When in doubt, DANCE PARTY!

I have been going to the SOS Children's Village most Monday nights since I arrived in Gabs. It's an enormous orphanage with hundreds of kids split into houses of eight or nine and one "house mother". At first we were taking giant green grocery bags full of books, cards, and toys, and sometimes we could make it to one of the houses before the bags exploded from lots of grabbing, but most of the time couldn't. I now only carry one or two toys.

There are two houses that have the youngest kids, and one of them has five adorable little girls who are usually wearing old party dresses. My third week, I tried branching out to get to know some other kids, but I've since come back to the little girls, and they are decidedly my favorites.

SOS seems to have a pretty decent school, and we've since met some older kids who are now enrolled in the University of Botswana. The saddest part about the orphanage is the lack of personal attention each kid gets. When one pinches or hits another, the ten-year-old house brothers either intervene or they don't. For this reason, manners are basically non-existent, and I am lucky if our game of Go Fish goes two rounds without someone grabbing cards out of turn or knocking them all off the table. It's always the smallest and cutest ones I have to watch out for!

Last week I was so frustrated by their bad behavior, that I just gave up on scolding them and sat silently for a minute listenting to them bickering.

Then it came to me. I got up and just started shaking my booty. After a few seconds of shock that "Teacha" was acting like an idiot, all the little girls joined in, and their brother played the drums with pick-up sticks. We clapped, kicked, twisted, and spun. It was glorious and full of giggling. The host mom joined in as well and turned on the music video channel. Her booty was going nuts! I left that night wiping sweat from my forehead.

Tonight when I showed up with Go Fish, the girls immediately demanded a "dance party".

The Spice of Life

I'd like to introduce you to Aromat, the secret to all good cooking in Bots. Allow me to share with you how our relationship began and blossomed:

For the first few weeks here, I was using whatever spice mixes I could find in the grocery store. The variety was astounding, and included such diverse options as "beef spice," or "chicken flavor." Even though all the meat looked a little off-color, and the vegetables had their own ant farms, everything tasted incredible. It wasn't until halfway through Sarah's bottle of "Parmesean Pesto Spice" that we discovered our new best friend's name: monosodium glutamate, otherwise known as MSG. I immediately stopped messing around with the add-ins and fancy names and bought straight up Aromat Original. I will never eat another bite without it, and I'm saving at least half my suitcase to welcome my new friend to America.

Things They Don't Tell You About Running

Over the past week, I've been sporting some not-so-stylish wounds on my chest. Basically, everywhere my sports bra had a seam during the 32k run, I now have an unsightly scar. The diagonal dashes actually look surprisingly like the traditional medicine scars I saw on patients in Tanzania. For many patients presenting with cardiac issues, the traditional healers had generously marked the precise spot of the heart murmer with a concentration of small linear burn marks. It made the med student's job a little easier, though unfortunately, we usually had just as few tools as the traditional healer for actually healing.

Mine, fortunately, are not cardiac related, and today for our 2 hour run, I tried a different method that involved a large piece of duct tape. I thought that if this worked to prevent blisters while hiking, it would certainly prevent sports bra chafing. I was feeling pretty proud of my ingenuity until about 4 miles in, when the intense itching began. I'm embarassed to say I now have a bright red duct-tape-shaped contact dermatitis cooling off in a slathering of Neosporin. Somehow these chafing issues don't feel quite as badass as running's other effects...

One of the coolest things about our new house is its abundance of weaver birds. There's one giant tree hanging over our cement yard, and it's full of tiny woven baskets with spouts coming out the bottom. Ryan D pointed out that we must have several species in the area because the nests at his house have side-spouts, whereas ours come out the bottom like "prolapsed rectums".

Last Saturday morning at 7am as I was waiting for Ngaire to pick me up for our long run, I watched all the mommy birds flooding their nests at once. They clung onto the spout entrances and stuck their heads up inside, and I could only assume that meant breakfast time.
So we all know that what goes in must come out. As our single male neighbor has been having more and more visitors lately (always well-dressed women who come and leave alone and occasionally make grunting noises in the kitchen while...cooking), our covered parking spot has occasionally been occupied, leaving us to park on the other side of the yard under the weaver bird tree.

