More Donations!

Another beautiful morning near the base of Mount Meru. You can’t complain when you wake up with this view every morning.

 Once again, I’m sitting here drinking my tea, and I was about to cut up some fruit for breakfast when I came across this! 

 You know you’re in a house of medical students when you find an orange full of sutures...and I don't think this patient would be very happy with our skills haha!

The three of us (Ben, Grace, and I) had a full but satisfying day yesterday filled with donations and last goodbyes. Phabian (our program coordinator) came over Sunday night for a glass of wine and some cake-baking. Phabian was interested in learning to bake when he saw us baking a cake for our Pakistani neighbors last week. So, we promised him we would bake two more Sunday night. Success! We ended up with one vanilla and one strawberry cake smothered in Nutella frosting! We couldn’t find real frosting lol The strawberry was a little deformed but I think it turned out pretty well considering our oven is crap and we didn’t have any measuring cups. Haha!

Richard picked us up yesterday morning to make our rounds around town. We went to the bank, dropped one piece of cake off for our friend Angel who works at our favorite supermarket, and then picked up our donated supplies from the pharmacy. And by picked up, I mean we waited for over 2 hours as the pharmacy scavenged to find supplies that were missing from our list. Motorcycles were randomly brining supplies from other pharmacies and we still didn’t fulfill our comprehensive list. After a somewhat frustrating morning, coupled by the reassurance that this place is simply lacking supply chain management and the western hustle and bustle attitude, we managed to find all of the items with the help of another pharmacy. Woohoo! Blood pressure cuffs, sutures, thermometers, glucometers, gauze rolls, an otoscope, 19,000 doses of pain medications, and other essential supplies. The hospital was extremely grateful as Dr. Geoffrey and several of the nurses thanked us multiple times for the donation. What a great feeling! 

Cake delivery

 meds on meds on meds

pharmacy crew

 

  2 mil in Tanzanian shillings!

 a little excited about the new glucometers 

 16,000 doses of pain med!

After the donation, Grace and I stopped at Mt. Meru Laboratory to say our final goodbyes and deliver a cake. The lab staff had welcomed us with open arms during our first week at the hospital and we thought it would be appropriate to end in the same place with a celebration. It was so nice to see all of our “mamas” again and laugh over our attempts of Swahili communication. I will miss all of those wonderful people. 

 Not sure why but they wanted to feed us the cake first haha!

 Mama Mary and Redempta

Then, Grace and I walked around town to say goodbye to some others like Thomas, a street vendor who befriended us and never tried to sell us his merchandise (unlike other street vendors). But secretly, that’s how you get someone to buy your stuff! I’ll think of Thomas every time I look at the painting I bought from him to hang on my wall at home :) We walked to the post office one more time to look for Grace’s mail, only to assume it had been lost in transit. Not surprising in Tanzania but it was worth a try! We finally got home at 5pm, just in time for a little siesta and dinner with our  neighbors. We had some traditional Pakistani dishes and learned the rules of eating with only our right hand and without silverware. They were excited to teach us all of their religious/traditional ways, just as we were excited to learn. A perfect ending to the trip for Gracie!

Our sweet neighbors :)

We rescheduled our second visit of St. Jude school today so we plan to do that just before Grace leaves. Sad to be sending her off but I know she is just as excited as I am to see her family and friends. 6 weeks sure does fly by though. Can’t believe I am already leaving tomorrow! As Bayne says, I am trying to suck the city dry of all the opportunities it has for me this last couple of days...See you in 3 days America! 

Love,

Last days at Mount Meru Hospital

Habari A Sabui, Good morning!

It’s 8am in Arusha. I just pulled a mattress onto the roof and am enjoying one of my last cups of tea while listening to the rooster and noisy traffic. These sounds, which made it difficult to sleep the first few nights, will make home seem so empty and quite. It will be another adaptation back to “normal” life. At least I will still have my taste of Arusha mornings with the box of 60 teabags I am bringing back to the US :)

  
Friday was our last official day at the hospital. And to use the most cliché saying possible…it was bittersweet. We watched an interesting elbow reconstruction surgery of the humerus. Unfortunately, our morning was delayed by a staff meeting and that was our only surgery of the day, but an interesting one at least! However, we did see some amazing surgeries on the previous day, including a knee reconstruction surgery on an 8 year old boy with a recurrent dislocating patella. To fix the luxation, the hamstring tendon was harvested, a hole was drilled straight through the patella, and the tendon was threaded through to hold the knee cap in place. After the knee surgery, we got the opportunity to observe a complete leg amputation! The poor gentlemen was 43 (although he looked at least 70!) and was battling diabetic complications. We debated staying for the whole operation, thinking it would take hours, but we were pleasantly surprised by the contrary. Once the fella was sedated and ready to go, the doctor cut through the limb and it took a mere 10-15 min to complete the above-the-knee amputation. Wow, what an incredible (and pretty gross) thing to watch!! Tying off the arteries and suturing the nub closed took a little bit longer but the entire procedure only took 1.5 hours from start to finish. Crazy! I’ll spare everyone the pictures on this one!

