To start off, my night did not end when I thought it would. We left the cafĂ© about midnight and then we all went to a local bar called Bob’s. One of our coordinators was with us, so don’t worry, we were safe. There was also a lot of security at the bar and everyone was scanned as we went in, so that was good. It was an open courtyard surrounded by a security wall and then there were several bars on the inside that you could choose to go in to. Everyone in the bar was super nice to us and excited that Americans were in the bar. So, we all hung out there and then took a tuk tuk home. A tuk tuk is a little 3-wheeled vehicle that can fit somewhere between 4 and 6 people in it. Hopefully I’ll get some pictures up soon so that you guys can all see this stuff. It’s really cheap to use these (only about 1 U.S. dollar) and very safe. Well, as safe as any vehicle is here since there aren’t any traffic laws. Then we hung out a little at the compound and went to bed.
We were supposed to start of the day at 8 this morning with a doctor coming in to talk to us about the hospital that we will be working at, but he ended up being really busy at the hospital and couldn’t come so we rescheduled to go to the hospital tonight. So, we went back to sleep until about noon. I feel like I’ve been spoiled by sleeping so late the last couple days. After we rolled out of bed, we all took off to go down to the beach. The tide was out when we got there (it comes in about 5, when we were there yesterday) and I have to admit that I lied to everyone yesterday. It was just about as beautiful as the pictures. There was so much more sand today, although the sand was really packed down from the water. It was probably about 85 degrees, sunny, with a wonderful breeze coming off of the ocean. It wasn’t very humid today. The ocean was really wonderful, although there was a lot of seaweed when you walked out into it. We swan a little bit, tanned on the beach a lot, and played with some of the local people. We played sand volleyball and Allison (another girl that came here with us) raced with some boys. These boys then told us they were going to sing to us, went away for awhile, and came back in traditional tribal dress, which was really cool to see. They then sang and danced for us for a little bit until we told them we had to go back home. I hate to admit it, but Dad you were right. They started following us and we didn’t understand why for awhile. Then we figured it out: we had been scammed and they wanted their money. None of us had very much on us (I still didn’t have any), but we did end up giving them 200 shillings, which is about 2 dollars. This is actually not a small amount to them, but they told us it wasn’t enough. We just walked away and they followed for awhile and then finally gave up and went back to the beach. It was a little freaky, but there was about 7 of us in the group and we had 3 guys, so we figured they could protect us. Nothing happened, thankfully, and we made it back to the compound in one piece. I’m a little bit wiser now, so hopefully this won’t happen again. Then we came back and hung around for awhile and ate supper.
I called my parents and I think I finally got the money issue figured out. My parents were able to send me money through my Elective Africa account online, and I should be able to get this money from the accountants here by tomorrow. My fingers are crossed! It was a big relief for me to get this figured out. It feels like a load off of my chest. Then about 7:30 we headed to the hospital.
I can already tell that being at the hospital tomorrow will be a huge shock. Just touring it today was shocking enough. The standards of cleanliness are just so much lower than what we are used to in the US. For the first couple of days, we will just be shadowing at the hospital until we kind of get the hang of things. Then we will start doing and assisting with procedures. Since there are so many of us, we all have to split into groups of 4 and will be assigned to a specific ward every couple of days. We should be rotating through every ward so we should get to see every sort of thing. Some of the clinics/wards they have are infectious disease ward, pediatrics ward, labor and delivery ward, HIV/AIDS clinic, and there are a bunch others that I can’t think of right now.
Anyways, we are going to bed here soon, so I’m going to call
it a night. I hope everything is going good back in the States!
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