The last week together and with our home stays

 

The major thing that happened this week was we moved to our respective hospitals but that wasn’t until Friday! So I should probably update you on what happened the rest of the week. The last week was quite similar to first four weeks. The Swahili classes had some interactions with the locals and some more lessons on grammar and vocabulary. The final day that is on Thursday we had a final evaluation and feedback session where everyone was asked to give both written and oral feedbacks.

Again this week we did not have any technical labs but just some reflection labs where we talked about how working in developing world can be. We also discussed about some forms that are very important to be filled like doing the inventory or performing need finding in our respective hospitals.

The last day before we left, Thursday we gifted our Swahili teachers farewell gifts and thanked them for their efforts and patience. During the labs we cleaned up our classroom, packed some working stuff and then coordinators briefed us about our hospitals and our stay for the second month. After getting home, our homestay took us out for the dinner. Later that night we had to pack up a lot of stuff but I managed to sleep early.

Farewell and thank you gifts

The next day we set out for our final visit to TCDC where we had transportation waiting for us to take us to our respective hospitals. It was a very sad to leave everyone and also our homestay. I gave my homestay farewell and thank you gift. The journey to Karatu, where my hospital was situated was long. First , we, me with two other guys( my partners I talked about and also shared a photo of them)  had to  drop of other people who were situated in Arusha, then we got dropped off at the bus stand from where we took public transportation to Karatu. It was a 2 hour-long journey cramped up journey and we arrived in Karatu at around 3 in the afternoon.

 The goodbye day

We were driven to our house by one of the coordinators in the hospital. It is a big house with huge drawing room and kitchen. We have our rooms and plus one room, where currently there are two Swiss medical students staying. They are really cooperative and told us about the town, we went out for the dinner we went. After the dinner we all were so tired that we went to sleep early.

The next day we set to Arusha again to meet our friends for the weekend. We visited a waterfall in Arusha, again it was about 6-7 kms hike one way. But the waterfall was beautiful and the water was really cold. Everyone enjoyed the trek and later we had dinner (Ethiopian dinner) in the town. The next day we returned back to Karatu again and cooked our own dinner and got ready for our first visit to the hospital.

The waterfall in Arusha

The fourth week

I am almost in my last week of the first month. The end of this week I will be moving to our respective hospitals with my partners. But instead of talking about the future let me know tell you about how my past week has been. The Swahili classes were no different from the previous ones except for new rules and vocabulary. And we had a simple test last week and it went fairly well.

In the labs, we built an infant incubator alarm, which sounds when the temperature exceeds the required level and thus keeps the babies from cooking. An infant incubator is used to keep babies warm when they are born prematurely. This was a two-day lab and it was fun making something so useful and practical that can be put to use.

One of my classmate working on the infant incubator

The other two labs we had reflection sessions like the previous ones. One of this reflection sessions we spoke about issues like some obstacles we might face, what we should accomplish and how to make relations with the staff. It was a nice discussion session where everyone sat in the grass in a circle and discussed about these issues. We also worked on a troubleshooting lab where every group opened some or the other device and troubleshooted the problem.

The reflection session

The troubleshooting lab

It was our last Friday at Mt. Meru hospital.  However, this day was slightly different as it was raining and so we could no longer work in the open, we had to arrange our workspace below two shades. There were no instruments to repair and I so worked on the air compressor I told you in my last blog. I just made another tiny fix with the stethoscope by replacing the missing diaphragm. The final hour of the day all the groups discussed about devices they had fixed for the day. Some students also spoke about the fixes they had made while they were in the operating room. It was a good idea to discuss all this as everyone got some idea on how to repair a device if they found similar problems.

Air compressor from oxygen concentrator

On the weekend we had planned a trip to the Ol Doniyo Lengai which is an active volcanic mountain. We reached the base of the mountain at around 3 in the afternoon after a 6-hour journey. The road was so dusty that we were covered in sand by the time we reached the place. After arriving we decided to visit the waterfall. The trek to waterfall was around 45 minutes and we had to cross the river and the rocky paths to reach the waterfall. The waterfall was amazing and the flow was so forceful that we couldn’t swim against the flow.

