Perspectives

I am incredibly exhausted, so ready for dinner, napping, and some time to decompress. Overall, it's been a great week and a great day.

We've officially finished one full week here at TCDC, the training center for Swahili, community development, and various other human rights programs. Every morning during the week has been Kiswahili lessons from 8:30-12:30, and the brain power it takes to learn a new language, especially when I've been doing science and engineering for 4 years, is incredibly demanding. On the plus side, I'm thrilled that I've been steadily understanding more and more each day. I'm getting faster at responding to greetings and can even compose complete sentences that make sense.

Afternoons have included short lectures on general electronics and equipment theory (everything from transformers to compressed gases), followed by lab exercises. I'm quickly getting more comfortable soldering, stripping wires, and building small circuits. Merete (my lab partner and hospital partner next month) and I are both trying things and learning all the skills, but we seem to have pretty complimentary skill sets that will serve us well in the hospitals next month. I could probably be studying the engineering and troubleshooting parts of my day much more, but it's very easy (and a little more fun) to focus primarily on the swahili and communicating with my host family and local people we meet.

Today (Friday) is our break from classes and a practice run at the hospitals. All 20 of us will spend the next month of Fridays at Mt. Meru hospital, working on broken equipment and trying to get things working. There was an entire room of stuff that had been brought down from variou sparts of the hospital, waiting for us. Apparently next week, we should expect various doctors and nurses bringing 'their' piece of equipment down and hoping we can do something about it. Today's grand endeavor was to tackle the various parts and pieces sitting around that needed some attention. Some people worked on what turned out to be an aspirator, others found some sort of vibrator - probably for test tubes and diagnostic stuff. One group got a piece of equipment working that heats water in a chamber and has what appear to be intake and output tubes - perhaps an old-fashioned nebulizer? My group spent the entire morning going through a box of stethescopes, blood pressure cuffs, and a few other assorted pieces of equipment that needed to be triaged. In the end, we managed to salvage a set of pediatric bp cuffs, a couple more complete cuffs, and various working air bladders and velcro casings, but a severe lack of pressure gauges made it impossible to get complete sets.

For those of you going into healthcare or charity donations, don't send incomplete products, please. Aside from the broken and assorted parts and pieces, we had an entire box of unopened disposable bp cuffs that had no pressure gauges or bulbs. Unfortunately, we couldn't just assemble the cuffs with existing parts because the connections were specific to the system those cuffs were intended for. I'm not so enchanted with donations that are done in the name of a tax deduction - just throw away your own trash.

After the morning in the hospital, we went back to town for lunch and to get a handle on where hardware/parts stores and general use stores are. I was very happy to find an ATM that took mastercard -- but I was incredibly annoyed by the guy who was trying to sell me something and actually waited around for me to come out of the ATM so I had cash. I'm generally okay with nicely turning down the millions of street vendors and 'tour guides' who easily identify a white girl, but this was entirely too much. I wasn't quite as nice that time - perhaps he won't bother me again.

It's interesting how the people who work the street for toursists are incredible with their marketing skills. They meet you once, are incredibly friendly, and learn your name as well as your friends' names. This was our second day in the city, and I had at least 5 people come up to me and ask if I remembered meeting them. At first I thought they may have just been making it up so that I would feel bad and stop and talk to them, but when they would remember assorted names of our group members, I had to admit that I was pretty impressed. Once again, I had one offer from a guy who described himself as 'just a charming guy,' to go home with him, or at least get ice cream alone so he could tell me the feelings of his heart. I hope I made it clear that I won't be found in the city alone, even if we should run into each other again. On the other hand, I enujoy parts of the hassling. People here are incredibly friendly, and especially since I've started to learn more Kiswahili, interactions with strangers on the streets are always interesting and can often lead to new discoveries.

I'm hopeful that since Merete and I will be working in or near Arusha (this same city), we may begin to gain a familiarity and possibly even long term recognition with the local shop owners and 'tour guides.' I know we will continue to stand out as Mzungu, but will a month or two be long enough to be accepted as familiar mzungu?

Dinner is likely ready, so I'll finish with one funny moment from the afternoon. It is incredible how much we get stared at in the city - especially with children it's rather adorable and incredible (perhaps I'll think differently later in the summer), but it's just plain funny with adults. After wandering the city for the afternoon, Merete and I were the first of our group to return to the hospital to meet the bus back to the center. As my very blonde, pink, blue-eyed partner walked in, another local man (perhaps a patient) walked by, obviously staring and very ungracefully tumbled his way into a pothole as he kept looking back. I guess the hazards of rubber-necking extend beyond driving past an accident on the highway...