Tanzanian Life

Hi all,

So three weeks have passed and I have settled into Tanzanian life. Work is going well, some days are very slow and there is nothing to do, but other days are very hectic. Monday, Wednesday and Friday the baby clinic is busy and Tuesday and Thursday the other volunteers and I float throughout the clinic between the nursing station where we take blood pressure and weight of the patients, reception, and the wards. This week we are going to try and get into the lab to test ourselves for malaria ect. I have seen three c-sections but no natural births yet (apparently most of the happen during the night, haha, I don’t know how they work that out). On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons I go to a school up the street to play games with the kids.

Weekends are peaceful, we tend to lounge around the house, do laundry and go out for food. Yesterday Leah and I went on a road trip to our friend Nelson’s village near Moshi. He is fixing up his old house there and turning into an orphanage with the help of one of the past volunteers. His village was amazing, absolutely beautiful, the orphanage is going to be awesome, he still has quite a bit of work to do but hopes to be able to move the kids in soon. We met a lot of the orphans that will be living there and gave them new clothes and toys that we brought over. Most of the kids are currently living with neighbors or relatives but are not being treated well so hopefully they will be able to move in soon. We also gave an HIV talk to the women and some of the men in his village, which went very well. They were very appreciative and hopefully will pass on the information to their families and friends. It was a long but wonderful day. The drive was stunning, it made me so happy to be here, Tanzania is one of the most beautiful places I have visited.

Today we all went for breakfast at one of the hotels up the road. It was so good to eat cheese and fruit and drink real coffee. The food at home is great, but there are a few things that we miss. Isaac (our cook) tends to only buy fruit once a week, and is eaten very quickly- luckily we pass orange carts all the way home from work so we can easily buy fruits ourselves, but it was a treat to have an endless supply at breakfast. The coffee was also amazing… at home we drink Africafe instant coffee (I drink a lot of tea instead), it sure makes real coffee taste amazing though! Haha. After breakfast a few of us went on a walk to the new Basecamp house, we are moving in September to a smaller house that is closer to most of the placements. Our house right now is too big for the low season because there are generally only 5 volunteers at a time, the new house is amazing though, it has a beautiful front yard and huge garden that the landlord is going to have maintained, it is all on one floor with 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. Moses (our country coordinator) has even agreed to get a dog (that I will have trained by the time I leave), our house right now has two dogs, but they belong to the family who lives next door. I am very excited for the move… and it means my walk to placement is only 20 min rather the 45.

That’s all that is new over here… Oh, Leah and I, along with 5 other volunteers, are heading to Zanzibar on Friday for 6 days and then 10 of us are heading out on safari when we get back!!! It should be an amazing week!!!

xoxo from Africa!

PS. I know you all probably want some photos, but the internet is very very slow here, so it might not happen, we might be able to put them up through the internet at one of the hotels, I will let you know if we manage to get it to work!