26 July 2014 04:15
Dar Es Salam,
Tanzania, Africa
Habari za asubuhi (good morning) to everyone! Today is the day to start blogging. For those of you who don’t already know we
will be spending one year serving in Africa with Global Health Service
Partnership (GHSP;) which is a public-private partnership between several
organizations including the Peace Corps, Seed Global Health, & PEPFAR.
Together we are comprised of 48 physicians,
nurses, and other professionals who are serving as Peace Corps Response
Volunteers in either Tanzania, Malawi, or Uganda. The ratio of trained medical professionals
to the population is one of the lowest in the world. We are hoping to continue to fill the void of
medical educators in this region so that the world is one step closer to equal
health access and treatment for all. (For
more about these organizations please follow the links below.):
THESE ARE OUR STORIES…
We arrived safely to Tanzania just over one week ago after
almost 2 weeks of intensive orientation and training in Washington D. C. Alex and I had to change our plans to fly to
D. C, at the last minute, due to some unexpected visitors at our home.
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| Oh the HORROR! |
After 12 hours of driving, we were ready to begin. We stayed at One Washington Circle hotel which was
about 3 blocks from the Peace Corps Headquarters where we had our training.
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The bedroom at One Washington Circle in D.C...Our last bit of luxury. |
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| Peace Corps Headquarters First Evening |
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| Tanzania...here we come! |
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| Entire Group of Volunteers. |
Those of us who were going to Tanzania and Malawi left
together on a bus to JFK airport in New York City.
It was a “Four hour” trip that took over SIX
HOURS but after settling in for the night, Alex went out and brought back the
MOST DELICIOUS veggie pizza I have ever had in my life!!
We then had the honor of traveling to Johannesburg, South
Africa on what turned out to be
Nelson Mandela Day, July 18th.
A main idea of the day is to do at least 67
minutes of service.
One for each year
that Mandela served the public.
It was an
amazingly surreal coincidence, that our volunteers were leaving on this special day!
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| http://www.mandeladay.com/ | |
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| Fits SO WELL with the objectives of GHSP!! |
Here, we
split from team Malawi and headed for Dar Es Salam where we were greeted by one of the program managers, Henry Meena.
We had met him along with his Malawian and
Ugandan counterparts in Washington D.C. but he returned early so that he would
be able to greet us at the airport.
It
was super nice to see our
rafiki (friend)
again when we arrived.
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| Our Bus in Dar Es Salam |
We continued training for one week in “Dar” and covered
topics such as safety, medical education in Tanzania and Swahili.
The training is intense, but SO MUCH
FUN!!!
The time is just melting
away.
Here are some pictures of our hostel and surrounding neighborhood.
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| Hostel Restaurant. |
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| Our bedroom with mosquito net...these are IMPORTANT! |
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| Our outside classroom! |
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| Gotta love the chair! |
Today we will be traveling by bus to one of the neighboring
sites in the city of Dodoma for two more weeks of training and
orientation.
Our Internet access has not
been very good so far, but we are hopeful that once we arrive to our final site
it will improve and if not
hamna shida. (Turns out this is the way
real Tanzanians say “no worries” and
not
hakuna matata, but I did not know
this before creating our blog name....oh well, hamna shida!
Learning Kiswahili is my favorite and I am AMAZED how much we have learned in just one week!!! We are planning on talking to the ¨MOYO¨...
Arrived to Africa on Nelson Mandela´s day is a good omen. I'm sure is going to be a wonderful year. Take advantage of it and have fun!
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