The Oranges Here Are Green

At long last. The blog is up.

Our first night in Moshi.

If nerves weren’t enough to keep me up last night, I owe the 3am wakeup to the roosters and goats chatting outside my window (all night long). This morning we visited KCMC (Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center). We toured the hospital with two Duke graduate students, who are researching the effect meditation has on the performance of orphaned children.

KCMC was nothing I have ever seen before. The wards were overcrowded, mattresses (if you can call them that) were scattered about the hallways, which were coated with last night’s rainfall. At one point, we were stopped before entering the delivery ward because our shoes were “contaminated”. Meanwhile, dirty water was dripping from the ceiling, despite a continued effort to mop it up. Patients were dressed in their normal, colorful African attire, while nurses wore what we consider patient gowns, ones clearly donated from overseas.

But even with the tremendous number of patients that come to KCMC each day, the hospital remains one of the most capable in the region. People were excited to hear we were from Duke, they definitely appreciate the collaboration.

What most struck me today was the size of Tanzanian “mamas”. Women here, and I say this respectfully, are heavy. It is apparently customary for a woman to take three months after she delivers a child to stay home and care for her baby. While the woman cares for the child, it is the community, especially the husband, who is responsible for caring for her. If the woman emerges from her home months later and is relatively thin, it is interpreted that the husband and the community could not properly care for her. Obesity becomes a sort of right of passage into mama-hood. [I can think of a mother or two who would appreciate this custom in America…]

Tomorrow we are off to Marangu, the rural village we will be spending the next eight weeks at. Our project, though we expect to see some changes in it, is to help Marangu hospital by assisting with community-based care, developing health education materials, and revising the hospital’s method for obtaining patient information.