Arrival and Orientation

It’s great to be back in Africa!  Not to say that I don’t have some residual trepidation about what I may encounter in the hospitals, but the warm breeze in the air that greeted me as I stepped off the plane combined with the pitch darkness of a night relatively undisturbed by city lights was enthralling.  Arriving at the Work-the-World house, I found that my program put me up in dorm style housing on the bottom bunk, albeit I’m currently encased in the mosquito netting canopy which is not what I had ever experienced back in PA, but oddly, my room still reminds me of the time my brother and I shared bunk beds growing up, and mine was always on the bottom.   It’s good to have some reminders of home this far away.  Orientation tomorrow then off to 2 weeks of obstetrics, which I’m curious to see what their medical practice is here.  I was talking with one of our program managers who expounded upon the bush medicine and how traditional ways (still practiced) are to limit the mother’s diet to keep the fetus small, thus keeping the laboring simple.  This makes me curious about developmental defects, but our director swears up and down that the children being born are very healthy.  They warned us that there would be striking differences between medical practice compared to back in our home countries (undoubtedly!), and while the urge is to interject our recommendations and state the differences (and possibly do our way while here) most of the docs don’t care how it’s done in other countries.  If we try to resist the current system, we will only get frustrated, so we were instructed to just ‘go with the flow.’  I’m sure I will come to my own conclusions concerning that matter.  More to come…