Because Research Projects Don't Give Out T-shirts

In my fellowship, I'm supposed to have one "primary project" that I can ideally complete in one year, and then I can be a part of larger projects, and I can do additional smaller projects as well.

My primary project just became PROJECT MARATHON MACHINE. aka: my original "primary project" on pneumonia continues to gather dust on the Botswana ethics committee's desk, my new fill-in mentor is in the Dominican Republic for a couple weeks, and I just cranked out a small project on antibiotics.

So, the only thing left to do is to become a beast. With that in mind, I signed up for the Soweto Marathon in 2.5 weeks. Maybe you think that is nuts. I prefer to think of it as healthy coping. Sarah's going to do the 10k. Total credit to her for this post title.

I have been told the Soweto Marathon is a once in a lifetime experience because it's the only day of the year when historic Soweto is safe enough to explore. My first reaction when I heard that was probably something like yours: "Then keep me the hell away," but several others have since recommended it, and if I can keep my car from being stolen and not suffocate or cramp to death in the altitute change, I will be a happy camper.

With that being said, I'm off to practice running some hills! ...on the treadmill...if it's not broken today...

Living the Dream: first 20-mile training run

I'm officially signed up for the Two Oceans Ultramarathon (56Km) in Capetown the first weekend in April. The course is along the coastline, and it's supposedly the most beautiful marathon in the world. When in Africa, right? Now I need to pick a c0uple marathons to run before April to make sure I won't die.

So that brings me to today: my first 32km (20 mile) training run through the scorching Botswana bush. A few weeks ago I was introduced to Ngaire, an Aussie ER attending, and ever since, she's been taking me on epic runs around the city and into the bush in preparation for her first New York Marathon.

Today's run was a bit more epic than usual. We did the first 10 miles on crazy narrow bush tracks, and I had no idea how Ngaire knew where she was going. The crazy African dagger thorns (see picture I took a few weeks ago) kept stabbing up through the soles of my shoes, and at one point we had to stop. There was one nasty thorn that we couldn't get out with our fingernails, so...I may have used my teeth. It worked, and I could run the next 10 miles!

This was very good for me in many ways, but mostly because I realized I have no idea what I'm doing. I brought one small bottle of water and no food, assuming it would be like a normal run, just longer. Luckily, Ngaire had snacks for both of us, and she called her boyfriend to come throw us some Poweraid bottles when we popped out of the bush. He was a real hero. I think by the end I'd had 3 full waterbottles, 2 Poweraids, and 1 large can of coke (apparently a secret weapon).

We ran the last 8km back to the car on a main road, and 9 out of 10 passing cars honked or cheered us on. I spent most of that part staring at Ngaire's heels and dumping my then near-boiling water over my head.

Incredible experience, and it made for a glorious bath in the posh palace's giant tub, followed by one of the best naps of all time

A Botswana Kind of Day

There is definitely something a little off when you spend all day serving cookies, fruit, and Coke Light to workmen because they are locked inside your house. First, the internet guys came and could not get out the gate, and then the gate guys came and could not get in the gate, and now the locksmith is on his way. At least I finished the lasagna before anyone got here...

Yet again, so much has happened in just one week. Harvard's Doris Duke program sent us to Durban, South Africa for an HIV conference, and we turned it into a five-day glorious Global Health Camp reunion. Eleven of us doing Doris Duke fellowships in Africa rented a huge beach house, and we took full advantage of the enormous waves crashing 30 ft from our doorstep. Alex was man enough to rent a 9-person party van to transport us back and forth to the conference (see picture).
After conference hours, there were many more hours of grilling (called having a "braii"), swimming in the ocean, and making bonfires on the beach (woo team Dartmouth!). On Saturday, Melike (Doris Duke in Malawi), Jon (Doris Duke in Ghana), and I rented a car and drove 2.5 hrs to the Drakensberg mountains. The car was a manual, which made for a very interesting experience for 2 people who sorta thought they could drive stick, and one person (me), who'd never done it. Let's just say that by the end of the trip, we were all experts! Okay, not experts, but I feel confident enough to temporarily move the car in one direction, and I think Melike mastered not stalling at each toll booth.
The 7 mile hike was incredible. I kept wanting to sing songs from the Sound of Music (hence these pictures of me frolicking). We came across waterfalls with crystal clear swimming pools so clean that all hikers drank from them. I even climbed one of the tiny waterfalls not to look like a wuss after Jon and Melike did it. It was terrifying, and all the pouring water basically took off my shorts...
It was so great to see everyone and hear about cultural experiences and hear the echo of "Yeah...things are going pretty slowly". That made it a little easier to come back to Bots to find out that my IRB (what needs to be approved before I start collecting my data) will be delayed another 2-3 months. Long story short, things in Africa move a LOT slower and less efficiently. I'm trying not to be too frustrated about it, and luckily, the big boss researcher here came up with a few other project ideas that I can do in the meantime. They sound pretty exciting and are actually pretty similar to the other project, except they already have IRB approval.
In other news, Sarah and I are officially moved into the posh palace, and it is glorious. Somehow we are living in semi-luxury...with down comforters. Yesterday I came very close to forgetting I was in Africa until I saw the colony of ants setting up shop in our jacuzzi. Okay, not really jacuzzi, but it could definitely hold 3 people.
To give you a sense of my hood, I took a few pictures of Main Mall, where we sometimes go to the grocery, bank, restaurants, etc. This is Bots baby!

