Orientation

This past week as been orientation! We have spent most of our time in the center's board room, below ;)
We have learned all about Botswana's national guidelines for HIV care, how the center runs, and have even had time for a Setswana lesson! Setswana is very hard to learn as many of the words have multiply meanings and pronunciation is difficult. But I can now do basic greetings in Setswana.
I spent yesterday working in the clinic. It was very busy. Most of the patients were doing incredibly well with undetectable viral loads on medicines. I saw some complex patients as well. One was an 18 yr old male who was severely mentally challenged and very confused about his medications. We are very fortunate to have a psychologist, social workers, and even an "inreach" team (social worker/nurse who go to patient's houses to assess the home environment) to help with these complex social situations. They are working very hard with him and his family to remedy the situation, but much like the U.S. these situations are incredibly hard to solve.
Today is the beginning of Camp Hope. A one week long sleep away camp for children who are HIV positive. I'm looking forward to being a part of the camp and hope that will be covered in the next post ;)

Gabarone Game Reserve

On Friday we visited the Gabarone Game Reserve. It is a protected area about 5 min from where we are staying in Gabs. You can drive your own vehicle around the park and see what you see. We saw two zebras, ostriches, warthogs, bush bucks, kudus, monkeys, and gemsboks (to name a few;). It was so neat to see so many animals 5 mins from our house, and they were so close to us! This was only a brief taste of what a true safari will be like, I can't wait!!!

Dumela

Dumela from Botswana!!!
Dumela means hello in Setswana, and it is a beautiful sounding word. I have heard it many times in the last 5 days. I arrived in Botswana on Tuesday July 28th at around 4 pm after well more than 24 hours of traveling. The trip went very smoothly and amazingly all of my baggage arrived without any problems at the Gabarone airport. The airport is pretty small, only one baggage claim area. Here is one of my first views of Gabarone. It is a picture of me and Julia (a fellow PAC doctor) on the runway at the airport with our small prop jet in the background.


I am currently staying in Gabarone, but I will be moving to a town called Serowe in a few weeks. Gabarone (or Gabs as everyone calls it) is a very modern city. There are several movie theaters here which are showing Harry Potter, Bruno, etc (basically the same movies that are currently out in the US). Already I have eaten pizza, Italian, Indian, Chinese, and today I even found veggie burgers for sale!!!! I hear that Serowe is much more rural, so I'm getting my fill of these luxuries now. However, it is only a 3 hr drive away, so hopefully I will be able to come and stock up periodically. For now I am living in a wonderful house with three bedrooms. However, only one room has a heater and since it is freezing, (by that I mean 40-50 F at night, as it is winter here) my temporary roommate (Steph) and I are sharing a room.


On the left is a picture of the front of the house. It is in a complex with several other PAC doctors and other families. We do not have internet in the house yet (they are working on it but it may take some time, which is why I have not blogged before this, and why this blog is so long!).

The Center of Excellence in Gabarone is pictured above. It is a very up to date clinic, they even have ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS!!! There will be more pictures and details of the clinic to follow, as I officially start there next week.

One Giant Leap

Happy 40th Anniversary of the first ever moon walk!
I spent the weekend exploring Houston sites. It seemed like a fitting weekend to go to the Houston Space Center. While there, we learned all about how astronauts live in space (sponge baths for 6 mths, etc), saw historic mission control, and found out how much we would weigh on several different planets.
This is a picture of historic mission control which they used until 1996! We couldn't see the current one since a mission is ongoing right now...


Other weekend highlights included a free outdoor concert which was packed with people. It was in Herman Park which is a really nice park in the city and they even have a miniature Washington monument!On Sunday a group of us explored the Menil Collection. It is a museum created by the deMenils (a wealthy couple in Houston who collected a lot of art). They also commissioned two chapels to be built! One is The Rothko Chapel which houses several large painting by Mark Rothko. Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, and others have spoken at the chapel. It was quite a diverse collection of art; everything from figurines from 500 BCE to abstract art from today. There were even a few outdoor sculptures.

We then found the best restaurant so far in Houston, Ruggles Green! It is Houston's first certified green restaurant and it was delicious with lots of veggie options. All in all a great weekend!

Time for knitting

Well it may be hot in Houston, but that doesn't mean you can't knit! I think everyone who is reading this blog knows that I like to knit. (That may be a bit of an understatement ;) Some of my fellow PAC (Pediatric AIDS Corps) doctors asked if I was bringing knitting to Botswana! Of course I am; the question is how much! (They will learn soon...)

So obviously I am going to take advantage of two weeks of classes to work on some fun projects. I began a baby surprise jacket on the first day of orientation and in 4 days it was finished! It is called "baby surprise" because when you are knitting it looks nothing like a sweater. When it's finished, you sew up two quick seams and tada you have a sweater! It's amazing what you can accomplish when you can knit all day and still learn all about HIV, TB, diarrhea, etc!
Here's a photo.
It still needs a crocheted neck and some buttons, but they will come in time.

In other news, I hear that people who have signed up to "follow" the blog are not getting emails when I post. I read more about blogging today and I have added a "button" on the side panel which will allow you to subscribe to the blog. If you enter your email in the subscription line, and follow the instructions, you will get an email confirmation. Click on the link in the email and you will be subscribed. Let me know if it works or not, so I can try to figure something else out if it doesn't.

Hot As Heck Houston

Hello from Houston.
It is hot as heck here for sure (98 degrees, but with the humidity it feels like well over 100). Each day we walk a mile from the hotel to the training at the medical center and back. (Well some people take the shuttle, but it is good to get exercise, right mom?) Outside I feel like I'm walking through really thick air, and it is definitely harder to breath. I guess it is good practice for Africa, though there it is not nearly as humid, and right now it is 70 degrees in Botswana!

This is a view from the room where we have our trainings. The medical center is massive (the biggest in the country I think). All the hospitals are clustered in the medical center and they are building all the time (the picture only captures a small portion of it).


My fellow Pediatric AIDS Corps doctors are all really great. Baylor put our pictures online today, so you can read all about them and see pictures here:
http://bayloraids.org/corps/bios2009.php

Each day we have lectures on topics that will be pertinent to our jobs in Africa. The professors so far have been great speakers. Yesterday Dr. Kline (the founder of the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative and now also the Dean of Pediatrics at Baylor) gave a truly inspirational talk about the founding of the program. Basically a lot of people said a program like this would never work and he just persevered. Many said that parents in Africa would not bring their children to an "AIDS Center" because the stigma was too high. But the opposite has been true - everyone comes, even if their child does not have HIV. We are all inspired and even more excited to begin!

Bye Philly

So I left St. Chris for the last time one week ago :( It was bittersweet. I'm not going to miss the crazy hours, but I already miss all the people.
I managed to sell all of my larger things and pack all my possessions into my car. If the pediatrics thing ever fails I could always be a truck driver. As evidenced by the fact that I was pretty good at driving the 2 hours back to NJ without a rear view mirror ;)Now I just have to organize, pack, and store everything. Oh and sell my car, get my finances in order, get a NJ driver's license, say good bye to family and friends, and start STUDYING for the BOARDS :(