Culture Shock Extreme

So today is my first day in London. Wow! Can we say culture shock. I went from extreme poor conditions to extreme rich conditions. London is incredibly high tech and modern, at least the areas we were in. At this point, I am now with my friend Dana for my almost 5 day layover. Yes, thats right, it is a layover! When I booked my tickets using frequent flyer miles, the only ticket I could get out of Tanzania was on July 16th. The flight went to London, where I was so unfortunate to not be able to get a flight out of there till July 21st. (Can you hear my sarcasm?)

This actually worked out great. It was just long enough to get a good, full experience of London, but not too long to make it long and drawn out.

The first day in London we bought tickets for the double decker tour bus, which was good since it gave us a little bit of an idea of the layout of the city. We got off and walked around Parliment and Buckingham Palace. We got to see the London Bridge and many other places. We also went to Harrods (not my idea!), which was massive! It was a pretty tame day, especially since the weather didn't really seem to want to corporate. It would rain awhile and then quit. We walked to our hostel that afternoon, about 2 miles, in the rain. We did at least have ponchos which we had grabbed from the tour bus. Those came in handy!

The Time Has Come....Goodbye Tanzania :(

Yesterday was a fun day. I got back into Dar, where I would be flying out of. To my surprise, Justin was actually still in Dar waiting on the his dentist appointment. So we got to hang out and look around Dar. It is funny because when we first flew into Tanzania and into Dar, I was nervous everywhere I went. I was afraid of everything and everyone. After spending more than a month in Tanzania, I come back to Dar and I was very comfortable with the city and the people. We went to a wood carving market and I perfected the art of bargaining yet again.

Today has finally come. We woke up this morning, got all my stuff rounded up and hauled it down to the taxi. Justin and I said our goodbyes again. I jumped in the taxi and off we went to the airport. I went through secuirty and boarded the plane. As I sat in my seat waiting for the plane to take off, the flight attendants walked through the cabin and sprayed pesticides in the area. Wow, goodbye third world country!

So Long Tanzania, You Will Be Missed!

Half Day at the Orphangee

This morning I spent a half day at the Orphangee. I just wanted to check it out and see the kids. So we caught a daladala over to Upendo with the other volunteers and I played with the kids for a couple hours. As I walked up they all started yelling, Baba, which means dad in Swahili. They were cute. It was a little heartbreaking being there, but at the same time I'm glad I got to spend some time there.

Crystal and I left around noon and went over to the clinic. There was a small crowd at the clinic, but it was all mothers and babies that were there for counseling and vaccinations. By about 2pm, the crowd was gone and around 3pm we left for the day. Crystal and I went back into the downtown area. We did some shopping, had a bite to eat, then a little more shopping in the Masai market. After this, we went to Peter's Club to meet up with the other volunteers for drinks.

We walked back to the house after dark. When we got back to the house, we learned of the horrific day Maggie had at the house by herself. Basically the alter ego of Frederick made for a horrible day for her.

Waterfall Exploring Day..

Today we woke up and went to town to meet this guy Eamon that the girls had met out in town. He was going to go with us to this village called Manguara where we were going exploring. The daladala ride was about an hour to Manguara where we caught up with Tamar, Hadassah, Maggie, and Justus who were already there. When we got there we went to eat at a local place, then started walking through the bush to go to the waterfalls. We went to the first one, which was a somewhat smaller one. Then the second one, a slightly larger waterfall, which we swam at. The water was freezing cold, but it was cool swimming under the waterfall.

We left this waterfall and started towards the third waterfall. We stopped to thave some bananna beer. It was a little nastier than I remembered from the previous night. Then we continued on to the third one, which was a smaller waterfall, but it had to place to jump in, which was fun. It was probably about 5 meters high. Nothing comparable to the 14 meter jump earlier in the trip! This one was a little nerve racking though, because we weren't sure how deep it was and whether we would hit bottom if we jumped in! The local guy that was showing us around jumped in, so we decided it was ok. I jumped in and I hit bottom, but it wasn't bad and I actually just kind of softly sat down on the bottom, so it wasn't bad.