From top to bottom: 1) Riding in the safari mobile to the pans. 2) Planet Baobab's huts and a giant Baobab tree. 3) Meerkats! 4) Speaks for itself 5) Cousin Ryan grilling up some multi-colored sausage. As for the green ones, your guess is as good as mine... 6) Cannot believe I signed a waiver 7) Tessa and Matt chillin before our safari to the pans.

Makgadikgadi Salt Pans: If you're not coughing phlegm, you're not saying it right

Wow, what a week. Thanks for being patient those of you who follow this...ahem...mom. No, wait, you emailed me twice asking if African bushmen had carried me off. To answer your question, not quite, but I did venture far into the bush this past weekend on our trip to the Makgadikgadi salt pans in northern Botswana. Eighteen of us caravanned through cows, goats, and shanty towns to Planet Baobab, named for the huge and creepy Baobab trees that dominated the campground. I know what you're thinking...we must have carried in massive amounts of hand, foot, and mouth disease into the bush. Nope! There were several "check points" along highway A1 that required walking through muddy pesticides and driving the Dingo through deep puddles of it. It felt very similar to fording rivers in the Oregon Trail in that I had no idea if the Dingo was going to make it. In other news, no one on our trip died of cholera, but Sarah is likely to feel the effects of Salmonella soon, after eating half of her insanely raw chicken wrap at Wimpy Burger in Francistown.

We pitched our 8 tents at the campground and had a massive cook-out. I think this is an appropriate time to mention this country's obsession with sausage. The meat rack at the grocery store is approximately 90% sausage. There's lighter-colored sausage, darker-colored sausage, bloody-colored sausage, and old-looking chicken sausage that no one seems to buy. It is also impossible to buy less than 10 feet of sausage. And it's impossible to pay over $3. Anyway, let's just say that our cook-out included multiple sausage designs of Princess Leia's hair buns, or, what I thought looked like sizzling tape worms.

The next morning was spent with goats and hornbill birds (Zazu from the Lion King) at the pool. Apparently, we couldn't leave for our tour of the Pans until 2pm because it was "too hot". Anyway, making good Botswana time, we left for our tour at 4pm in two giant safari trucks. My window seat turned out to be a serious liability as we sped through the bush and its knife-like thorn bushes. Our first stop was to join five Japanese tourists in harassing a family of Meerkats (Timon from Lion King) by slowly pushing them off their land with 18 giant cameras. Not going to lie, they were pretty freaking cute, and much smaller than I expected.

Next, we pulled up to an isolated village of three small traditional huts next to a herd of cattle. "A cultural stop," I thought to myself. Wrong. Behind dilapidated mud hut #1 was none other than 15 badass ATVs! Sarah and I claimed one, and she maniaced our way onto the salt pan, which felt like floating onto the flattest, whitest beach I've ever seen, except no water.

Sadly, because it started raining, we didn't get to camp overnight on the salt pan and experience the famous peaceful star-gazing we'd heard so much about. Instead, I drove our ATV back to dry land, and we camped another night by the Baobabs.

Pictures to come. For now, I have to prepare for a powerpoint presentation to the Emergency room staff tomorrow, and exhaustion is hitting me like a carton of shake shake. Oh there's so much more to tell...