The trek to the waterfall

The waterfall

We got back to our camps when we were surrounded by the local msichana ( girls) selling local jewelry. I bought some from a girl and it was difficult to say no to others. After returning we had a quick dinner and we had to leave for climbing the mountain at 11 in the nigh (yes you heard it right!). After resting for some time we set off to trek.

The mountain looked serene below the full moon and we started the trek at around 12. I wouldn’t go through all the details. I would just say that it was extremely difficult and there were some moments during the hike where I doubted myself and wasn’t sure if I could summit the mountain. Thanks to my short height and lack of stamina it took me around 17 hours instead of 11 hours to complete the trek. But I was happy that I climbed all the way to the summit and conquered it. On the summit, we could hear the lava in the crater. Scary and exciting at the same time!!

This is how steep the mountain got 

The crater with active volcano

We got back home at around 3 and were completely tired. I was completely covered with dust from the mountain, as I had to slide all the way down. My pants were torn and my legs were hurting beyond description. I was glad that the day was over and I was home safely. Stay safe (Salama!).

                                                                                                  

The Third Week

Habari gani (how are you) people? I am back with some more stories( doesn’t it feel like you read my blog just moment ago?? Phewww ! Days or should I say weeks are just flying by. By now you must be well aware of my daily routine. Swahili classes this week included an exercise where we have to speak with locals in Swahili. It was a learning experience where I realized I have a long way to go to speak flawless Swahili (its not possible to be fluent in a month).

The interactive Swahili lessons

                                                                                                  

The labs this week were different in the sense that there was no technical work; instead we spent time on reflections. It was great break from the usual technical stuff where we introspected what had changed within and around us. The first session made everyone analyze some poetic quotes in context to our experience with stay and culture in Tanzania. The next day we had a guest lecture by ex-EWH student who had come to Tanzania for the same purpose as ours, however she planned to stay and work for the betterment of the people in Arusha. She is been here for the past four years. It was inspiring the way she spoke! One of us asked us what did she miss the most from back home and she said I miss nothing!! The last session in reflections was an icebreaker activity where each student had to communicate one-on-one with other about 12 topics mentioned by our coordinator.

One of the group  presenting in the reflection session

The day at Mt.Meru hospital was relaxing yet challenging. Remember I told you about the battery I had removed from the generators? I put that to charging, to see if we could reuse it. Rest of the day one of the other girls and me worked on to convert an oxygen concentrator to an air compressor. We also went on a tour around the hospitals just so we got an idea on where to find broken equipment and how to work with hospital staff.

The night after the hospital visit was fun. All of us went around the Arusha market. We had dinner at Khan’s barbeque; I think I mentioned going there in our first week in my second blog. After that we then went to a club where everyone danced till like 3 in the morning.

The next day, Saturday our coordinator had arranged a visit to a school, St. Jude. It’s like a boarding school with huge campus. The graduating advanced level students had organized some activities for us, where we were divided with the students into different groups. We played musical chairs, performed some activities like a play or some dance and then they taught us a song in Swahili (cant remember any of it except for the first verse). We ate lunch with them and they showed us around the campus. They were really happy to have us and asked us if we would visit again.

EWH students with the St. Jude students

The lunch session with the students

And Sunday, I got up at 8. First actual Sunday. The rest of the day my roommate and me spent almost the whole day braiding our hour. Most of you must have seen me in them. It took like 4 hours to finish braiding them.

So guys pretty much this was my week. It is going to remain almost the same for the next 2 weeks. Be happy (kuwa na furaha) !

  

The second week

Seriously I don’t even realize how fast the days pass by and its already a week. I feel like I just updated my blog. The week was pretty much similar to the previous week. We started with our Swahili lessons and ended with the engineering labs. We learned some new Swahili msamiati (vocabulary). We also built our power supplies, something like the portable chargers. It’s one of the things I learned back in my undergrad years but it was an experience to put it to practical use.

