It’s another rainy evening here in Mbeya and there isn’t a whole lot to report since the last post. The Americans that were here have left so Melissa and I have the house to ourselves again...I can’t decide whether I am liking the emptiness or not. Wednesday we had a meeting with Dr. Tambukwa and some of the outreach team to see what sort of work we will be doing. A couple of ideas were thrown around and for now I think that we have settled on collecting data on home based care patients as well as assessing the quality of nutrition assistance being provided by NGOs. It should be interesting work if it all comes together which I am doubting right now. We also met with a German doctor who asked if we wanted to help on data collection for a project relating to the over-diagnosis of malaria. It’s something that I would love to help with but Dr. Tambukwa was hesitant as the work isn’t funded by the US...I am really going to push in hopes that we can work on it as long as we put the Walter Reed stuff first. There is also the possibility that a project looking at the prevention of mother to child transmission will be approved and we will get to help with that. We’ve been here for three weeks already and haven’t done a whole lot but I am hoping that things will finally change. Friday we made a random friend (nurse Frida) and she insisted that we go visit the children’s ward with her. Most of the kids there were malnourished but we found out that there is a kitchen behind the ward where cooking classes are taught so mothers learn how to use local ingredients to make the healthiest food possible for their kids.
It’s been a dull weekend. We were going to go into town yesterday but Melissa ended up sleeping all afternoon instead. I read and did some GRE practice which was thrilling. The power was out last night which is always fun especially since that means only selective things work in the house (we’ve only discovered one outlet that functions when the generator is on). That’s all for now...maybe something exciting will happen in the next few days that will be fun and exciting (we did get real peanut butter which is awesome but it’s just not as good as JIF)...
