To all of you that followed my blog, heres a link to my video on youtube. Perhaps it will fill in any blanks I may have left.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGw24OvopBE
Monday, July 14, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Airports are Multicultural Chaos
I'm sitting in the airport in Musoma waiting to go to Arusia and climb Mt. Meru. The airport is ridiculously small. There's only one gate, Gate 2; I think the 2 is intended to make themselves feel bigger. The runway is dirt, and it's in the middle of the town.
Security consists of a man digging through everyone's stuff. When the man went through my bag (the flap was in my way, so I couldn't see in) he hesitated at an item and was like "what is this?" I looked in and said, "tampons;" which satisfied him, but I'm not sure if he understood or just got the "you don't want more details" vibes. Then an Asian guy that had been hitting on me in the security line (it was like 9 am, and he was asking if he could pick me up when I return next week) also started pulling stuff out of a suitcase. It was actually Karen's stethoscope, and she got a bit defensive. He had played all buddy buddy with the security man and got behind the table with him.
Then, when we came in the waiting room, the Asian guy (who told me he was going to Dar, which is right on the ocean) decided to pack a fresh fish to take with him. They put it in a sack, two plastic bags, a box, and roped it up. I just don't quite understand.
I can hear the airplane outside, or maybe saying "right behind me" describes it better than saying "outside."
Security consists of a man digging through everyone's stuff. When the man went through my bag (the flap was in my way, so I couldn't see in) he hesitated at an item and was like "what is this?" I looked in and said, "tampons;" which satisfied him, but I'm not sure if he understood or just got the "you don't want more details" vibes. Then an Asian guy that had been hitting on me in the security line (it was like 9 am, and he was asking if he could pick me up when I return next week) also started pulling stuff out of a suitcase. It was actually Karen's stethoscope, and she got a bit defensive. He had played all buddy buddy with the security man and got behind the table with him.
Then, when we came in the waiting room, the Asian guy (who told me he was going to Dar, which is right on the ocean) decided to pack a fresh fish to take with him. They put it in a sack, two plastic bags, a box, and roped it up. I just don't quite understand.
I can hear the airplane outside, or maybe saying "right behind me" describes it better than saying "outside."
Thursday, February 21, 2008
My Day, Plain and Simple (Tuesday, February 19, 2008)
Today I went by myself, but with a driver, to collect samples from our newest village. It's about one bumpy hour away, and is the village of our translator. We held a workshop there two Thursdays ago, and today was the first time collecting samples. Actually our translator, who is an extremely involved, dedicated filter person put on the workshop. We used it as an opportunity to gauge our own success, through his ability to be successful at holding a workshop.
There had been no new filters built, as no one managed to get pipe. Pipe is only found in the town I live in or farther away. Either way, there were two working filters, and a lot of really good vibes. I also helped to build another filter, although nearly all the prep work had been done, and we simply had to assemble the thing. After assembling the filter, we were fed breakfast bread and chai. It was sort of special for me, because I usually avoid eating on surveys. I have almost 20 houses in each of the other villages, and could not complete my work in a day if I ate at half my houses.
We then went to a non-filter home, which is what we use as our control group. It was the most amazing thing ever, the woman was a local midwife. She showed me her record book. It was where she recorded the date, mother's name and village, baby's name, and something in a column labeled "dead." I only looked at the first page, but of about 15 - 25 entrys, in the dead column all but three were vertical hash marks, one was a horizontal hash, and two were blank. I asked what the horizontal hash meant, and the translator said that the baby lived. So it sounds like all but one, or three, of her first 20 recorded patients died. Wow! Although that was in 1989. I really wanted to take a picture (we use our camera as a photocopier) of every single page. Anyway, on that first page she had about ten babies a month. In the survey, I found out that she had attended no school, and delivered her own children herself.
There was even a very pregnant lady just wondering around the room for a while. She picked up a pile of dried leaves and went out. I just wanted to stay and ask questions, but we finished the rest of the surveys and went home.
When I got home, I found that Ausubuhi had sliced his hand at school, and had to get stitches. Apparently he did it in the morning, but couldn't get stitches for six hours because his stomach had to be empty for the anesthesia. So he was totally passed out and everyone was just watching him. So I walked over to the lab to prep my seven samples (that was easy compared to the usual 45 samples).
Unfortunately, when I took the agar out of the autoclave, it didn't look quite right. So I swirled it a little, which broke the surface tension, making it erupt and land all over my hand. I wiped it off, and it felt fine, but about five minutes later it was soooooo painful. It was also bright pink, because there is red and blue die in the agar. Everyone who saw my hand said, "Wow, that's bad."
