I'm here! After no less than three trips to the Houston airport and an aggravating experience with United, I finally got on a plane and arrived in Managua on Friday. From there, a $4 cab ride (with a very friendly grandfather of 25 grandchildren) to the minibus stop (la UCA), and a $1, 1 hour bus to Granada. I met a poet/painter on the bus who left me his email and invited me to his cousin's farm in Leon, so I may eventually take him up on that offer. By the time I checked into my hostel in Granada I was dripping in sweat--Nicaragua is HOT.  But Granada is a very beautiful city, filled with colorful Spanish colonial architecture. I met up with the EWH students at the end of their class day. Technically I don't start work until the 15th, but I wanted to meet everyone. They all have homestays in Granada now, and will be moving to new homestays throughout the country for their second month, when I'll be working as OTGC. I'm on my own for finding housing. My plan is to just live out of hostels, usually under $10/night. The only downside is that this means I have to carry all my stuff with me wherever I go, so I've just brought a 38L pack. Very little spare clothes, so forgive me if I'm wearing the same thing in all my photos!

For the weekend the students had planned a trip to San Juan del Sur, a surf & party town 2.5 hours to the south. I jumped on their air conditioned bus with them and stayed at their guest house for the first night I was here. The benefit of them travelling in a large group is that it brings down the price of nice transport & lodging! After they left on Sunday afternoon, I moved to a popular hostel, Casa el Oro. It's a nice place close to the center of town, but not right next to the clubs so it's not as loud as some "party hostels."  Not that the town is very big anyway!  On Monday I took a $25 surf lesson. I'm definitely not a pro yet, and I have to use a really long board, but I improved a lot from 11am to 4pm!  Surfing here is a lot harder than it was when I took a lesson in Costa Rica a couple years ago. On that beach, the waves were very steady, predictable & small. Here on Playa Maderas they get scary big and criss cross all over the place. But by the end of the day I was paddling, catching, and getting up on my own. :) I wish I didn't have to lug around such a big board though!! That night a group of us from the hostel went to Iguana Bar and met up with pretty much every other person in town. Nicaraguan beer, Toña, is only $1 per bottle, and it's pretty decent. Last night made me SO glad that I took that Latin dance class at Duke!! Nobody felt like fistpumping to the terrible top40 stuff, so we requested something more salsa-esque. Only a couple of people knew how to salsa, but a lot of people pretended and I tried to teach a few. So fun! I met a lot of interesting people as well. 


Today (Tuesday) I'm planning to practice my new surfing knowledge. Hope that goes alright... Wish me luck!

Get ready, cause I'm starting up the blog again! This summer I'll be in Nicaragua. Remember that Engineering World Health (EWH) thing I did in Tanzania a couple years ago? Fixing medical equipment? Well they also have a program in Nicaragua, and this time I'm not a student volunteer. I'll be the "On The Ground Coordinator" (OTGC) for the 2nd month of their program, while they work in the hospitals. I'm in charge of maintaining hospital contacts, acting in case of emergency, and traveling around between the hospitals, helping the students with any repairs they may struggle with. It's a paid position, and all my flights, vaccinations, etc were covered. I also booked my flights with room for solo vacation travel. I have 10 days before I start work, and 2 weeks after, to just backpack around the country doing whatever sounds fun. 

I touch down in Managua June 5th, so stay tuned for more posts!

Now, for the post you’ve all been waiting for…. FOOD!  Or chakula, as we call it here in Tanzania.  The diet here is extremely starchy, which we’ve all definitely tired of.  And while they do have nyama choma (barbequed meat) on occasion, pretty much everything is fried or boiled.  Here are some of the staples:

Ugali: a starchy, polenta-like dish of maize flour (cornmeal) cooked with water to a dough-like consistency.  Eaten with the hands, dipped in sauce or stew after being rolled into a ball.  Doesn’t really taste like much, just helps fill you up.  I had a lot of this at my home family.  I don’t have any pictures of it, but this one shows how it is eaten very well.

Wali: Rice.  Usally white rice, served with pretty much every meal.

Pilau: Rice seasoned with cinnamon, cardamom, cumin, and black pepper.  Cooked with meat (usually goat) inside.  This is one of my favorite things to order at restaurants.  At a local canteen or guest house you can get a plate of pilau served with a slice of avocado (parachichi), some boiled spinach (mchicha), cabbage (kabichi), and maybe some sliced tomatoes (nya nya) for 2,000Tsh (~$1.25).

