish our day in town we went to the Masai market- a local craft market and I haggled for some gifts. That night we had our first official Swahili lesson (although I had picked up quite a bit just from being in the house with the other students and the staff that work at the house). Not many locals speak English so basic Swahili is really helpful. We also had our first meal from Witness the cook that lives with us at the house. She is incredible and always greets you with a "Mambo, Mambo! Bomba bomba, rafiki best!" Which essentially means hello, how are you?I am fantastic my best friend! Her cooking is wonderful and dinner conversation is alway fun with her at the table.

Tuesday we headed back into town for our hospital orientation and meeting with the head medical director. He gave us an overview of the hospital and showed us around onto the ward we would be working in. The hospital is quite large but incredibly overcrowded. There are people everywhere. A typical ward is one large open room with many beds and as many as four patients per bed. There is barbed wire lining the connecting sidewalks between buildings to try and prevent patients and families from lying the grass but there are still loads of people all around the grounds. After our tour we went out to lunch and then headed back to Players for an afternoon of swimming before our evening Swahili lesson. That evening I joined in the nightly card game and then went to watch the football(soccer) match with some of the students from the UK.

Wednesday was our first day of work. I began my placement in the neonatal unit. The unit is divided into 3 large rooms each one with 4 cribs and 2-4 babies per crib. They do not have incubators so they have wall heaters to keep the rooms at about 30C. It is already very hot and sticky here and in the neonatal unit you have heat on full blast- I was soaking with sweat within 10mins of being there. The babies are all extremely ill and there is little to no resources available to help them. The only thermometer in the ward was one that required batteries and was donated but they do not have to proper batteries so it does not work. So the doctor just uses her hand to try and estimate the babies temperature. The incubator and warmer they have are both broken so they are typically used as extra beds or sit unused. It was so difficult to see these little babies suffer so much but with limited resources there is really only so much to be done. When walking me around the ward for he first time the doctor told m e she chooses to see the positive even in the broken equipment by being thankful that people want to help these children.

I feel like I have been here awhile already, all of the staff h as been so helpful and have truly made the adjustment as painless as they possibly could. It is quite a steep learning curve from learning to ride the dala dala To doing your best to speak broken Swahili. The first day was pretty rough but tonight I am truly starting to enjoy the country and its people. I am excited for the adventures I am going to have starting with going to hot springs and a waterfall along the base of Kilimanjaro tomorrow. I haven't had much opportunity to take pictures yet but will have some from the hotsprings on my next post.

Much love from Africa!
Kwaheri! (bye!)