 My group members working during the labs

Swahili Classes

We visited a church with our homestay family. Our homestay family really loved our idea of coming to a church. It was my first church ritual and I appreciated all of it. There was this choir, which sang to some devotional Christian songs, and it was a delight to listen to them. One of the sections wanted us to introduce our self. We introduced our self in Swahili and they were really happy to hear us speak in Swahili.

The local church (kanisa)

Something different we did with the Swahili classes was actually implementing whatever we learnt by visiting a local market. We learned some words that could help us bargain like ghali sana (too expensive). Our teachers gave us around 2000 Tsh (around Rs. 70) and we were asked to buy anything we could. The market was no different than the market I had seen in India, but the bargaining was different. I realized bargaining is so easy when we do that in our native language but its really difficult in some new language. I managed to get some green leafy vegetables, about 4 brinjals and around 4 tomatoes in those Rs, 70 I had and still saved some Tsh 400 ( Rs. 10).

Some of the vegetables we bought from the market

The day at Mt. Meru was interesting and also a bit disappointing. Remember in my last post I mentioned about a device that took us a day to fix it.. Apparently that wasn’t the end. We tested it and it stopped working. We had to open up the device again and fix some other problems only to realize that it wont work because we did not have a replacement for one of the important parts of the device. So we had to leave it and couldn’t fix it. It took almost half our day to figure out that it wont work. It was really frustrating but we realized that that’s how its going to be in hospitals where we can fix some and some have to be left unused.

Oxygen Concentrator (did not work!)

The next half I worked on an automatic blood pressure machine that had a tilted screen. It was an easy fix and I just had to open it up, put the screen in place and voila it worked perfectly fine. After fixing that I opened a UPS power generator that wasn’t working to see if I could use the batteries for some other devices. When I opened it the batteries were covered with zinc oxide and while I was cleaning them I got it all over my face. I could taste it all my lips too and it was disgusting (apparently its not supposed to be inhaled or swallowed). The batteries were really drained and we thought of recharging them the next time with our self-made power supply.

That was the end of the week. We got back home early, as we had to pack for our Safari weekend. Had to get up really early the next day as, we were meeting at around 7 in the morning at TCDC. Our group consisted of about 27 people and we were divided in 4 jeeps for the safari. The safari was a two-day trip. The first day we visited the Ngorongoro conservation and the second day we visited the Tarangire national park.

 One of the safari jeeps

  

Born and brought up in India I had seen couple of safaris but I couldn’t compare it to them and was awestruck by their beauty. Just to give you all a little background, the Ngornogoro crater was formed from the volcanic eruptions from the surrounding mountains. It is 260 square kms wide (that’s vast) and about 610 meters deep. The land is mostly covered by grass and is dry, yet supports a whole lot of fauna. The view was breathtaking and the to see the diversity in the animals was like cherry on the cake. Vervet monkey, baboon, jackal, lion, zebras, warthog, African buffalo, wildebeest, impala, gazelles were the animals we got to see from a short distance. We had our lunch in the midst of the craters with hippos resting in the nearby lake (its dangerous!). We ended the safari at around 4 in the evening. It felt like heaven as we went up the crater and we realized the vastness of the crater (cannot describe it guys).

The Ngorongoro Crater (just half of it)

We rested at a campsite outside the park and they had set tents for us. But as my coordinator mentioned it was glamor camping as the only thing we did similar to camping was sleep in the tents. Otherwise everything was like staying in a lodge. The organizers served the meals, where the dinner was a four-course meal with fruits as desserts. Everyone stayed awake till midnight and enjoyed the beauty of night sky and stars shining above us, it was so mesmerizing and serene.

The tents

The next morning we started for the Tarangire national park, which was completely different than what, we saw the previous day. We saw almost completely different sets of animals including giraffes, loads of elephants (got around 300-400 pics just of the elephants) and also saw some really colorful birds. Again, we had lunch in the park and then after lunch started our journey back home.

Tarangire National Park

As promised I tried to keep the blog as small as possible. I will update you about this week and many more adventures in my next blog. Don’t forget to check the safari photos on facebook . Badaaye!!