DukeEngage | Duke Center for Civic Engagement

Saturday the whole EWH crew went up to the slopes of Mt. Meru to visit the Maasai village up there. The visuals were amazing. I would take time to describe it but I can't. I have pictures but it doesn't do it justice at all. The mountain is so green and so lush as well as so expansive. You'll just have to look at my pictures on webshots.

The Maasai villages were eye opening. From western standards they are very poor. All of the children wear ripped clothing. Whole families live in one room huts, yet this is how they want to live. This is their tradition. To them, they have 3 cows, chickens and goats. They're rich.

I just couldn't imagine being a child in that area. It would have been amazing. It's a jungle. It is all open and expansive. I would have been the happiest kid alive. There were plenty of places to make forts, heck the jungle itself is like a fort against the clearings.

The children almost grew violent when we started giving them stuff. Ben started by giving them pens and he almost got mauled. The kids are ruthless. They push and shove trying to get anything that you are offering to them.

When we visited the children's village, we saw them playing a game. It had a top that one spun and kept spinning by slapping it with a fibrous plant tied to a stick. I tried it but was terrible at it.

Finally we finished the day by hiking to a water fall. The waterfall wasn't terribly big, but still was beautiful. We went around underneath the waterfall and got a little wet, but the pictures were worth it.

On the ride home we almost crashed several times going down the mountain road due to the slick mud. Luckily our drivers were very experienced with their land cruisers.

The day was amazing and very tiring. I ended up going to sleep at 8 pm that night.

Hu Jambo Tanzania (Hello Tanzania)
We arrived in Tanzania last night around 8PM and met our "parents" at the training center around 9. My "mom" (Mama Elda) was in the hospital with her new born baby girl, Faith. My house mate, Watson, and I were taken to our new home by Kelvin and Alfred, Mama Elda's nephews. We ate a nice dinner at the neighbors' house where Jenna and Brittany are staying. The food is much better than I expected. Today in orientation Gaude, one of our Swahili teachers, said, "In Tanzania, it is not a meal without meat." I think I will fit in well here...

There are monkeys all over the grounds of the school where we are taking Swahili and Engineering classes. So far they have eluded my relatively slow picture taking skills.

We just finished dinner and I met my homestay mom, Elda, for the first time as well as her three children (including the 1 day old Faith). Elda's husband is in Zambia doing some teaching for about 1 year so we will not get the chance to meet him. Everyone is very nice and welcoming...but the English stops tomorrow so I will need to struggle with my Swahili from now on.

As of now I notice that I am thinking in Spanish (mostly gibberish). I don't have a great handle on Swahili and I know I can't use English so I guess I resort to my mediocre Spanish.

Today was our first day working in a hospital. We will go from now on, every friday to Mt. Meru hospital and work as a group to gain some experience before leaving for our individual hospitals. When you get there it is kind of a free for all. There is broken stuff everywhere. The workers have no idea what parts go to what...it is all just stuffed in a room wherever it fits. Today when we got there all of us started going at whatever we though we could fix. I found an old motorized wheelchair which looked like it would be fun so I went to work on that. The "key" was just the male end of a 1/4" plug. So I just shoved a phillips head screwdriver in there and that did the trick and the "go-cart" fired up (eventually I found the real key)...well at least the horn worked now. I couldn't get the damn thing to move. Took us about an hour or two to get the rusty old screws out so we could get at the guts. Since the car wasn't moving we wanted to check the power out to the motor from the battery.  We must have done something wrong because smoke started coming from the keyhole...needless to say we stopped doing that!

All that was wrong was a wire had come unsoldered to the speed control dial (potentiometer). It was a pretty quick fix and we all had fun zipping around on the wheelchair telling everyone else to pick up the slack because our shoulders hurt from carrying the team.

All in all we had a good day and must have fixed about 10 pieces of equipment including: my wheelchair, an autoclave, a centrifuge, 3 or 4 blood pressure cuffs, a suction machine, and a ventilator. Not bad for the first day.

The hospital is at the base of Mt. Meru and the mountain was visible in the clear sky today and it looks pretty daunting...hard to believe kilimanjaro has 1500 meters or so on Meru. The city of Arusha is crazy. Everyone is trying to sell the wazungo (white people) something. Just today a guy offered me a bracelet and started at 12,000 Tshillings (10 bucks). I wasnt interested and after walking with me for 5 min he offered it for 2,00Tshilling ($1.50). Haha looks like its not so hard.

Nothing here.