Thanks to the help of Google, I just looked up synonyms for ‘bittersweet’. The first term on one list: ‘American.’ I’m not sure what that is supposed to mean...maybe our extreme over-use/abuse of the term, thus making it extremely cliché.  Screw it, my last day at the hospital was, well…, bittersweet. We left the theatre, said our goodbyes to some of the staff, and walked through the reception/waiting area which was overflowing with people…People patiently waiting for government healthcare at a facility with little resources, at an understaffed hospital that only charges $1.60 for a visit, a small fee that some patients still cannot afford. I thought about the care these patients were hoping to receive at the hospital (if they can even afford what is needed), and I reluctantly thought about the quality of care. Pretty sad, really. Then, I pictured the nice, private hospital we pass everyday on our way to Mount Meru. I’ve personally never felt as though I couldn’t access healthcare (though it might be somewhat difficult for me here). At home, it’s easy to walk into a clinic with the confidence that the facility is equipped with the necessary means to help with almost anything that could be wrong with me. Then there are the people of Arusha, the majority struggling to get any good form of healthcare. Poverty is obviously a huge issue in this country, and along with that, comes the common poverty ridden diseases – particularly HIV and AIDS.  And when these residents of Arusha scrounge up a few shillings to pay a visit at Mount Meru Hospital, a future of good health is still wishful thinking. I know this is poverty, and I realized life is different here, as it is in many parts of the world. But I begin to think – Why ME? Why am I given the good life, the lavish life, a life of too much rather than too little? I am blessed. 

We visited The School of St Jude Friday afternoon. The St Jude slogan: “Fighting poverty through education.” The school is completely funded by charity and provides free, high-quality primary and secondary education to 1,800 of the poorest and brightest children in Arusha. It was founded in 2002 by Australian Gemme Sisia, whom graciously agreed to meet one-on-one with Grace, Ben, and I during our visit. While sitting on the beautiful lawn surrounded by a colorful, home-made playground and a plethora of animal painted buses, Gemme took us back to her earlier days in the 1900’s when she volunteered at a school in Uganda. She explained that at the time she was “young and naïve” but she still couldn’t help but to be bothered by the education system. She notices that only a certain percentage of kids, those with enough money, could afford to attend the school in Uganda. This didn’t seem right to Gemme, who knew there were plenty of other “smart” kids without the means to pay for an education. Long story short, Gemme took her idea of a “free” school to Arusha, where she opened up St. Jude’s for poor students demonstrating an eagerness to learn, a basic level of “smartness,” and appreciation for the sponsors keeping the school running. Now, the school has expanded to three campuses, provides boarding for 1,000 students, and employs over 400 Tanzanians…all helping to fight poverty through education. 

The point of this story, besides it simply being a cool story, is that it made me think about Mount Meru Hospital. Could this same idea possibly be implemented at a charity funded hospital in Tanzania? Would it be possible to find a way for sponsors to finance the healthcare needs of impoverished families in Tanzania? The idea creates many questions on how such a system could be run, and I’m sure it would be expensive to jump start. Just a few ideas floating around in my head. Good thing I have 30+ hours of travel time this week to think about everything! Turning a miserable 30 hours of sitting on my bum to a bit of positive thinking?lol Anyways, the hospital has certainly opened my eyes to the facets of healthcare in this third world country. I know that there is an increasing need of Physician Assistants in America, especially in rural areas after the passing of the Affordable Care Act. I hope to help with these problems in America for the time being. But I also have future visions of traveling abroad once again (hopefully next time as a PA!) to help with healthcare in a country like Tanzania. Who knows where the next place will be, or how long I will stay, but either way, Tanzania will always have a place in my heart. 

While my trip is winding to an end, I am grateful to have 3 more days to spend practicing my Swahili with the locals (if you can even call it Swahili ;)), walking the streets of Arusha, and visiting the hospital at least one more time this week. Ben and I are getting ready for a walk to town to pull out our last bout of donation money. I have been trying to upload the order form on FB, but am butting heads with technology so I’ll keep working on that for those of you that have donated. We are excited to deliver our last load of supplies tomorrow!! We are also visiting St. Jude’s school one last time tomorrow to sit-in on a school assembly and to see how some of the classes operate. I will post more pictures soon!

For now…here are a few random pictures I have tried to capture of Arusha city life and its people. I still need to take more! 

I just looked back to the top of this post and realized how long it is. Sorry for the lengthiness…apparently I’m in a chatty mood this morning :)

Hope you are all having a peaceful night sleep back home! Xoxo 

 Mama and Matotos

 Masai villager with the traditional Masai stick

 buying grapes on our way home from the hospital

look at this little fella!