We hung out at this waterfall for a little while longer, and then went back into the village. We caught a daladala back into Moshi. We went to the bar on the roof of the Kindoroko Hotel where we hung out the rest of the night. At some point we left and got a taxi to take us back to the volunteer house, which was a fun ride! Good night!

Vaccination Day

Tamar and Hadassah were going to come to the clinic with me this morning, but when I woke up they were still in bed. So Trent and I left to go catch our first daladala into Moshi. We walked down the dirt road for about 10 minutes till we got to the bus stop. Then we took the daladala into town, where we got off at the hotel downtown. We walked up the hill to another bus stop and got on another daladala that would head out to the area we worked in. He would get off a couple stops ahead of me in order to go to the hospital. My stop was the very last stop on the route. From there, I walk another 10 minutes to get to the dispensary - that is if I can find it!

I got off at my stop, pretty confident that I knew where I needed to go, and started walking. I came up to my first split in the road, so I have a choice to make. I choose the direction I thought and kept on walking, but as I kept going I started feeling a little less unsure about my decision. A local walking behind me took the opportunity to practice his English by speaking to me, so I took the opportunity to ask him if I was heading in the right direction. Of course, he told me that I needed to turn around and go in the opposite direction. I went back and turned and went the other way. About 2 minutes later I was somewhat unsure, yet again! I asked another lady outside her house, she didn't speak English, but found someone who did. I asked her if she knew the way to the dispsenary, and she started taking my back in the direction I had just come from! Luckily, at this point, I saw Frederick's car turning onto the road. I hopped in the car with him, and Tamar and Hadassah was in the car with him. He took us the rest of the way to the dispensary. I could tell as soon as I got in the car that he wasn't very happy, nor were the girls, but I didn't ask. We got to the clinic, and Frederick finally left leaving the girls at the clinic with me. They told me that when they woke up they told Frederick they were going to go to the clinic with me today, and just wanted information on how to get there, ie. which daladala's to take. Evidently, Frederick didn't like that to much and yelled at them and told them he would take them, but they would have to pay him. He refused to let them go by themselves. This was the first introduction to his alter ego side!

The clinic started out kind of boring, but then people started arriving for vaccinations. I asked Helen if I could give some, and she said yes, sure. So I got to give vaccinations for the rest of the morning - which this actually isn't that big of a deal for me considering I give vaccinations a lot in the military. After this, we got to watch and assist in counseling being given to expecting mothers. Basically, the nurse took their information, counseled them on HIV, took vital signs, did a physical, and lastly an HIV blood test.

The first one was really smooth. Nothing to fear. The seoncd one, however, was a little different. The lady started freaking out, and the nurse was trying to calm her down, but she just didn't want to take the test. We couldn't figure out if she was just afriad of the needle, or if she was afraid of learning the results of the test. She was she stressed out she almost passed out. The nurse told us that she was really worried that the lady had not been truthful about something. I guess it turned out that she was just really freaked out by the needle, because she came back negative. Both ladies came back HIV negative.

We ate a late lunch and then afterwards, the doctor told us he needed to leave early and we could leave with him. So we all walked to the daladala stand together and rode into town together. It was a pretty packed ride. I thought it was pretty crazy how a doctor rode the daladala just like everyone else. I can't imagine a doctor in America riding on a horrible public transportation system.

Later that night, Hannah, Frederick's wife, taught us how to make chapati. After dinner, we played a few games and went to bed.

So Long Justin...

Woke up this morning for breakfast, then Frederick took Justin and I into Moshi. We dropped Justin off at the bus stand so he could catch his bus into Dar. It was a kind of sad moment, because we had been together now for almost 2 months. Our travels were coming to a close and the scary part was our lives were about to begin - his once he got back to Meredith's village and mine once I got back to the US. When we arrived at the bus stop it became a surreal moment, and it was kind of like we both knew this moment would come but had hoped it wouldn't.

