This week was fairly uneventful, which was actually really nice. The new group is here, and they are generally older (late 20s-71!), though one 19 year old on gap year. They are very serious and everything is a big to-do, not laid back at all. They’re all on safari right now so its only 4 of us at the house, which is actually quite nice. We went for Indian food last night at a restaurant called “el rancho,” which is obviously, not Indian, but the food was really good! Its incredible how cheap things are here. We went for drinks at the Kindoroko hotel, took a taxi to dinner, had dinner, then another taxi to glacier (a bar), and another taxi home, ends up being about $20-25 per person, for the entire night. We’ve made friends with one of the taxi drivers who we’ll call whenever we need rides, we call it our african dial 6, and the most expensive a ride can be is 5000 tsh (or about $4). Today we are supposed to go to a wedding, which is really exciting! One of our friends (local) is going and invited us along.

Last week when we were walking from the bathroom (a local coffee place b/c the hospital bathrooms are really gross…) back to work a dog started following us, people generally don’t keep dogs as pets here, and will for the most part be mean to them, so she seemed to like that we weren’t kicking at her. We tried to get rid of her, but she kept following us, eventually into the hospital compound. We went into one of the wards and tried to block her, but she ended up running in and hiding under one of the patient’s beds…notOK, but everyone just seemed to think it was funny. We did eventually loose her, but it wasn’t easy, we had to run into one ward close the door and sneak out the back.
Went into surgery again, this time was better than the last, smells were of course terrible, but it is getting easier. It’s really hard watching unsafe IV starts (sometimes without gloves) or the unsterile conditions in general. Next week we’re spending some time at a diiferent clinic (Bodeni) with Julien who works there, which will mostly involve getting injections, assisting in exams, and malaria testing.
I’m very grateful to have this expereince that I couldn’t in the US (too much red tape!), but a lot of the time i feel fairly upset by the things I see. When people are in pain many of the doctors may ignore them, or just laugh. Not sure what thats about…
We got a tour of “shanty town” this week, which is ironically, the nice part of town, it’s basically large homes on compounds, and many are really nice and comparable to the US, if you’re white, you live there is what we were told. Others who live there are doctors or people who have been successful in buisness somehow.
I cannot believe that at the end of next week I’ll be half way through my program, and only three weeks away from climbing Kili… Next weekend we’re planning on going camping at some local hotsprings with a few of our local friends (from Pristine, who took us on safari and are climbing kili with us), should be fun! But today and tommorw, just relaxing!