Still Alive!

Hey all, this post is just to let you know that I'm still in Gaborone, doing my thing at Princess Marina hospital and traveling around the country. With a lack of a laptop and a busy work and play schedule, I've been hard pressed for time to keep you all updated on my time here. Some quick updates:

-two weekends ago I camped at Khama Rhino Sanctuary, where Botswana is attempting to breed the gravely endangered black rhino (didn't see any unfortunately);
-last weekend was a trip into the Khutse Game Reserve and the Central Kalahari Game Reserve- simply amazing scenery, cool desert animals and lion roars at night;
-this long weekend will be a trip into the Okavango Delta and the Moremi Game Reserve with several of the other interns;
-I (finally!) started my nosocomial TB transmission project in the medical service at Princess Marina, and data collection is going well;
- I have only 3 weeks left here!! Bittersweet thought that.

Plus, I have tons of stuff I've been meaning to write about that I'll try to put out in my last days in Botswana. So stay tuned, if you're still there :)

Reminders and a wish list

Things I know I'll take for granted later about Botswana, if I don't write them down:

1. fat cakes- donut-like balls of high-cholesterol amazingness that people eat for breakfast here.... yuuum

2. the AMAZING sunsets that happen nearly every day

3. How lots of people like to greet you on the street

4. Nando's chicken... the most amazing poultry on the planet, except for what's come out of my mom's kitchen

5. riding around in Alfred's cab- Alfred is a student at UB who also runs a cab company, and who my group of interns nearly exclusively uses to get around when not using combis. If Alfred lived in Philly, I would grab beers with the guy on the weekends, he's that cool of a dude. He even hiked up Kgale Hill with us this weekend, which was great because he's chill AND brought his golf club, which made for a good anti-snake weapon, walking stick and photo prop ;)

6. Running on dirt tracks through open country, which makes you feel like you're in some sort of Nike sneaker commerical about Africa and lets you get a runner's high while looking at, yes, another amazing sunset

7. Setswana- possibly the coolest language, rhythmically, that I've ever heard. Everything is a tounge-twister to say, except for the most basic stuff, and it just sounds so fluid and intricate in a way you have to hear to understand

And things I still want to do:

1. Live in a rural village for a weekend

2. Visit the Okavango Delta (July 18th-20th)

3. Camp in the Kalahari (July 11th-12th, providing the tour provider's trucks don't break down again)

4. Play football with some locals

5. Actually make Tswana foods (or maybe brew their traditional beer)

6. Watch the sun go down over the Gaborone Dam

7. Get (sort of) close to a huge elephant

8. Rent a Land Rover or LandCruiser and drive off into nowhere

9. Learn to sing, then sing along with, a Setswana song

10. Visit the San, quite possibly one of the oldest cultural groups on the planet (they still, in certain cases, live a migratory hunter/gatherer lifestyle)

It doesn't hurt to dream, right?

Meeting Leo

On my way back from lunch at the Main Mall to the hospital today, I was joined spontaneously by a man named Leo, who shrugged off my attempt at a friendly dismissal and decided to walk with me to the hospital. I immediately got the feeling that I should give this Leo character a chance, especially since his English was decent (though this is not at all a requirement for me to find someone interesting, usually) and he seemed legitimately interested in learning about why this lekoiya (white person) finds himself in Botswana. You know how, sometimes, you get a vibe from some stranger that they can be trusted? Well, maybe life has jaded me into always having some baseline reservation about talking to people on the street, but this is Botswana and Leo seemed like (and is) a good guy.

Leo, it turns out, comes from Francistown, Botswana's second largest urban center and transportation gateway to the Okavango Delta, Chobe Game Reserve and other tourist draws up north. He told me he works in a sort of craftsman's collective, making furniture, paintings and postcards, amongst other things. I told him about my projects at the hospital, that I was still a student and about some of my impressions of his home country. He tried to teach me how to ask someone's name in Setswana (Leina la gago ke mang?), which was fun but I failed horribly at. (It takes me tons of repetition to get things down.)

As we reached Princess Marina Hospital, he offered to sell me some of his artwork that he had in hand, which included some paintings, which I didn't see, and some hand-made postcards, which I asked to take a look at. Leo had multiples of 2 or 3 really nice postcards, but the one I chose is actually a regular, blank greeting card, with a vibrant picture of two women, arm in arm, stained or painted on cloth and attached to the outside. My untrained eye for art was impressed, and we bartered the price for it down to just above $1 in pula.

