The Clinic

Just wanted to post some pictures from the clinic. We have been taking vital signs (blood pressure, temperature, and pulse) on all of the patients coming in to the HIV and outpatient clinics.

This morning it was rainy and muddy, but the light was pretty over the mountains. This just gives you an idea of what a typical building in Majengo looks like.

Here's me in our little room in the clinic.

This is looking out from the room into the main waiting area and the courtyard beyond.

Here's Roxy inside.

 And here's a few of our patients waiting to be seen. I will post more about it this weekend when I have more time to write

Thursday we must have taken 100 little kids temperatures, most of who have either some sort of horrible wheezing lung disease (pneumonia?) and the others are burning up with a fever, most from malaria. Friday was a slower day, but more dramatic as we got questioned by the local medical programs director, who, as far as I can tell, finds his job much more important than anyone else does. He asked me who the heck I was, why I was at the clinic, where I was from, and who said I could be there, followed by a very ominous, "I need to see you in my office." Luckily Roxy and I happened to be extremely busy at that moment and a minute later he came back to tell us nevermind. Of course I was a bit concerned about being hauled off to volunteer jail, but we were soon occupied by a woman brought in from the local police station because she had been hit by someone she knew. It was truly the saddest and most frustrating moment because she only spoke Swahili. We really just wanted to ask her if she was ok and help her navigate the crazy doctors who were being more dismissive than helpful. In the end we saw her about three times, and as our normal doctor and translator was away at a meeting I think we did absolutely nothing helpful. Sucked. Hopefully catching babies next week will be a little better. Later. M.

The First Days

Wow what a whirlwind. I'm pretty sure I've seen and done more new things in the last 48 hours than I have in the last 6 months.

Today was our first day at the clinic and minus that fact that my Swahili is limited to "Jambo" and "Asante" it was a pretty great day. The walk is about 25 minutes from our hostel and passes by an entire art village where the local artists paint and sell their work. I can't tell you how hard it was for me to walk past this! We walk to the town of Majengo, which is notably poorer and a bit more run down than Moshi, turn left at the bright green building and then the clinic is on the right! Everyone was extremely welcoming and seemed to be very glad we were there, and the ones who spoke some English did not hesitate to do so, so I tried to learn as many Swahili words as I could and used them regularly. Surprisingly difficult is remembering names, because very few are ones that I have heard before.

The best things about the clinic were getting to use the microscope ti dianose blood smears of malaria (thanks for that lab Dr. Makenzie!) and telling the Drs (Anastasi and Dr. Mariki) that we can solve their problem of having only one blood pressure cuff. Thanks to our fundraising we can afford the 15 more they so badly need for their more than 100 patients a day.  We would really like to be able to send some more desperately needed items like stethoscopes, but can't do it without your help! Donate here.

Okay everyone's favorite, picture time!
Here's me and Roxy by the sign to the clinic, the crazy green building and the art town on the way to volunteer.

And these are some much needed pictures of our hostel! Out front.

The backyard and "kitchen."

The dining room outside where we eat/ sit and read/ do mostly everything.

These dogs names are no lie Peanut and Butter!! Makes me miss my Butters.

Ok so that's all for now but much more to come!
Later. M.

The Journey

I don't know how long you have sat on an airplane, but Roxy and I just spent approximately 3 days on one. Ok more like one day, but it felt like longer.

I left from good ol' KC which meant I needed to head down to Houston to meet up with Frox before heading to Amsterdam and then Kilimanjaro. This all would have gone swimmingly if United Airlines had decided to put my bag on my plane. Needless to say the panic level was high when I arrived in Houston with only one bag, of course the less important one. Lucky for me and Roxy we have pretty cool, helpful parents and between the four of them and us we managed to find the bag and get it onto my flight to Amsterdam. I would elaborate more on how this happened but truly I have no idea. I think it had something to do with magic.

So for your viewing pleasure I took this picture of our airplane in Houston.

When we arrived at Schipol, AMS we thought we had wandered into an Apple computer. Everything was very white and shiny and modern. Oh, and there were a lot of tulips. Lots and lots of tulips. That short transfer was uneventful except for the lady on the people mover whose shoelace got stuck, causing her to fall and squish the baby she was carrying. I think it was pretty ok, it was a little upset because it was smashed, but we think it was ok. Anyways she was swarmed by really helpful, really blonde KLM employees shortly.

So then we fell asleep for a little while and then many many hours later we were making our final decent! Landing gear was down, the lights of the runway were in sight and just before we touched down we rocketed back up into the air. Now, I'm no pilot, but I was aware that this was odd. Turns out there was another plane chilling on our runway and either our pilots didn't know about it or hoped he would move? Not 100% on that.

On attempt number two we landed (hooray) and this is Roxy on the tarmac, very happy to no longer be on a plane. 

After about an hour of waiting at customs for our visas we made it through and found Joel, a nice Swiss who manages the hostel. He grabbed us and our bags, threw us into a cab (thanks Juma!) and we drove into the lovely, starry night. Seriously the air here is alarmingly clean, and there are lots more stars than we have in Houston. Twenty minutes later we pulled into Hostel Hoff and were mobbed by friendly dogs and other volunteers.

This morning we went on a tour of the town with Mary, who knows everything about Moshi and ate goat for lunch. Its pretty good, quite sweet actually. The town is awesome, sort of everything you would want in an African city, crazy drivers, street vendors, row after row of amazing shops, bizarre restaurants and some gorgeous weather. So tomorrow we start at the clinic and I can't wait to post about that. Later! M.

The Beginning

If you're reading this you probably know all about why I'm leaving on Saturday. You know about Hostel Hoff, the Majengo Clinic, Path to Africa and the awesome fundraising parties thrown by Hans Bier Haus. So I'm not going to retell the story of why I decided to spend my summer volunteering in darkest Africa, or why I chose Tanzania in particular, but rather I'd like to start with the fundraising success Roxy and I had while preparing for our trip.

So a long time ago before I was a medical student I was a real person, and as a real person I had hobbies. One of these hobbies was riding and training horses, and my equestrian trainer Heidi just happens to be a professional fundraiser. So once I decided I wanted to travel to Moshi, volunteer in an HIV clinic and help Path to Africa power a borehole to provide local children with clean water I knew exactly who to call. With Heidi's guidance I started a huge social media movement to get people excited about our trip. I have since used Facebook Twitter and (archaically) email to spread the word. Luckily I have some pretty cool family and friends, and we raised 40% of the money in a few weeks.

I knew I was running out of people to heckle for cash, and my medical school classmates were getting progressively more jaded and apathetic about awesome causes, so Roxy and I decided to do something unique. Our friends at Hans Bier Haus are into supporting great causes and offered to put their beer on sale for us. We brought a ridiculous amount of flyers, a few pitchers and set up begging the bar goers like a group of friendly, more well dressed hobos. The results are below.

So these are my friends Katy and Kendra enjoying their cheap beers.

 This is me and Roxy and Mat who set up our whole fundraiser and also happens to be a poet.

This is me and our flyer and Robbie. We're not 100% sure what he does.

Me and Frox.

Hans is famous for their bocce ball court, here being enjoyed by my dog Butters and his favorite person Jay.

Now we have 60% of our $6000 goal (thats $3500 ish) and we're pretty stoked about how well we've done so far. Since we're leaving on Saturday afternoon, most of the promoting will happen from our hostel in Tanzania. Hopefully reading about the trip and volunteering on this blog will help us get the last $2500! Hooray for putting med school summers to good use.

Oh and if you want to check out our fundraising website with the full story you can do so here.

Later. M.