Stew: We ate a lot of stew.  Goat stew, beef stew, intestine stew, banana stew, chicken stew (complete with chicken feet), fish stew, stew and rice, stew and ugali… you get the picture. 

Fruits: While we didn’t get as much fresh fruit as you would expect, when you got it it was amazingly juicy and fresh.  We did have banana (ndizi) with almost every meal and avocado (parachichi) with many of them.  Other fruits were available from street sellers, but having to peel them makes it a little impractical on the go.

Samosas:  The best samosas ever!  Beef and vegetable, both delicious.  You can buy them from little canteens during chai (tea) for about 500 shillings (~$0.30).

Chapati: Everyone loves chapati! Regular is somewhere in between Indian naan and Mexican tortillas.  Chapati ya maji (ya maji = of water), on the other hand, is a lot like a Finnish lettu—somewhere in between a crepe and a pancake.

Indian Food: Okay, so maybe not a staple, but the Indian food here is sooo good! And perfect for me, since you can get really good options that aren’t spicy.  We loved going to Bigg Bite, an Indian restaurant that also delivered.

There are also just a lot of strange combinations of food.  Liiike, chips mayai!  Chips mean french fries (cause that's what they call them in Britain), and mayai means eggs. So, yes, that is a french fry omelet.  Healthy!  But still a very popular dish.  Chips with anything, really.  

You can always find nice restaurants serving more western-style foods.  One of our favorites was Michelle's (next to ShopRite & Empire), an amaaazing French place run by a nice man from Belgium.  Rafiki menu crepe stuffed with emental, leeks, mushrooms and cream, served with mini quiche, sangria, and eclairs.... MMMmmmm. For 12,000 (~$7.50), it was well worth it.

This last week has been really hectic.   Am I actually leaving on Sunday?  I don’t want to.  We’re working on our secondary project this week.  Every EWH group does a secondary project: something that addresses the needs of the hospital, whether or not that is engineering related.  In past years, students have repainted wards, built bilirubin lights, installed wheelchair ramps and created children’s libraries.  Our first idea was to install privacy curtains in the surgical wards, since right now the men’s ward is also a hallway, and people just walk right by patients having catheters put in, no privacy at all.  The head matron disliked that idea, however, as she said they would only aggravate the stuffy, hot air in the rooms.  That gave us the idea of installing fans in both the men’s and women’s surgical wards.  First step, actually finding the darn things!  After a day’s searching, we finally found a guy who said he could meet us on the market corner the next day to show us 3 fans for 50,000Tsh ($32) each.  Kinda sketchy, but hey! Good deal.

We did find him the next day, and followed him (pretty far!) to his sister’s shop.  The whole way we were thinking, “Oh gosh, now he knows we’ve got money and he’s gonna lead us down some back alley…” It ended up okay though!  We got all three fans for the price agreed (an under the table deal, no receipt available).  Next step, hanging them from the walls.  Unfortunately the walls of pretty much every building in Arusha are made of hard concrete/clay/rock stuff.  Jonas did have a masonry drill bit, but it’s never easy to set up shop in a surgical ward filled with patients.  One day, we had finally gotten the fan hung and were about to start wiring when a young girl was brought in, fresh from a motorcycle accident.  A very gruesome sight, and a good reason to pause work early for the day.  We eventually got all three installed and wired in after about 3 days of intermittent work when the wards were slow.  Two in the men’s ward, since that was the hot hallway one, and one in the women’s.  We wired them directly into the wall power, from behind the sockets so they can’t be unplugged.  We also included switches for each fan.  The patients seemed to appreciate them, and one of the nurses came in very excitedly when she saw what we were doing—“Oohh, air conditioning!  Thank you!”

It was nice to use our resources to leave something permanent for the hospital.  We just hope these fans will still be in working order next year when the new group of EWH students return!