I have to admit that at that point, I felt a bit guilty. Here I was, initially expecting to have a nice conversation with Leo and simply be asked for money at the end, which has happened already. However, artist or not, Leo had legitimate (to my eyes) crafts to sell, and I ended up paying him hardly enough to get a decent lunch in Gabs. After paying him, I asked him about his life, and how he supports himself. His collective has a small farm in Francistown, so that they can support themselves without having to beg, he said. I tried to explain that (despite currently wearing a nice button-down shirt, slacks, and expensive prescription eyeglasses) I was really a poor student and couldn't pay him his original $3.50 (P25) asking price, which I of course could afford to do but wouldn't.

I felt all kinds of awkward about this situation, though I was very glad I met Leo. In some way, I think we both decided to give each other a chance. Now I have a piece of African art, Leo has lunch and once again, I have the nagging feeling Botswana has given something to me that I can't give back. I'm still processing the whole episode as I write, so please comment on what you feel about this story.

Hot Dogs 1, Interns 0

The sun has just reappeared from behind a 3-day-long bout of rain here in Gabs, and it's definitely a welcome sight! Just when it felt like I was never going to be able to dry laundry ever again or avoid getting splashed with mud along the road to work, things got much better :)

My roomate and I also have just gotten over our first experiences with traveler's diarrhea, because of our really dumb decision to eat the 'hot dogs' at the Main Mall west of the hospital. They were pretty tasty at the time, but little did we know that they would knock us down for a couple of days. I'm sorry to say that my roomate got it worse, and was convinced by a visiting Chinese physician to take some medicines he'd brought over from the homeland. It looked like a vial of ink to me, but it seemed to reduce his stomach pain and let him sleep. I personally got through the off feelings from the food without medicine- I'm determined to save my stash for a serious case of dysentery.

Unfortunately, the soccer game last weekend didn't happen- the other team had been out celebrating the Botswana national soccer team's draw against the New Zealanders all night long, and showed up too sloshed to play. A minor disappointment, but the national game itself was definitely fun and worth the ~$7 we paid for the tickets! The Batswana played with a lot of effort, more than you could say for the New Zealanders, but the home team missed way too many great chances at goals on the way to a 0-0 game. Botswana was supposed to be a warm-up for New Zealand in their effort in a soccer tournament in South Africa, but something tells me they won't win.

The best parts of the game, by far, were sitting next to the Zebras fan club and watching the brilliant African sunset go down over the pitch. The crazy blue-and-white-dressed fans next to us were standing and singing Setswana football songs for the majority of the game, interspersed with heckling and suggestions for the players on the field that I couldn't understand, but seemed to play off of each other.

I'm looking forward to getting out of Gabs to see more of Botswana soon. If not this weekend, it'll definitely happen on the 20th, when our intern group will get trucked out into the Kalahari desert for two days of game drives, camping and stargazing. Also, this time I PROMISE to take the camera, and I'll see if I can borrow some of my friends' pics from the game and other things to share with you. Until then, Gosiame!

IRB and the computer virus

Things are getting kinda frustrating, in a big way, at the partnership office. The office computers all have serious issues with virus, worms, and whatever else is making them run slow. I even think that one got on to my flash drive, will have to watch that. It's been slow going getting the letters and proposals for the IRB ready this week, but it's been ok, because that's all I've really had to do. In the meantime, Jacob and I (a Motswana co-worker) talk about the upcoming national team game on Saturday and cars he wants to buy. Speaking of which, the selection of autos runs from very nice German sedans to tiny, beat Japanese pickups from the 80's. I personally want one of the nasty old-school Toyota Landcruisers I see driving around, it'd be a perfect vehicle to take out into the middle of nowhere.

The fate of my TB intervention project now rests in the hands of the Princess Marina Hospital IRB, which could or could not be ok... circumventing bureacracy is not a strength of Batswana. We need to play by their rules, regardless, because I'm a guest in this country and I'll be handling patient info. As long as the computer worms stop for 5 min, I'll be able to print the letter to the IRB chair...

The ladies in the office were talking about me again today. It's quite annoying being possibly gossiped about when you can't understand anything people say. So the deal is, if they're going to keep talking about me, then they have to teach me more Setswana. Or so I tried to make clear to them. On that note, I'm trying to look for a local Setswana tutor. I know enough of the language to get myself into trouble in conversations, because some people might assume I know more than I do.

