Month 2 - part1

I know guys I haven't updated since a month and believe it or not, I blame it on the excellent internet connection I got back in Karatu!! ( if you didn't realize I was being sarcastic!). So I thought its better to update you all, once I get out from the city. And so, as one month is a long period, the blog ought to be long ( so I am dividing it not two parts).

Or hospital entrance

So after spending a wonderful weekend, we returned to Karatu all ready and excited to start out work on Monday. I got up at 6 and had a quick breakfast, getting ready by 7. We left the house with our roommates, who are 2 swiss girls working in the same hospital as ours as medical students. The shuttle picked us up at 7.10 and believe it or nor we cramped about 20 people in a vehicle with capacity of maybe 12-15 people. The road to the hospital was so bumpy that sometimes I thought, the vehicle would disassemble by the time we reached the hospital, I kinda enjoyed it though!! At 7.30, we would visit the church and attend the prayers for about 30 minutes, did not understand anything, but we knew it was important as it was important for the hospital staff. So we never missed church for the whole month, I mean the four weeks we were there in the hospital. 

The morning church

After the church, we attended the hospital meeting where they usually discussed about the admitted patients and what measures were taken. That was also attended everyday by us for obvious reasons. In some of the meetings, we announced the fixes we made so that the entire hospital was aware of them and they could put the devices to proper use. They were really happy with them and always mentioned how grateful they were with all the repairs.

The morning staff meeting (the doctor in-charge with our fixed suction pumps)

We usually started our work at about 8.30 am or 9 am depending on when the hospital meeting ended. The first day in the hospital, we just went around the hospital, meeting the staff and looking around for the equipments in use or jut lying around, in technical terms carrying out an inventory. We introduced ourselves in basic Swahili. After doing that we got some devices that were not working to our workshop. Oh ya! forget to mention about our workshop, we have our own workshop close to the hospital, where we work with the hospital technician, Augustino Panga, who is experienced and trained in electrical engineering.

 The outside of our workshop

Our worktable in the workshop

At about 10 am we went for a chai break for about 15 minutes to have some delicious donuts or vitumbua( a local sweet) and refresh ourselves with a cup of tea. After that, we continued our work.

I would usually go looking for doctors to fill up the ten needs finding form I had fill up to get my financial aid. At around 12.30-1 we go for lunch, which was wali, maharage (rice and beans) for all the days we were in hospital and sometimes I ordered roasted nyama wa ngombe (roasted beef). After spending about 45 minutes for the lunch we returned to our workshop to continue working and kept working till about 4 pm when the last shuttle left for the town. Why was taking the shuttle so important? Because otherwise it took about 45 minutes to 1 hour to walk to the hospital( we know that because we tried it on one day when there was public holiday and the shuttle wasn't working.) From there we would usually visit the market, either to buy something for dinner or to buy supplies to fix devices, then we would head home.

The canteen

After we came back, we did some of our personal work like entering the inventory in the laptop or completing the remaining needs finding form (pun intended). Around 6 we would start cooking and the menu would be the same for a week, like mondays would be scrambled eggs, tuesdays maggi ( Indian noodles), wednesday pasta and guacamole, thursdays would be omelets. Why didn't I talk about the weekends? Because we usually would not be in Karatu(usually all the groups would meet up and spend the weekends together) and thus would eat outside in the restaurants.

Arjun multitasking (cooking and dancing)

During dinner we would watch some episodes of modern family together and then around 9-9.30 we would go to our individuals rooms and call it a day!! This was our daily routine all the week for four weeks, nothing different except that, our personal work would change. The updates about what we fixed and our secondary project would be continued in my next blog.

We watching Modern family

Ohh btw did you realize that everything in the pictures is red? That is because Karatu is covered with red soil and as a souvenir from Karatu, my shoes are red till I wash them!