This weekend I went to Moshi again for a camping trip to Lake Chala, a volcanic crater lake about 2 hours north of the city.  Part of the lake is actually in Kenya, and all of our phones got a text welcoming us to the Kenyan network and wishing us a pleasant stay.  Pretty cool!  Everyone else from the Arusha house stayed here to go on a hike, so I left work a little early on Friday and caught the bus to Moshi by myself.  Well, not quite by myself—you’re never by yourself on a Tanzanian bus!  It’s always at least 5 people to a row, with fold-down seats down the center aisle.  Every time the bus stops, people get up and shuffle around to let people climb off or on.  For a large chunk of the trip, I rode with my arm squished around a Massai man (stretched ears, wooden staff, everything) who smelled unmistakably like cow.  He was really nice though, and invited me to come marry his son.  After I finish school of course.  

When we arrived in Moshi it was pouring rain (first and only time the whole trip!), so I had a fun time running through the streets, dodging under storefronts and leaping across rivers to get to my next car, a Dala Dala to KCMC Hospital, where I stayed at Juan & Christine’s house in the doctor’s compound.   That night we went out to dinner at one of those Brazilian style steakhouses where they just keep bringing you more and more meat.  It was pretty expensive at 20,000 Tsh (~$12), but totally worth it!  We met up with the EWH Moshi crew (Juan, Christine, Stephanie, Daria, Ray, Rishabh, Ollie, and Aman), the Karatu pair (Keerthigan & Marko, who travelled 6 hours from Karatu!), a group of Scottish girls who work at KCMC, and a handful of random Germans.  Quote of the trip:  “It’s a good day for Deutschland!”  I really like that about visiting Moshi—they live with so many interesting volunteers/students from all over the world!  After  dinner we went out to Glacier Nightclub, basically the Moshi equivalent of Via Via: outside, a couple dance floors, a fire pit, and a bunch of wazungu (white people/foreigners).  It was a great night with such a fun group of people.

Next morning, we stopped by the market to buy camping groceries and loaded up into a rented Dala Dala for the ride to Lake Chala.  I dunno about the people squeezed into corners or sitting on the floor, but I had a great time hanging my head out the window like a dog, singing catchy songs into the wind. :)  As soon as we arrived we headed down to the lake, a steep 15 minute hike down to the water’s edge.  Now, we’ve all been warned about Schistomaniasis, a parasite that lives in freshwater, swims in through your feet and lays eggs in your blood. But we also heard Chala is schisto-free, and hey, a quick blood test and a couple pills in 6 weeks is pretty much worth it, right? How often do you get to swim in a beautiful African volcanic lake?  Blood parasites never felt so good.  

After we were all nice and sunburned (the malaria medicine Doxycycline makes that pretty easy), we headed back up to work on dinner.  We had brought pasta, tons of vegetables, and guacamole ingredients…. but all we had was a fire.  Luckily, we were able to borrow a wok and pot from the campsite kitchen.  Cooking over just a fire (no rack or hooks or anything) was great entertainment, especially with Ollie (super posh British guy), wearing just his tiny, pink, European swim trunks and hiking boots. 

Next day we got up early to watch the elephants at the watering hole.  We saw the family of 200 elephants in the distance (and Philip the German had binoculars!), but unfortunately they didn’t come to our watering hole until 20 minutes after we left, according to reports from a friend who arrived as we were leaving.  We did, however, see tons of baboons.  It was kinda scary actually.   The first encounter occurred when Stephanie and I were walking around taking pictures, and almost walked into a cabana containing a huuuge male.  We stood and watched him for a while, and it’s strange—his mannerisms were so human-like as he sat taking in the same view we had been enjoying.  Before heading back to Moshi, we made one last trip down to the lake for a morning swim.  This time, there were two local couples down by the water.  When we started swimming, they asked if they could take pictures of us!  With each of them lining up for their pose next to the crazy swimming wazungu, we felt like celebrities.  Things like that really show you how similar all people are; we tourists stare in awe at the local people for their exoticism, but we are just as exotic and intriguing (or maybe just funny-looking!) to them. 

I’m really glad I decided to go to Moshi, even though I was the only one from Arusha to make the trip.  It’s just nice to have a change of scenery sometimes, and I enjoyed hanging out with Moshi crew and their new international friends.   I can’t believe that was the last weekend though.  I feel like I need at least another 2 weeks here in Tanzania, or maybe even a month.  There’s just so much I still want to do!  It’s always like that though; you finally get into the groove of things and then… tick-tock, your time’s up.  We’ll just have to try and make the most of this week.

