The reason my hemoglobin is catching up to my age

Today I woke up at 5am to drive an hour with my running buddies Ngaire and Renaud to Lobatse to visit Ngaire's boyfriend Phillip's farm. It's one of the biggest cattle feeding stations in Botswana, which basically means cattle ranchers pay him to fatten up their cows before slaughtering them for beef. Of course, we did a 2 hr run first in the rolling hills before meeting Phillip and a few others for a gourmet brunch overlooking the cattle. I've come to learn the word "farm" in Botswana is a loose term. While I usually think of fenced-in muddy squares with chickens or pigs, here, it usually involves hundreds of kilometers of empty bush with 200 meters or so of animals or crops. It's not the land that has the real value but the cattle. A man is judged by how many cows he has on his farm, and a woman is worth a certain number of cows in exchange for marriage.This was sadly somewhat of a farewell brunch for Ngaire, because she's going home to Australia for three months. I'm pretty devastated, because I don't think I can routinely get out of bed at 6am on Saturday mornings to run without her overly enthusiastic peer pressure. Luckily, I still have my Frenchman Renaud who's training for Comrades, the 89km survival race in Durban.

I haven't yet mentioned my fantastic news from last week: I FINALLY GOT ETHICS COMMITTEE APROVAL TO START MY STUDY! For the past week, I've been frantically collecting data in the Emergency Department, which gets interesting after 5pm or anytime it's slightly overcast outside, because the office ,with a broken overhead light, gets completely dark. I'm continually learning that headlamps really are a miracle.

Anyway, I feel such a boost of encouragement and energy, and I can't wait to analyze the data. Unfortunately, the data will have to wait at least another couple weeks, because Sarah and I are off to Zanzibar tomorrow in our new matching $2 beach wardrobe. Life is so tough this year.

Happy Hannukah! And more...

So I do actually know there are 8 candles in the Hannukah menorah, but I couldn' fit 8 in the special star of David cup! I'll figure something else out for the second night.
In other news, it figures that as soon as I become a badass marathon runner, everyone decides to become all obsessed with biking and their super cool zip-up bike club shirts. All I hear is, "30k climb this" and "50k ride at 6am that". I see two solutions: either I buy a used bike and an automatic ticket to the clubhouse, or I steal everyone's bikes and sell them to buy more running spandex. Also, it's SUMMER! Just about every day we get an intense downpour, and a couple spots in the orange dust bowl are actually starting to turn green! Check out this crazy sea monster plant attacking the Dingo.

Spandex-o-philia

My birthday party in Gabs was a huge success! The theme was "philias and phobias," though I seemed to take it a bit more seriously than others. Thanks to everyone for a very special night!

I've Got a Fever

If there is one thing I have learned in Gabs, it's dancing. I've never had such dance fever in my life, and as soon as the weekend hits, my hips refuse to lie. I'm not just a frenzy of American two-stepping though. I'm trying to update with as much African booty influence as I can. This usually means standing behind an unsuspecting well-endowed booty shaker on the dancefloor and copying exactly what she does. Unfortunately, all dancing here involves gyrating booty spins, so I always get caught in the act.

My proudest moment yet was not my dance-off with a bedazzled cowboy who drank beer out of a bull's horn but rather when a busty woman looked me up and down, slapped my butt, and said, "I like the way you move."

The President of Botswana Drives an ATV

This weekend I blew up 60 blind-folded teenagers who stepped on newspaper mines in my team-building activity at Stepping Stones bootcamp at the President's farm outside Gabs.

Stepping Stones is an incredibly successful NGO in Mochudi, Botswana that offers after school programs, counseling, and summer camps to at-risk and vulnerable teens. Many of the kids have suffered abuse at home, others have HIV, and most are not succeeding in school. I heard about this bootcamp through its organizer, who wanted to model it after his training in the British Forces. He also happens to be the nephew of the President of Botswana, and he was able to fund the weekend with help from the Lady Khama Charitable Trust.

My "command task" was called the Mine Field and involved a 3mx3m square full of exploding newspapers that the 6 blindfolded teens had to avoid while working together to rescue some paint buckets. Basically, I stood on the sidelines making explosion noises while baking in 100 degree heat and direct sunlight. Then, after 30 minutes of baking, we searched for a few inches of shade in the bush to debrief with the kids about what had gone well, but mostly to lecture them on why the task hadn't worked because they had cheated. We also asked them what they wanted to do after school, and I learned that a mine field was perhaps not the best choice of leadership activity since many of them "wanted to join the army to kill people".