Well, this post has been quite random, so I think I'll save some for next time. More to come soon!

N95's and braais

I'm now starting the second official week of my internship with the Botswana-UPenn Partnership here in Gaborone (http://www.upenn.edu/botswana/), and I have a better idea of what I'll be doing for my supervisor, Nicola. He thinks that re-infection of patients with tuberculosis in Princess Marina Hospital is driving the TB epidemic in Gaborone, so my job is to create tools and a protocol to test this idea. I've got a survey in the works that will try to map each patient's relative exposure to TB within the hospital, based on clinical signs of contagiousness in other patients and the clinical environment.

After receiving training in TB prevention with Batswana nurses and pharmacy workers last week, I feel that environment is going to play a significant part in our study. The wards I'll study are poorly ventilated and house up to 8-9 patients per alcove in open wards. TB bacteria can be coughed into the air by any patient with active TB disease, and those bacteria can float in the air on dust particles for several hours. All someone has to do is breathe in the bacteria to be infected or re-infected with TB. In people with strong immune systems, this usually isn't a problem- the body's white blood cells trap the bacteria in the lungs and keep them from multiplying. The problem is, immunocompromised patients (like those with HIV) and those not previously exposed to TB (like myself) are most at risk for having the infection or re-infection progress to active TB. I wear an N95 repirator in the clinic to try to stop this, but not everyone who works there does, and the air in the wards isn't cycled well enough to clear the air of bacteria quickly.

This first weekend in Gaborone had some new experiences as well. Our intern group had a braai (a Tswana version of a barbecue) and bonfire at our coordinator's house. Meats and maize meal are definitely staples of the diet in this country, and we cooked some traditional dishes with the help of one of our Motswana student guides. Another really nice braai was held as a going-away party for another long-term intern at the Partnership. I think I could get used to this!

I also went to the Gaborone North Church of the Nazarene with one of Princess Marina's nurses and some of my intern group this Sunday. The congregation was very small, but they had such great voices and, as I expected, had their praise hymns memorized. It was also very cool to hear the sermon given as a team by the pastor and deacon in both English and Setswana. I enjoyed worship there, and although I want to visit several different types of churches in Gaborone as well, I'll be sure to return before leaving town.

My Setswana is getting better, but at a snail's pace- I can greet others, find out how they're doing and say goodbye fairly well. But Batswana generally speak much softer than what I'm used to in the States, so I've mostly had to work really hard on my listening skills, and there are a number of sounds that are hard for me to produce. It really helps with getting to know my Batswana co-workers at the Partnership, though, who do some interesting stuff when not at work. A bunch of the guys my age play soccer in rec leagues on Sundays that always end with the cooking of a cow. I've been invited to play next weekend! Despite the fact that the guys will hand my butt to me on the field, I think it'll be a great time.

Getting Oriented

Nearly all of my intern group and I have officially arrived in Gaborone!  The weather is beautiful, not unlike a Californian or Mediterranean summer, and with the forecast of no significant rains for several months, things already feel like a vacation ;)

I don't think, however, that a Motswana would say the same thing- the currency and national slogan are both Pula, meaning rain.  In a land that has no natural standing water sources and whose land is taken up by the expansive Kalahari, pula makes sense.

Today was our group's short orientation to the University of Botswana, Gaborone, and some of Motswana traditional culture.  Our in-country coordinator, Dr. Oagile, is like our adoptive mother and is really dedicated to making sure our time here is safe, fun and productive.  The best part of today was our outing to a re-enactment of a traditional Tswana village, where two of our group were married in the traditional way, dowry of cattle and all, and shown the duties of adult married life.  Revenue from the village supports the group of elderly women who work and live there, all of whom lost their husbands to the side affects of a miner's career long ago.  The sharing of cultures and food was culture shock in a good way, reinforcing the fact that we are in essentially a totally different world and showing us the value of it's many differences.

The countryside that we drove through today was beautiful- scrub-covered red stone hills, brush and cotton-puff clouds bathed in a red African sunset.  At times, it's really hard to believe that I'm on this continent and experiencing all that I am, which has been a dream of mine for so long.

Yes, pictures are to come!  I need to borrow some from the rest of my group, and remember to bring my own camera next time.  Tomorrow will be my first day on the job with Dr. Zetola, so more updates to come!