Where I work, Part I

So I work at a couple places. The first one, the main one, is called the Dartmouth Pediatric Program. Its a pediatric HIV clinic in downtown Dar, about 200m from the ocean. Its a collaboration between Dartmouth and the MUCHS, the Muhimbili University College of Health Sciences. I work there with about 8 other people. There are 2 doctors, Dr. File and Dr. Jema, both new doctors a couple years out of Muhimbili, the premier teaching hospital in Tanzania. File (pronounced "fee-lay") is a really warmhearted woman, who loves to laugh and who knows her stuff. Jema is much the same way-- they speak pretty perfect English, and use it to give me a hard time (all in good fun), especially about the fact that I suck at Swahili.

Dr. File. See, even she knows she's awesome.

Speaking of Swahili, damn. All the native speakers here are like "Its an easy language!" or "You'll be speaking in no time!" F that. This language has zero indo-european or romantic roots, so every word is straight memorization. Sure, the verb forms are pretty easy and straightforward, but that doesnt help much if you cant remember verb youre looking for is. As you can tell, its not coming too easily for me.

So back to the office. We've got our 2 counselors, Sister Janet and Sister Elimina. I havent gotten to know them very well yet, except that Elimina absolutely delights in all forms of humor that come at my expense. More on that later. Next is Etigala, who does most of the cleaning and other things (boiling water to drink in the morning, etc). Having a bit of a hard time to break through to her, seeing as she doesn't speak much English.

The clinic is run by Dr. Helga Nuburi. She teaches at Muhimbili, among having her patients there and also being in charge here. Helga is a rock star. She's super nice, gets right to the heart of what a problem might be, and just all around kicks-ass. She is only around once every couple days, which sucks, but when she is, things get done.

Sampson, our driver. He's awesome. We played with chickens.

And I can't forget Joyce. She's our receptionist, and I share a room with her where my computer and desk are. She speaks pretty good English and, as I just learned from lending her my ipod, LOVES the Kings of Leon. Shes also the closest person in the clinic to my age, minus Margi, another intern. What that means, is that, because we share an office, everyone gives her tons of shit about the two of us. Constantly, people will speak really quickly in Swahlili to her and, even though I can't catch a word of it, I can tell by her reactions and the way they keep glancing at me, that they're giving us shit. Afterwards, as though I knew what they said word for word, she says "Sorry, they were joking!" Of course, the primary culprit for these acts are Elimina.

Joyce in our office

So those are the people I work with. Well, except Margi. Shes a rising sophmore at Dartmouth and has been here about a month longer than I have (I got here the 9th of July, I think). She works mainly in trying to connect DPP with other programs, and so is constantly exploring other NGOs and meeting new people. It seems like a pretty cool deal. She speaks a lot better Swahili than I do.

You might be wondering now, what do I do? Good question. Considering I have no medical education thus far, really, it would seem like an extremely specialized clinic (by Tanzanian standards) wouldnt be the best place for me. Well, I'm doing a couple things. The main one is helping with getting an online database running here. After getting everything online, I'm analzying it to try to help get kids on ARVs (anti-HIV drugs) faster, as right now the time between figuring out they have HIV and getting them on drugs is taking too long. Besides that, I'm doing alot of random things, like teaching the nurses how to use computer applications, designing a new broshure, and trying to learn how AIDS treatment works. Oh, and I'm the resident "my computer broke, come fix it" guy. So I'm about 33% awkward American, 33% medical student, and 33% IT guy.
Oh, and 1% total badass.

No, I don't have any idea what I'm doing.