In all honesty, the weekend was an enormous success for the kids and for me. Some of the teams of kids became incredibly trusting of each other, but mostly it was clear to me that Stepping Stones had already formed a group of strong young leaders. I heard many stories from staff including one about a 16-yr-old boy who first came to the program a year ago refusing to speak a single word, and he was now his team leader directing all his teammates across the minefield. This is the most successful and worthwhile NGO I have witnessned firsthand, so check i out if you're interested http://www.steppingstonesintl.org/newsite/.

On Sunday morning, as the kids were shaking their booties and singing in a circle, we heard reving engines getting closer and closer. Then, in the middle of the bush on the Khama farm, Ian Khama (the president of Botswana) drove up on his flame-striped ATV followed by his flame-striped posse. After seeing his portrait in literally every establishment and office in the country, it was a surreal moment for me too. He shook our hands and then drove off...without seeing our mine field, but I'm sure he had other things to do.

Africa for Beginners Part 2: Photographic Evidence

Thanksgiving in Botswana! Penn med student Ali and Columbia Derm resident Vishal are hard at work preparing turkey from World Foods, an import store in Gabs that inherited some turkeys this year after they were unsucessfully smuggled from SA to Zimbabwe! Alex, another Penn med student awaiting the fruits of our labors.

The Hash ceremonies! Newbies and those guilty of misdemeanors during the run/walk have to enter the circle and chug the most disgusting thing the "brew master" can create. And yes, those are children.

This hash took us past the former church and home of Dr. David Livingstone, the Scottish explorer and missionary who re-named Victoria Falls, and disappeared while exploring Southern Africa. His church was up and running in 1860, and it's now the pile of rocks seen below, which makes colonial Boston and Williamsburg seem all the more impressive.

Here Ryan and I are struggling in our lack of modern conveniences...

Plea for music and books!

I am desperate for new music! Please email me music or send a cd to my mom who's visiting in a few weeks.

I also cannot find many books around here that don't have aliens and/or lingerie on the cover, so if you've read any good ones recently, please send them to her too!

Mailing address:
749 Chestnut Rd
Sewickly, PA 15143

The Day I Hung An American Flag

Tonight I duct taped a square-shaped American flag to my bedroom wall. I miss my country! I miss not having five layers of dead bolts on my doors, downloading PDFs in less than an hour, having seasons, being able to swim in bodies of water without fear of crocs tearing off my limbs or dying a slow death from schistosomiasis, walking down the street with my laptop without fear of it being grabbed, seeing patients getting great care in the hospital, my friends, girls nights, and the New England outdoors.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still having a great time exploring Botswana and meeting new people, and I can't wait for my mom to come visit in January for Mom-fari, but I think the different pace here, referred to as "Botswana Time," is staring to get a bit on my Type A(minus) American nerves.

I suppose it's time I talk about my research project. My pneumonia severity score project is part of a larger "Botswana Pneumonia Guideline" that the Ministry of Health asked UPenn to draft for the country. To begin actually collecting data, we need ethics approval from three institutions: The Botswana Ministry of Health, Princess Marina Hospital, and UPenn. About a month ago, we got Princess Marina approval, and UPenn has told us they will follow quickly after both Bots approvals.

So, here we are still waiting on the Ministry of Health. If you're scratching your head, you're right--they did ask UPenn to draft the protocol in the first place. They have been sitting on it for five months now, which means that my mentors actually did a stellar job getting everything together ahead of my arrival, but no one could have foreseen that the Ministry would take this long. Our UPenn staff keeps having meetings with Ministry officials in which they report, "We are understaffed, and that person who reviewed your protocol is on vacation...out of the office...not answering his/her phone...unheard from." Last week I was told that the committee is having a meeting on Tuesday to plan when to have a meeting to discuss the protocol.

I keep having to remind myself that I knew things would be extremely slow, and this cultural experience is what I signed up for. All in all, while "piloting" the study, I've been doing a pretty good job finding other ways to keep busy. I bought a guitar and have been playing more than ever, I run everyday with friends, I volunteer at an orphanage, I started teaching swimming lessons, and I've been cooking more than ever. It's just so different!

So, after that rant, rest assured that I am happy and enjoying life in Botswana, and I'm just saying that sometimes it can be a little frustrating...