Kind of a downer.

Death is such a regular occurrence here.  It's hard to really compare it, because people back home make it such a private affair. When people die in the hospital it's usually a subtle event, people are upset but in a more controlled way.  Here, there's an outburst of grief, people throwing their hands up to the skies, repeating certain phrases over and over, collapsing to the ground, screaming so loud that you can tell when there's been a death at the hospital even when you're at home in your living room.

Usually other parents crowd around the dead child, curiously, but most of the time the family members mourn alone, without other families trying to comfort them, like they all know its part of the process and not to interrupt it.  

This goes on for 30 minutes or so, then the family members - usually the mom - comes back inside the ward and dresses the child, which is a really intense process to watch. You can imagine her getting this child dressed every day, and now it's for the last time.  They usually softly mumble the same phrase they were yelling outside, almost like they're comforting their child.

It's just all so different.  At home, a team of doctors and nurses mobilizes at the bedside, CPR is usually started, the kid would maybe get intubated, they'd get a lot of IV medications to help restart their heart, possibly get shocked.  But here, we don't even have oxygen to give, let alone all the rescue meds, defibrillator, and ventilator.  So death is a much more natural process here, something you just have to accept, as terrible as it is.  And it's better not to dwell on whether they would have survived at a hospital in the 'western' world, because it's not the reality here.  Everyone tries to do the best with the limited resources that we have here, and hope that one day things will improve.

Elisa's not-so-excellent adventure

Yay!

I was able to download the blogger all from my iPhone!  It took 40 minutes :)

So...it took me 6 days to arrive at Shirati instead of 3.  

I was about 4 hours in to an 9 hour bus ride from Nairobi to the Tanzanian border town of Sirare/Isabanya, and was all excited and sleep deprived, writing down a ton of stuff for the blog on my laptop, taking photos of the awesome landscapes that we passed on the bus, only to have my bag stolen...and be left without a passport, all money, laptop, camera, and lots of other things...

After getting essentially no help from the local security, I sat on the bus for another 5 hours wondering what the hell I was going to do...when I got to the border I met Dr Chirangi who helped me find a place to sleep, since I didn't have a passport and wasn't allowed to cross in to Tanzania...  I had to file a police report, for which I got a 'receipt' on a torn of piece of paper the size of a passport photo.  

Long long long story short, I got a new passport at the embassy, filed another police report at the Diplomatic Police Station in Nairobi, and wasted 2 full extra days on the bus.

Some people on the bus told me that had they caught the guy then and there, he might have been killed by the locals.  It's another story I came across when I heard 2 Dutch med students had been robbed and they actually managed to catch the robber in their house - people asked them why they hadn't killed the guy.

Anyways, Tanzania has been great to me since I finally made it.  Next blog will be about the hospital!

Here's my police report:

My new passport!

My buddy Dan, a neurosurgery resident in Nairobi:

Emmanuel and Lucy, who let me stay at their home at the border and gave me a warm dinner!