Later that evening I went to see the little guy, and he was starting to wake up. They had a matress in the middle of the living room for him, and I lied there with Sara and him. Otherwise, he kept wanting to get up, which didn't seem to work so well. Anyway we got the first laugh out of him, when we played the "pull open each others closed eyelids" game. Then, when the generator got turned on, we watched Al Jazeera, the BBC of the Middle East. He fell asleep on my lap and drooled all over my leg.
On Wednesday, it was back to the same old. We went to a village to collect samples and source water. My hand was so burnt that I had to wrap it a bit to avoid the pain from the Sun.
I got extremely annoyed when we met a child that Daniel told me was not in school because she didn't have the right color shoes at the moment. He told me it was just a rule. I explained to him that I could understand the rule if she had them, but chose not to wear them; but not having them means she can't wear them, so why shouldn't she go to school?
Back in town, the power had been off since Sunday morning. That was definitely a record for me, over three days. It's easy to live without power (minus blogging, which I do from my phone), but working without power is another story. Sarah and I agreed that we would be able to do the source waters after another visit (many of the source water tests require a spectrophotometer), but we were able, and going, to do the household samples. It was disappointing, but we decided it wasn't so bad. Just as we were finishing the tests, the electricity came back on. We started the source water tests, and were in the lab until midnight, again.
There had been no new filters built, as no one managed to get pipe. Pipe is only found in the town I live in or farther away. Either way, there were two working filters, and a lot of really good vibes. I also helped to build another filter, although nearly all the prep work had been done, and we simply had to assemble the thing. After assembling the filter, we were fed breakfast bread and chai. It was sort of special for me, because I usually avoid eating on surveys. I have almost 20 houses in each of the other villages, and could not complete my work in a day if I ate at half my houses.
We then went to a non-filter home, which is what we use as our control group. It was the most amazing thing ever, the woman was a local midwife. She showed me her record book. It was where she recorded the date, mother's name and village, baby's name, and something in a column labeled "dead." I only looked at the first page, but of about 15 - 25 entrys, in the dead column all but three were vertical hash marks, one was a horizontal hash, and two were blank. I asked what the horizontal hash meant, and the translator said that the baby lived. So it sounds like all but one, or three, of her first 20 recorded patients died. Wow! Although that was in 1989. I really wanted to take a picture (we use our camera as a photocopier) of every single page. Anyway, on that first page she had about ten babies a month. In the survey, I found out that she had attended no school, and delivered her own children herself.
There was even a very pregnant lady just wondering around the room for a while. She picked up a pile of dried leaves and went out. I just wanted to stay and ask questions, but we finished the rest of the surveys and went home.
When I got home, I found that Ausubuhi had sliced his hand at school, and had to get stitches. Apparently he did it in the morning, but couldn't get stitches for six hours because his stomach had to be empty for the anesthesia. So he was totally passed out and everyone was just watching him. So I walked over to the lab to prep my seven samples (that was easy compared to the usual 45 samples).
Unfortunately, when I took the agar out of the autoclave, it didn't look quite right. So I swirled it a little, which broke the surface tension, making it erupt and land all over my hand. I wiped it off, and it felt fine, but about five minutes later it was soooooo painful. It was also bright pink, because there is red and blue die in the agar. Everyone who saw my hand said, "Wow, that's bad."
Later that evening I went to see the little guy, and he was starting to wake up. They had a matress in the middle of the living room for him, and I lied there with Sara and him. Otherwise, he kept wanting to get up, which didn't seem to work so well. Anyway we got the first laugh out of him, when we played the "pull open each others closed eyelids" game. Then, when the generator got turned on, we watched Al Jazeera, the BBC of the Middle East. He fell asleep on my lap and drooled all over my leg.
On Wednesday, it was back to the same old. We went to a village to collect samples and source water. My hand was so burnt that I had to wrap it a bit to avoid the pain from the Sun.
I got extremely annoyed when we met a child that Daniel told me was not in school because she didn't have the right color shoes at the moment. He told me it was just a rule. I explained to him that I could understand the rule if she had them, but chose not to wear them; but not having them means she can't wear them, so why shouldn't she go to school?
Back in town, the power had been off since Sunday morning. That was definitely a record for me, over three days. It's easy to live without power (minus blogging, which I do from my phone), but working without power is another story. Sarah and I agreed that we would be able to do the source waters after another visit (many of the source water tests require a spectrophotometer), but we were able, and going, to do the household samples. It was disappointing, but we decided it wasn't so bad. Just as we were finishing the tests, the electricity came back on. We started the source water tests, and were in the lab until midnight, again.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Little People Do the Funniest Things
Ausubuhi has been over at the hostel, which is now full of 10 mzungu, almost every day for hours. I would have to say that if there are this many mzungu here for very long he is going to become insanely spoiled. Anyway, this morning he came over and I asked why he wasn't at school, already knowing he was sick. He dirsegarded my question and mumbled something about coming in. He wandered over to the coloring set that's always at the hostel, opened it, and got all sad that the pencil sharpener wasn't there. He doesn't necessarily like to color, but he loves to sharpen pencils, which is why the sharpener had been hidden. The pencils are getting short, and there are always shavings all over the place. So he didn't find much interest in the coloring set, but before he was able to do anything, someone was sent to collect him, because after all, he was home from school because he was sick.