Last weekend in Moshi we didn’t end up doing anything we planned on, but we still enjoyed it!  We left Saturday morning with the plan of meeting the Moshi people at Maji Moto (means Hot Water), a hot springs in between Arusha and Moshi.  Unfortunately, there were some communication issues and we ended up just going all the way to Moshi while they lounged at the hot springs, having too much fun to answer their phones to give us directions (GGGRrrrrrrr!!)  It turned out alright though, because it turns out Moshi is great for fabric shopping!  Colorful printed bags are only 4,000 Tsh there (~$2.50), and you can get nice khangas (printed with border and a figurative message) and kitenges (4m big piece of printed fabr ic, no words) easily for 8,000 Tsh (~$5).  I got a khanga for my mom that translates to “Mom is number one without competition.” Hope she’ll like it!  All my new material also came in handy that night, when I needed a blanket for sleeping on a couch.  Like I said in my last post, khangas are perfect for everything!

After a slow weekend, this week has been super busy!  Wednesday was a Tanzanian holy day, “Nane Nane,” which literally means “Eight Eight” for August the 8th.  There’s also Saba Saba, Seven Seven, in July!  Basically it’s some sort of celebration of farmers or harvesting or something?  And there’s a huge fairgrounds set up where people sell strange infomercial-like farmers equipment, but also have science-fair setups from technical colleges around Tanzania.  Anyways, the 8/8 celebration goes on from Saturday to Wednesday (Wednesday was the 8th), so we decided to go see what it was all about after work on Tuesday.   And after thaaat, we went to see Batman!  Great day.  Then, since nobody works on Nane Nane, we had Wednesday off work.  It was Charlotte’s birthday, and we decided to make up for our missed hot springs experience and hire a driver to take us to Maji Moto for the day.  Such a good decision!  The trip was 45 min on the main road to the town of Boma Ng’ombe (Cow House), where we turned off onto a bumpy dirt path for the next hour and fifteen.  The dusty fields and sleepy villages we passed through were really interesting to see—exactly what you think of when you think of  “the real Africa.”  People riding rusty bikes loaded down with water buckets, children leading huge herds of goats down the roads, thatched-roof huts, etc.  My favorite were the old, scarred baobab trees.  They don’t look real!  Remind me of the “Tree of Life” at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. 

When we arrived, it happened suddenly.  You know in Lion King where Timon and Pumba have this awesome oasis hangout in the middle of dry, dry desert?  Yeah, like that.  Sheltered by tall, leafy trees in the middle of a flat grassland is the most beautiful (big) pool of perfectly clear, blue flowing water.  Literally paradise.  It wasn’t quite hot, but just the perfect temperature to swim in.  And deep enough to really swim, but not enough to hide any lurking creatures. Ah!  So nice.  The current was really strong though, so staying in place without a log or something was a pretty good workout.  The funniest thing happened because of it—there was this Indian family there, and a fat middle-aged man as floating in an inner tube.  Apparently he couldn’t swim, and suddenly we see him scrambling in a section of overhanging palm fronds.  He had been swept backwards in his little inner tube and gotten stuck in the plants!  Laura had to go pull him out.  After that they tied ropes around themselves so they wouldn’t drift away.   I think our day at Maji Moto Chemka may have been one of my favorite experiences here, it was just that perfect. Plus I always love water! :)

Today at St. Elizabeth, we finally finished up an amalgamator that we’ve been struggling with for a while.  An amalgamator is a machine used in the dental clinic to shake pellets for fillings in side of a little plastic bean.  Don’t ask me more—I don’t know enough about dental fillings! This thing was full of problems when we got it.  We fixed the electrical connections easy enough, but there was a snapped plastic bracket we just couldn’t figure out what to do with.  We fixed a metal bracket (for holding the bean, shown to the right), by drilling holes through a similarly-sized strip of metal and overlapping them across the break.  The metal strip on top is new.  Notice how the arm on the bottom is a solid piece, w/out screws.
Even the littlest things like that can be tough here though.  Where do you go to get holes drilled through metal?  At home: My dad’s shop, of course.  He doesn’t have a metal bit? Off to Home Depot! Not so here in Tanzania.  There’s nothing close to a Home Depot—you go to separate stalls (not quite stores) for pipes, spare auto parts, auto oil, nuts and bolts, tools, glass, lights, etc.  Every shopping trip is an adventure!  For these holes, we found a fundi wa fungua (key technician), who has a little key-making table on the side of the road. 

