We failed to see the big 5. The rhino was the only one we missed but we just couldn't find one despite the fact that they tell you you are almost 100% guaranteed to see on in ngorongoro! We did however see lots of other things and it was great!!! We saw a lioness kill a zebrawhich was quite exciting and beautiful in a morbid sort of way!! We just arrived back and will be getting a flight to zanzibar tomorrow! I'll catch up properly once I'm in zanzibar but am about to run out of internet time now!
Salx
Tuesday, 28 August 2007
Saturday, 18 August 2007
Thought for the day-
I do not think my feet will ever be clean again. They are still stained orange by the clay soil however hard I scrub. Maybe Vanish bar on my feet will work!
Since the last blog entry...
Went for a weekend in the Mountains. A lovely old mountain 'town' called Lushoto which used to be a German colonial town. Sounds nice... well it was EXCEPT for the fact that it turned out to be a cursed weeked for us. First of all...one of the guys got some rubbish news from home and so wasn't really happy all weekend...THEN.. one of the others got a serious bout of D+V (thank goodness I took my ciprofloxacin with us)...Amanda and Catherine got attacked by the Siafu (don't know how you spell it but biting ants!...not too seriously though!) and even though we went on a couple of nice long walks and the weekend finished off ok, it did start fairly horrifically!)
Then we had another week in the hospital, which I mostly spent in the Theatre. I spent friday morning in the lab though and did my first Gram stain (which excited me....I am such a geek) and had a look at Malaria slides etc.
This weekend its just Amanda and I...because the others have all gone and left the hospital.... so we have gone to Tanga. We had a bit of a splurge and are staying in the most expensive place in town but it has hot showers, air con, TV (FINALLY know what is going on in the world...thanks CNN!) and a swimming pool! Today we spent a long time waiting to change travellers cheques in the bank and then went to visit Amboni Caves via bicycle. It was nice to have a bit of exercise! There were a lot of bat droppings in the cave but they were good fun to look around, although perhaps not the most spectacular ones I've ever seen. Now we are going to go and relax by the pool til it gets dark!
Back to the hospital for a week on Monday but that will be our last week in Teule.... then off on Safari....soooo looking forward to seeing a Lion!!! RAHHHHHHHH!
Bye
Salx
I do not think my feet will ever be clean again. They are still stained orange by the clay soil however hard I scrub. Maybe Vanish bar on my feet will work!
Since the last blog entry...
Went for a weekend in the Mountains. A lovely old mountain 'town' called Lushoto which used to be a German colonial town. Sounds nice... well it was EXCEPT for the fact that it turned out to be a cursed weeked for us. First of all...one of the guys got some rubbish news from home and so wasn't really happy all weekend...THEN.. one of the others got a serious bout of D+V (thank goodness I took my ciprofloxacin with us)...Amanda and Catherine got attacked by the Siafu (don't know how you spell it but biting ants!...not too seriously though!) and even though we went on a couple of nice long walks and the weekend finished off ok, it did start fairly horrifically!)
Then we had another week in the hospital, which I mostly spent in the Theatre. I spent friday morning in the lab though and did my first Gram stain (which excited me....I am such a geek) and had a look at Malaria slides etc.
This weekend its just Amanda and I...because the others have all gone and left the hospital.... so we have gone to Tanga. We had a bit of a splurge and are staying in the most expensive place in town but it has hot showers, air con, TV (FINALLY know what is going on in the world...thanks CNN!) and a swimming pool! Today we spent a long time waiting to change travellers cheques in the bank and then went to visit Amboni Caves via bicycle. It was nice to have a bit of exercise! There were a lot of bat droppings in the cave but they were good fun to look around, although perhaps not the most spectacular ones I've ever seen. Now we are going to go and relax by the pool til it gets dark!
Back to the hospital for a week on Monday but that will be our last week in Teule.... then off on Safari....soooo looking forward to seeing a Lion!!! RAHHHHHHHH!
Bye
Salx
Wednesday, 8 August 2007
Thoughts for the day
For the first time since I paid 100 pounds for my Rabies vaccines I am relieved that I have had them. 3 people died from Rabies in the hospital the day before yesterday when a Rabid dog in Segera (not our town but one down the road) bit them. It doesn't seem thhat they have the treatment for it at our hospital...! We are keeping our distance from all of the animals.
I haven't described the hospital so here it goes... (I can't put up photos because computers are painfully slow) (now I'm home I can add them...YAY)
It has probably about 8 wards, theatre, xray. lab and outpatients. Each ward is in a separate building. They have about 40 beds in each and about half of the patients in each ward usually are sharing beds (bear in mind at this point that there is about a foot between each bed!) The Patients relatives visit during the day (not sure where they go at night) and clean/feed the patient... usually there are about 80-100 people on the ward at one time. Its kind of crazy really. The ward may or may not have a Dr visit during the day and the nurses may or may not give the drugs... but in general people are doing the best they can in a limited situation!