His English is really picking up though. He always says, "This you?" to ask if something is yours, but yesterday he said, "This yours?" Overall, there are a lot of things that he says that he didn't used to say.
His English is really picking up though. He always says, "This you?" to ask if something is yours, but yesterday he said, "This yours?" Overall, there are a lot of things that he says that he didn't used to say.
Freddy Teaches Us Time
A couple of weeks ago our Swahili tutor brought us a list of 200 words we should know. A day later he came back to pick up the list, and I hadn't copied them down. After begging, he finally brought them back, and I wanted to share. Some of them are essential, useful words; some are just funny.
166. anasa - luxury or luxuriousness
167. maamuzi - arbitration
180. adimika - be unobtainable, very scarce
182. janga - calamity
116. saa ngapi? - what time is it? Note: The answer to this depends upon whether the African or European system of reckoning hours is used. There are 24 hours in the African day, but the counting begins with sunrise and sunset. What therefore would be 7 am by European reckoning is one o'clock (saa moja) by the African system. There is always a six hour difference.
166. anasa - luxury or luxuriousness
167. maamuzi - arbitration
180. adimika - be unobtainable, very scarce
182. janga - calamity
116. saa ngapi? - what time is it? Note: The answer to this depends upon whether the African or European system of reckoning hours is used. There are 24 hours in the African day, but the counting begins with sunrise and sunset. What therefore would be 7 am by European reckoning is one o'clock (saa moja) by the African system. There is always a six hour difference.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Small Snake
Several months ago a snake came into the hostel. Sarah shooed it out with a twig that was a bit short for my own comfort level. I'm not afraid of snakes, but when there are so many deadly snakes here, and I don't really know what any of them look like, I'd prefer not to take my chances with any of them.
Today Sarah screamed when she entered the house, and explained that she had almost stepped on a snake. So we all went to look and there was a small black snake, no thicker than a pencil and shorter than a foot, in the front yard. It was acting all big and moving its head agressively. We contemplated what to do. I recalled that after we shooed the snake out last time we never heard the end of it when a neighbor got bit several weeks later; even though the guy didn't die and I'm sure it wasn't the same snake. Anyway, the point is that we had been clearly advised that it's culturally accepted (or expected) that snakes be killed. So we put the same trashcan we used on the scorpian over it, but he crawled through one of the millions of holes. We thought about leaving him, but he crawled toward the house. We agreed that we should just kill him, but the only thing we had were butter knives and my swiss army knife (which we needed to cut our watermelon in the afternoon). Eventually I found a hoe; making it my job to take care of the snake. I scooted him out from the grass where he was hiding and chopped him in half.
It was really sad. I know it's just a little snake. When I scooted him out from the grass he was just calm and harmless looking. He must have cooled off from almost being stepped on. It just didn't seem right to kill something that had done nothing to me. I know I did what was supposed to be done, but it was still sort of evil feeling.
Today Sarah screamed when she entered the house, and explained that she had almost stepped on a snake. So we all went to look and there was a small black snake, no thicker than a pencil and shorter than a foot, in the front yard. It was acting all big and moving its head agressively. We contemplated what to do. I recalled that after we shooed the snake out last time we never heard the end of it when a neighbor got bit several weeks later; even though the guy didn't die and I'm sure it wasn't the same snake. Anyway, the point is that we had been clearly advised that it's culturally accepted (or expected) that snakes be killed. So we put the same trashcan we used on the scorpian over it, but he crawled through one of the millions of holes. We thought about leaving him, but he crawled toward the house. We agreed that we should just kill him, but the only thing we had were butter knives and my swiss army knife (which we needed to cut our watermelon in the afternoon). Eventually I found a hoe; making it my job to take care of the snake. I scooted him out from the grass where he was hiding and chopped him in half.
It was really sad. I know it's just a little snake. When I scooted him out from the grass he was just calm and harmless looking. He must have cooled off from almost being stepped on. It just didn't seem right to kill something that had done nothing to me. I know I did what was supposed to be done, but it was still sort of evil feeling.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Cool Co-ops Contest
Thank you to everyone that voted for me in the Cool Co-ops Contest. I am one of the one hundred winners. They will be announcing and recognizing all of the winners at the UC basketball game on February 20th. THANKS!!!
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