Tanzania

Hello from Gonja Lutheran Hospital, Tanzania!

Kendra and I arrived here a week ago, on Tuesday, February 5^th after traveling for two days. We felt very welcomed by the people here and were immediately shown around the hospital by Sister Dora, the matron of the hospital. The hospital is built on two floors, and each floor is divided into North and South sides. The doctors’ offices are all located on the first floor, (south side) and this is where the outpatient department is conducted. There are four doctors total, and they take turns being the doctor on call and taking days off. As far as I can tell, the doctor on call has to round on the inpatients in the morning, okay admissions to the hospital, and be available for deliveries and surgeries. There are four doctors, Dr. Lusingu, Dr. Amini, Dr. Yona, and Dr. Mary – and even though everyone calls them doctors, they are technically Assistant Medical Officers. Our first week, Dr. Amini was on call. He is very expressive/animated and seems to have good rapport with his patients. This week, Dr. Lusingu is on call and Dr. Amini is gone to do things in town (down the mountain). 

The other half of the first floor (the north side) is where the delivery room, main OR, and minor OR are located. So far, I have not seen a surgery, but we did have two very unique experiences in the delivery room that hopefully I can write about later. The minor OR is more like a procedure room and is used for things like ultrasound, setting a fracture, or proctoscopoy. 

Upstairs is mostly inpatient. The south side of the upstairs is all wards. They are divided into male and female wards, and they group pediatric patients together but there hasn’t been enough for them to have their own ward. The nurse tells us during morning report there are somewhere between 30 and 40 patients in house, including the 7 women on “antenatal” who are really just waiting to deliver their babies. They are all have big bellies and share a room with beds like a ward, but it is on the north side and it is more colorful because they use their own brightly printed sheets. Also on the north side, second floor, there is the CTC where they have clinic for HIV patients on Thursday and the Maternal Child Health clinic, where they see well children under five and women for family planning and prenatal visits. The MCH clinic is open every day except for Wednesday when they go to do outreach clinics. The nurses at the MCH clinic also offer patient requested HIV testing/counseling and they said they see 3 or 4 people every day who are worried about having HIV – usually teenagers/young adults. 

Our house is across the road and a little bit up the hill from the hospital. It is one building with two houses. The other half of the house is occupied by Dr. Lusingu and his family. I think Dr. Lusingu is the doctor in charge of Gonja. In our half of the house, there are three rooms. Kendra and I share one room, and the other room will be occupied by 2 DMU students on February 18^th. The third room belongs to an employee of Gonja who is frequently gone, traveling for work. The house is neat and well kept, though not bug proof. We are currently scheming about how to solve an ant problem that has developed next to our front door. The ants have built a sort of highway from the corner of the “picture window,” down and across the wall, to the corner of our door. We also have lots of little lizard housemates and a constant stream of moth friends coming in to hang out and bounce off the walls (or our faces). 

There is running water in the bathroom, but we can’t figure out how to make it run into the toilet tank. Therefore, we fill a bucket from the sink to flush the toilet. The sink and shower have cold water only. I hoped I wouldn’t mind, but it is hard to get under that cold shower. Lucky for me, Kendra hasn’t complained when I decide to forgo the shower for an extra day. 

More than the cold shower, my biggest frustration with the house is that I am sleeping in a queen bed and the mosquito net won’t fit all the way around the mattress. It is a nightly struggle to arrange the net, and I still end up with it only over half of my body (so you can imagine how good the seal is). 

That is a brief sketch of the layout here. We have had a few interesting patients that I can tell you about later, or maybe I’ll tell you about new patients I see this week!