Tyler in Tanzania: Nkoaranga Introductions

Hujambo! I’ve made it to Nkoaranaga hospital! Mikkel and I were the first team dropped off at our host hospitals in the program so we got to say goodbye to everyone as we came to our new home. Once we arrived, we met the hospital secretary Jeremiah with our coordinator Alex before Alex left with the rest of the group to complete the hospital drop-offs. Jeremiah showed us to our new house for the month (pictures below) aptly named the “White House”. Mikkel and I insist on calling each other Mr. President which has been amusing. The White House sleeps around 20 but Mikkel and I are the only ones living here for the month, except for a few rats who seem to have made a nest at an unknown location in the house. A group of 8 Canadians from MedOutreach had lived here for the past month doing screening work at the hospital but they moved out Friday just as we were moving in. After moving our stuff to the house, Jeremiah introduced us briefly to the head doctor Dr. Samuel as well as the hospital matron, Neema. Neema is very friendly and has been a great person to the previous EWH students at Nkoaranga hospital so I’m looking forward to having another “Mama Neema” in my life this month. Mikkel and I are learning how to cook Ugali with her sometime next week. After some more introductions with hospital staff, we started our equipment inventory to assess where we will need to be doing our work for the month. We found around 15 non-working machines in the first few hours of the inventory. Even more surprising was the obvious impact that EWH has had on the hospital here. Nearly every piece of equipment in the hospital had been worked on by EWH Summer Institute program students at some point. This was clear from the “Quick Start Guides” students had created, translated into Swahili, and taped to the front of many of the machines. It reinforced that EWH is making a major difference in the host hospitals and that Mikkel and I will surely be busy the next month. Mikkel and I also set our workshop the first day in a large closet with some stools and a large crib that we were able to turn upside down and make into a table. After some more department introductions, Mikkel and I went to the orphanage located right next to the hospital campus to meet the volunteers and also to see if we would be able to help with any donations. Mikkel brought a lot of Legos and I have some puzzles and toys for older kids, but the orphanage is for kids under 5 only. There is a secondary school nearby that we plan to donate the supplies to. For dinner, Mikkel and I met with Rodrick, a local friend that we had met at a bar on my birthday. He is one of the administrators at St. Jude School which EWH visited last month to talk with the oldest students there about college and future plans among other things. We talked with Rodrick for a while at an outdoor stove fire on Leganga road before he took us with another friend of his to an African Jazz bar. We danced a lot and had a fantastic time. On Saturday, we went to a 30 meter waterfall near Arusha on an 8 kilometer hike with 10 other EWH students. Saturday night, we went out for Ethiopian food before crashing at the house of the Arusha students. Sunday marked the first cooking attempt for Mikkel and I and it went quite well. We got some vegetables from the local market and made pasta with veggie sauce, chile sauce, and some mozzarella from the grocery store. It was the first night we had electricity in the “White House” so that was exciting. The power is very inconsistent here and the hospital workday was quite slow on Friday as a result. There has also been a funds freeze on the hospital for the past 4 months which has meant almost no equipment repairs in addition to a lot of the physician assistants and nurses leaving the hospital to places where they are able to get paid. The few doctors (around 5) who remain live on the hospital campus and show tremendous dedication to their work. They are very busy people and have a lot to take care of with around 65 patients at the hospital most days. I’ll update again in another post with more details about work in the hospital.