After dropping Justin off, Frederick and I left for the clinic where I would be working over the next week and a half. I was going to be working at the Shirimatunda Dispensary clinic in an outlying village. Frederick introduced me to the doctor and the staff at the clinic and then quickly headed out to go tend to other volunteers. I stayed with the doctor the entire day, watching him tend to patients. As he saw each patient, he would usually talk to the patient awhile in Swahili and then turn and tell me what was going on in English so that I could keep up with what was going on. Towards the end of the day, he didn't do this near as much, which was fine because half the time I knew what the diagnosis was going to be anyway. Probably 75% of the people we saw today had malaria, which was alarmingly high I thought. I would have expected that in the hot, wet environments of Dar and the coast, but not so much in the colder, mountain regions of Moshi. I got to help out some by listening to patients lung sounds or taking their blood pressure. For the most part the adults were fine with me being in there. The children on the other hand were always scared to death of me! A few times the doctor asked me to listen to the lung sounds of small kids, and you could almost be certain that as I approached them with the stethoscope they would burst into tears and start screaming. As long as I maintained an appropriate distance they could withstand this reaction, but as soon as I started to get close to them it was no holding back!

The clinic was very busy! I arrived at around 9am and the doctor saw patients non-stop till almost 3pm. I would guess that we saw around 50 people that day!

I learned that kids under the age of 5 with malaria get free medical treatment, but everyone else had to pay 500 shillings. This actually isn't much, considering you can buy a large bottle of water or couple pieces of fruit for about 500 shillings. I would therefore assume that this isn't relatively expensive for the average Tanzanian, but then again I really have no way of knowing for sure. Also, treatment of STIs or sexually transmitted infections is free for all ages. The doctor told me that this is to encourage people to seek treatment and basically all he does is take down some information in a separate log book which is for the government, and then the government foots the bill. The doctor also gives the medicine to the patient directly in his office to ensure patient privacy, which I thought was pretty interesting.

After work was over, I went out an talked to one of the nurses, Helen, while I waited on Frederick to pick me up. She was nice, and said she would teach me a few words of Swahili everyday. We talked about swine flu, which she said she was very worried about because a case had been reported in Nairobi. That actually is pretty scary for them considering the lack of adequate health resources and health standards, and the greatly diminished immune systems of what seems to be many people who have malaria here in the region.

Frederick, along with some of the volunteers from the orphangee, picked me up from work and we went into town. We went to the internet cafe for a little while, then myself and a few of the other volunteers went downtown as Frederick took some new arrivals back to the volunteer house. We walked around downtown for a little while, then stopped at this bar and talked for awhile till Frederick came to pick us up. He took us over to a place to get our first good sighting of Mt. Kilimanjaro, which was just incredible! It was insane to think people had climbed to the top of that! It definitely made me want to climb to the top of it, but at this point I don't have the time or the money to squeeze it into my trip! Maybe next time! :)

Back at the house, I talked to a guy who was a first year medical student. He was working at the hospital. He said it was pretty interesting. He is basically shadowing and assisting from the sounds of it. He said he was in one surgery and the power went out! So he had to hold a flashlight so the surgery could go on! How crazy is that!

On to Moshi

We hung out all morning at the internet cafe in Arusha, then walked to the bus stop and found a bus that was going to Moshi. We arrived in Moshi around 3pm, where I called Frederick (the volunteer coordinator) to come pick us up. He took us back to the volunteer house were all the volunteers were staying. Luckily, it was ok for Justin to stay with us for the night (although it would have been far cheapier for him to have stayed in Moshi we soon found out - of course after he had already taken us to the volunteer house). Frederick was from Kenya. He seemed to be a somewhat nice man, although we kind of had our doubts about him. We got to meet Dana, another volunteer from Boston who was working at the orphangee. We got back to the house, and Frederick explained the rules to us.

We then went back into town to get some money and run some errands. Afterwards, we went back to the house. Frederick invited (except that he didn't really give us much of a choice) to go with him to pick up two other people flying into Kilimanjaro Airport later that night. We first went to a little bar out on the main road and stayed there for a little while. Then we went to the airport, picked up Tamar (from Canda) and Hadassah (from London) and went back to the house.