We then scoured the city for metal pipe-holding brackets (Ω shape) that would fit around the broken plastic…. thing.   We finally found them, and then that didn’t work!  Charlotte started using my zip-ties from home to supplement the brackets, and then we realized—“Hey! Do we even need these metal brackets?”  Nope, we ended up securing the stupid thing with just one neon orange zip-tie.  Sometimes the best solution is right in front of you.

After returning the amalgamator to the unbelieving dentists, we opened up a giant suction machine.  The motor was bright blue, and it reminded me of the blue Mustang my parents used to have.  My dad had this motor that I remember painting the same bright blue.  I think the plan was to put it in the Mustang (I really don’t remember, I was like 7).  Anyways, the machine had some suction but not enough to draw up any water.  As we were opening up the pump to check the valves (dirt-clogged valves are a common problem in pumps here), we noticed something strange.  The “seals” of the metal components, instead of nice rubber gaskets, were circles of newspaper!  Jonas scoffed, “Inafanya katika India!” (It’s made in India!)  And so it was.  But the strange materials didn’t stop there—we went to clean out the oil filters, and what were we pulling out?  Strips of khanga!  A khanga is a really colorful piece of fabric used for everything in Tanzania.  It’s like the multipurpose T-shirt:  skirt, head scarf, blanket, towel, etc.  I’ve seen books titled 100 Uses of the Khanga, but it never said oil filter!  It was like a magician pulling scarves from a hat.  Guess there’s really 102 uses.

We diagnosed the main problem with the machine as an uneven wearing of these little metal “flaps.”  In the picture you can see the coppery rectangles—notice how the one at the bottom doesn’t quite fit in the hole?  Nothing we could really do about that. The rotor was also unevenly worn, and we might have been able to find an auto shop who did rotor grinding (thanks Dad, for teaching me about that right before I left home!), but it turned out only one side of the pump was really that bad.  It was too old to spend much money on, so we just re-fitted the tubing to only use the good side.  The suction doesn’t get to the max, but it sucks up a lot of liquid, really fast.  Good to go!

Tomorrow we’re going to Ithna Asheri.  Ithna both expects us later and is way closer to our house.  Yay, sleeping in!

After the coffee farm stuff, we came back to our Arusha house to relax for a bit before going out.  Then we headed to the ShopRite (western-style supermarket) area for dinner and Empire Sports Bar.  We ended up eating at this amaaaazing French restaurant.  1 giant spinach & crème fresh crepe + 1 sangria + 1 pastry + croissant/sausage appetizers for the table for 12,000Tsh (~$7.50).  Kind of expensive for Tanzania, but so worth it!  After eating rice and stew, potatoes and stew, etc. every day for over month, you really start to appreciate the little things like cheese. :)  After dinner we hung out at Empire for a bit to watch the Olympics: Swimming, when Ryan Lochte won the 400m.  We were to early for the dance scene, so we went back home to hang out with the rest of our crew before going back to Empire a little past midnight.  It’s a great place; couches for watching TV, a pool table, small lounge in the back, and live music for the dance floor.  And after that we went to Massai Camp, formerly the largest club in Arusha.  We didn’t come home till 4am!  We never stay out that late, but we finally had everyone reunited to we had to make the most of it.  On Sunday we went to investigate a lake we had heard about near Tengeru Market.  It took a while to walk there, and since it was Sunday there wasn’t much going on.  The restaurant was only serving chips mayai (French fries omelet, extra grease), so we just sat by the water drinking Stoney Tangawizi (very gingery ginger soda).  The lake was so much bigger than we expected!  Unfortunately you couldn’t really do anything for a reasonable price around there, but it was still nice to see. 

Overall, a really good weekend.  So good to have everyone in Arusha again!  We're going to visit them in Moshi next weekend.

Last weekend all the people staying in Moshi came to visit us.  Moshi is a smaller city about an hour and a half from Arusha, on the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro.  It was nice getting to see everyone again, even if we were a little cramped for space Saturday night!

