Marangu

Considering Moshi was fairly urban and busy, we could not have expected what was to come in Marangu. We drove through town, windows down enjoying the Kilimanjaro breeze, only to be bombarded with bananas as women desperately tried to make drive-by sales. And as we moved further into the village toward the hospital and our compound, the market turned to farmland. This is the kind of place where soccer games are interrupted by the occasional grazing cow. Our house is on a hill at the base of Kilimanjaro. We pass over a waterfall each day on our way to the Hospital. The weather is cool and completely unsuitable for our wardrobe, but we will make due.

Marangu Hospital is a small, under-resourced, but clean and quiet place. Wards are contained in individual houses with waiting rooms that are rarely full. Parts of the hospital are construction sites, as they are desperately trying to finance a pediatric ward and a nursing home. We sat in on the morning report, where doctors who were on call the night before review the patients they saw. Some of the attention was on an eighteen year old girl who was bit in the cheek by her brother, but most was on the number of surgeries or patients that would have to wait because medication or equipment was scarce. The wheelchairs here are made of lawn chairs (the plastic white ones) mounted on bike tires. The incubators look like 1950’s jukeboxes.

We visited Marangu Hospital’s AIDS clinic, which was unfortunately very busy. The building was partially funded by PEPFAR, which explains the constant George Bush praise we hear everyday. I had about an hour conversation with the Hospital’s Administrative Director, during which he praised America and their foreign policy, something you don’t hear very often.