week #2...

well the first week of wards is over and as far as i can tell, everything went ok...big sigh of relief! my biggest struggles have been logistical so far, as i navigate the hospital about as well as i do the roundabouts. not to mention the fact that even when i do manage to find my way to the lab, radiology, etc., whatever i'm looking for has inevitably sprouted legs and walked away. i shouldn't complain because really we have a lot of resources for a hospital in the developing world, but it's still hard when your management of patients is hindered by systems issues. an example - last week we had a child with presumed pneumonia and pleural effusion (fluid in the lung). i say presumed because it took 3 days to get an xray. and then after it was taken it took a scavenger hunt and s.w.a.t. team to track down the film. nevermind what it took to actually find a chest tube so that we could drain the fluid!

this is not just the hospital though, gaborone in general seems to move at its own pace. in some ways it's nice (anyone who knows me knows that when it comes to being on time i was born in the wrong country)....lunch is always ALWAYS an hour - at a minimum - and no one misses lunch. that is unless you're the freshly graduated resident who's used to missing lunch....though i'm realizing that if everyone else stops for lunch, so should i! tea is not a privilege, it's a right...and one that comes twice a day (change that to coffee and i'm set :)). however, in other ways it's been a serious test of patience...there is no sense of urgency to get things done, period. whether trivial or life-saving it will get done when it gets done, or when you do it yourself. coming from a drive-thru culture to more of a crockpot culture (cheesy analogy, sorry) is challenging to say the least. my patience is apparently non-existent these days, and the thing is i get just as frustrated by my dinner order taking 2 hrs as i do a lab test taking 3 days! problem #1: i'm ridiculous. problem #2: i have to realize that i am the stranger here....my culture and sense of how things should be is not the norm. the struggle is not to judge them by my standards but instead to learn theirs. so far i am not succeeding in this, but i pray for grace that is so much bigger than me and peace in the process.

on to lighter things....while i'm mostly work and studying for boards these days, true to form i'm still trying to make time to play :) below are some pictures from a hike this weekend - it's called kgale hill, and while it sounds benign the straight up rock climb to get to the top is not easy! apparently only expats climb it cause when we stopped to ask some locals for directions they looked at us like we were crazy. thankfully we saw no snakes, and the baboons that are the supposed kings of the hill did not come out to play....truth be told baboons kinda scare me so i wasn't sad.

this week i'm attending in the NICU.....ummm, yikes! the first few days the neonatologist will be there and then i'm on my own for the second half of the week. which by the way is CRAZY because most people do a 3 yr fellowship before running a NICU, but apparently that's a minor detail. thankfully the medical officers (MOs) here are very good and spend a lot of time in the NICU, so hopefully between all of us the babies will be ok. scary larry is all i have to say....till next time!