On Saturday morning, we met them on the way to Ray & Juan’s former homestay.  Steven, their host dad, owns a coffee farm.  After hiking up the dirt road to their house, Steven took us to the fields to start picking coffee.  You only pick the red beans from the short, bushy trees.  And if you drop one, follow it!  Nobody wants wasted beans.  After filling about 5 buckets, our hands were filthy and we were hungry.  We headed back to the house for a delicious lunch made by Steven’s wife. 

After lunch, he showed us how to pulp the beans.  During large harvests, they use a gas-powered machine, but four our measly buckets we used a hand-cranked pulper.  Everyone got to try out.  Not too hard, but I wouldn’t want to do it all day! 

When the beans come out of the pulping machine, they are slimey and tannish yellow in color.  Then they are fermented for 18 – 24 hours, then dried for about a week, depending on the sun.    After drying, the flakey husks (kind of like peanut skins) have to be removed.  To do that you put them in a giant mortar and pestle kind of thing and hit them with a big heavy stick.   The beat of the stick kind of sounds like a drum, and Steven’s grandson really liked to dance to it—so cute!  After crunching off the husks, you shake and blow them away.  At this point, the grey beans are ready to be sold to corporations, who then roast them their selves.  We wanted to drink it, though, so we started roasting! 

It was literally just a fire with a metal pot on it.  Honestly, I wasn’t getting too hopeful about this coffee, thinking it would probably taste burnt.  It took about 20 minutes for all the little yellowy beans to darken into the roasted ones we are used to.  Then we took them back to the giant pestle and beat them into a fine powder.  Mmmm, they were starting to smell good!  Finally, Steven’s wife brewed what we had followed from branch to stove (Well, kind of.  We cheated by skipping to beans that had already been dried!).  It was delicious!  I’m one of those people that puts half a pound of sugar in their coffee, but this was so fresh it didn’t need it.  I bought a bag of beans to take home, too.  Get excited! :)

More about the rest of that weekend later--Sorry I'm so behind on posts!

So remember when I mentioned those stages of culture shock we were told about?  And how we were all still in the Euphoria/Honeymoon phase? Well…… Depression finally hit.  Don’t worry! I’m in Acceptance now, but for a while there we were all feeling pretty homesick.  I think it was just the huge transition from our sheltered homestays last month to living more or less on our own now.   A lot of small things just kind of piled up:  the boiled drinking water here tasting like soap, the heated water for showering being filled with ashes, the overall downgrade in food, the lack of routine, the hospitals not trusting us with English, struggling with Swahili all day at work, etc.  And then the thief who took Angela’s purse and we all kind of hit a low point.  That’s probably why I haven’t really felt like blogging lately—everything would just be a complaint.   The only good thing was that it seemed to hit all of us at once, so nobody was left alone and depressed.  We could all complain together.  But it’s gotten better!  Charlotte talked to Mama Makerine about the soap in the water, so now it just tastes like metal from the boiling.  We’ve gotten used to the food and the ashy showers.  And Miguel (our engineering professor) came to work at the hospitals with us, so we fixed cool things like anesthesia machines to prove ourselves to the hospital staff.  And as for the Swahili….. well, let me just say that I’ve been having a really hard time doing my Costa Rica Spanish level placement test because I can only think in Swahili now!  Anyways, I apologize for not updating a whole lot since the move, even though I do have a lot better Internet access now!  I’ll try to catch you up on what’s been going on lately.