Right... time is running out on the internet so I'll be off...
Byesey bye for now
Salx
I haven't described the hospital so here it goes... (I can't put up photos because computers are painfully slow) (now I'm home I can add them...YAY)
It has probably about 8 wards, theatre, xray. lab and outpatients. Each ward is in a separate building. They have about 40 beds in each and about half of the patients in each ward usually are sharing beds (bear in mind at this point that there is about a foot between each bed!) The Patients relatives visit during the day (not sure where they go at night) and clean/feed the patient... usually there are about 80-100 people on the ward at one time. Its kind of crazy really. The ward may or may not have a Dr visit during the day and the nurses may or may not give the drugs... but in general people are doing the best they can in a limited situation!
Right... time is running out on the internet so I'll be off...
Byesey bye for now
Salx
Thursday, 2 August 2007
Muheza
We've now spent 4 days at the hospital in Muheza. Muheza is a small townish place which has nothing particularly of interest but has a certain charm of its own if you look closely enough. The streets are dusty (red!) and there are stalls all along the roads (and a market) which all sell pretty much the same things (seems a bit stupid to me but hey...). Walking past the butchers means that I am not going to eat any meat whilst in Muheza...vegetarianism it is... but the ribcages of animals hanging in the heat with flies all around didn't really tempt me. We've adopted a diet of tomatoes, onions, peppers, carrots, potatoes, eggs, bread, rice, bananas and oranges in various combinations because that is about all you can buy. Well you can get other stuff but we don't really know what to do with it!
Our hostel is ok...its pretty basic but we have electricity and a fan in our room. When we arrived we didn't have running water because it had broken but they eventually fixed it yesterday so now we don't have to walk to the next door building to get buckets of water (it seems further than it sounds) which is luxury and we can have showers again (even if they are cold and you have to dodge mosquitoes flying all around you!). There are 4 other students here with us at the moment, all a year ahead of us...they all seem really nice too :)
We've spent 3 days on the paediatric ward which was good because there was a nice Dr and sweet kids and also a lot more ability to do tests like blood glucose and blood gases because they are doing a study into malaria medications. In the rest of the hospital its pretty much impossible to get any tests which makes everything a lot more taxing, combined with the lack of certain medications which we would take for granted in England. We had a guy that came in the DKA and wasn't given his insulin by the nursing staff one day...and the next day was given too much and went into a hypoglycaemic coma. When we got to him he must have been like that for a couple of hours and no one seemed bothered or had done blood glucose (mostly because they don't have a machine on the ward... ) so we stole one from paeds. I think it was probably too late though.
Today Amanda and I went on 3 palliative care home visits which were really interesting because we got to drive up dirt tracks into the remote villages and see what life was like. Mud huts and animals running all over the place... but everyone is really friendly and welcoming.
The little kids don't really know what to make of us...and constantly stare and laugh when we smile or wave at them but they are friendly even if they point and call us mzungos.
This weekend we are going to try and go to the beach...hoorah!
Salx
Our hostel is ok...its pretty basic but we have electricity and a fan in our room. When we arrived we didn't have running water because it had broken but they eventually fixed it yesterday so now we don't have to walk to the next door building to get buckets of water (it seems further than it sounds) which is luxury and we can have showers again (even if they are cold and you have to dodge mosquitoes flying all around you!). There are 4 other students here with us at the moment, all a year ahead of us...they all seem really nice too :)
We've spent 3 days on the paediatric ward which was good because there was a nice Dr and sweet kids and also a lot more ability to do tests like blood glucose and blood gases because they are doing a study into malaria medications. In the rest of the hospital its pretty much impossible to get any tests which makes everything a lot more taxing, combined with the lack of certain medications which we would take for granted in England. We had a guy that came in the DKA and wasn't given his insulin by the nursing staff one day...and the next day was given too much and went into a hypoglycaemic coma. When we got to him he must have been like that for a couple of hours and no one seemed bothered or had done blood glucose (mostly because they don't have a machine on the ward... ) so we stole one from paeds. I think it was probably too late though.
Today Amanda and I went on 3 palliative care home visits which were really interesting because we got to drive up dirt tracks into the remote villages and see what life was like. Mud huts and animals running all over the place... but everyone is really friendly and welcoming.
The little kids don't really know what to make of us...and constantly stare and laugh when we smile or wave at them but they are friendly even if they point and call us mzungos.
This weekend we are going to try and go to the beach...hoorah!
Salx
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