So the only machines we have been told to either not work on or be extremely careful with are X-rays, Ultrasounds, and Anesthesia Machines.  Guess what the hospitals wanted fixed?  St. Elizabeth: first thing, ultrasound and anesthesia.  Ithna Asheri: only thing, anesthesia machine.  Greeeaaatt.  Luckily at St. Elizabeth we were able to busy ourselves with inventory and helping our fundi (technician) Jonas with random small equipments.  Ithna Asheri, however, was kind of another story.  They were very skeptical of our abilities, which I totally respect; I wouldn’t want some random punk kids tinkering around on the medical equipment in my hospital!  But still, it was kind of annoying when the only thing they trusted us with was to “service” 2 oxygen concentrators.  Here in Tanzania, without oxygen concentration meters for testing, “servicing” just means cleaning out layers upon layers of dirt and dust.  We happily took the task though, and the lack of basic cleaning supplies here actually made it a lot more difficult than it would have been if we had had access to a vacuum, some canned air, Clorox wipes, or even just paper towels.  The paper towels here are literally just a roll of contruction paper.  Great for homemade Valentines, not so much for sopping up soggy dust bunnies.  Oh, and another thing about Ithna Asheri?  (It’s a really sweet little hospital, don’t get me wrong!  We enjoy working there because of the great location near town and the fact that we have complete freedom over our schedule)  We have our own office, kind of.  We have to give the key back at night because it’s the freakin TB Unit.  Yeah, like tuberculosis TB.  The TB patients come in after hours so as not to infect other patients, and they are seen in the TB Unit.  Smart move for the patients, but nobody seems so worry about us.  I guess we have shots?

After a pretty slow week, we were really excited to have our engineering professor, Miguel, coming on Friday.  He’s been making rounds to all the hospitals in Arusha, while Ben is doing the same around Moshi.  Miguel is super experienced and an awesome troubleshooter.  First, we had him meet us at Ithna Asheri to check out the anesthesia machine.  We had previously diagnosed a supposed “leak” as an open safety valve, but we hadn’t yet looked for the cause of the ventilator not turning on.  We suspected a bad power supply.  After a lot of struggles because we lacked proper tools (people who stayed in Arusha weren’t provided toolboxes, because technically we could go into the city to buy new tools) like wrenches and needlenose pliers, we finally got the valves exposed and opened to diagnose the leaking safety valve.  Was it defective?  Or was there just a pressure buildup down the line causing it to open?  While Laura and Charlotte attacked the ventilator, opening it up to check the power supply, Miguel and I looked at the valve. There is no way I would have been able to get that thing open on my own—I had no idea what it was supposed to look like, let alone how to get all the seemingly seamless pieces apart.  With Miguel’s help, however, we got to the very inside and found, to our dismay, a ripped rubber seal.  Thing was, this isn’t just any rubber seal.  It had these weird fibers made into the rubber, and the metal plate that held it was permanently attached.  What does that mean?  To stop the leak, an exact replacement made for this piece of equipment will be needed.  And here in Tanzania, that just isn’t possible.  We took some pictures and put it back together, mashing the seal in as best we could.  Maybe someone will be able to send a replacement from Ohmeda (it’s an American company).   Back on the ventilator front, after an extremely tedious struggle with the screws and housing, we figured out there was, in fact, nothing wrong with it at all!  But why wouldn’t the darned thing turn on?  Well, American plugs need adaptors here, and the stupid adaptor was broken!  Yeah.  They’ve been using manual ventilation for months all because of a tiny little $3 piece of plastic and metal.  An easy fix, and the anesthesiologist was ecstatic to have a working machine again.  Well, almost working.  It can still be used with the open safety valve, though that’s obviously not ideal.   Nothing we could do for that problem though.  :/

After lunch, we walked to St. Elizabeth to go take a look at their anesthesia machine.  Once again, ventilator issues.  This time, it turned on but wasn’t pumping air.  What was it, a leak?  Back to the horribly tedious process of unscrewing the housing!  I actually worked on taking apart another torturous housing (one for a heart rate/EKG monitor) while the others operated on the ventilator, but I saw how many screws came out of that thing.  A small piece of tubing was suspected to have a leak, but no hole was found.  After taking everything apart, cleaning, and reconnecting, they tested the ventilator again.  Tadaa!  It worked.  We still aren’t sure what the problem was, but it’s solved now.  Always a nice feeling!  The monitor I was working on was having problems with the blood pressure.  It always stopped at 143, where it should be getting at least 180 if Laura, our guinea pig, is as healthy as we believe.  Leaky pump?  Yep.  Nothing we could really do about a rip in the rubber pump seal, so a similar pump is now on our shopping list.

We ended up working really late that day with Miguel (and Jonas at St. Elizabeth), and didn’t get home until 7 pm.  But it was so worth it!  Both hospitals really needed help with these machines, and they’ve been using them in a semi-working state for so long now.  It was great not only to help them restore vital equipment to working order, but also to finally have them realize that we can help, even if it took showing off our “supervisor” for them to see it.  Thank you Miguel!