The Ghost of a Former Self

Revisiting Tanzania should have been like coming home. And indeed, in some ways it was. I’ve spent more years of my life in that beautiful country than anywhere else on earth. However, after seven years apart from it, I have changed significantly (I am now an adult, for one thing), and so has my beloved home. So instead of sliding mould-like back into the construct of my Tanzanian life, I found instead that I was an outside observer – a new self, tracing the trails of, and hunting the ghost of a former self.

Memory is a sloppy record-keeper. Places are remembered larger, and the distances between them shorter. Some details are ignored, while others figure so prominently in a memory that the subject becomes trivially reduced to an inane caricature. Smells have such strong associations; why is that? Mercifully, there are also some memories that are spot on.

I think it was important to go back – to become re-acquainted with my childhood self and, this time, to know it more fully. There is some closure in this exercise. There is the realization that the former and current selves are both fully “me”, and yet paradoxically distinct. Such a realization inevitably diverts my backward-staring gaze, and turns it to the future: who will the next “me” be?

How Did I Get Here?

When you are travelling (especially on a medical learning trip), it seems that you sometimes find yourself in the most bizarre scenarios, usually wondering to yourself “Just how did I get here again?”. From this trip:

• … squished into a mini-van with fifteen plus other people (and a goat?) bouncing down treacherous roads
• … being quizzed on the philosophy of aesthetics and beauty, along with two Dutch medical students, by a visiting gynaecologist from New Zealand.
• … asking how the patient sustained his supra-humeral fracture, and receiving the answer “lion bite”.
• … holding the foreskin of an under-anaesthetized teenage Maasai, helping the surgeon perform an elective (yes, elective!) circumcision.
• … changing (or rather, helping the driver change) a flat tire on the safari vehicle, not 50 metres from a crowded hippo pool.
• … watching a surprising number of egg-looking objects being extracted from a cyst (since there was no pathology department, the identity of these oddities will forever remain a mystery).
• … keeping the room door securely shut, lest the baboons make another attempt to invade.

Kilema Hospital

The next location, where we spent an additional two weeks, was Kilema District Hospital. Kilema is located high up on the slopes of mount Kilimanjaro – a very bumpy hour’s drive from Moshi town. The hospital is small, usually averaging 80 in-patients per night. There are male and female medical wards, a labour & delivery ward, a small paediatrics department, a busy out-patient clinic, a counselling and testing centre for HIV, and a two-theatre operating room. Given free-reign to visit any department of interest within the hospital, we spent most of our time observing with the staff medical officers. These two weeks carried a lot of new experiences for me e.g. first witnessed delivery, first witnessed C-section. Above and below are photos taken from the small hill just behind the hospital, where on a clear day there were stunning views of Kilimanjaro, the Pare mountains in the distance, and the surrounding plains.

Pamoja Tunaweza Women’s Shelter

Phew! Ah, the joys of being showered and in clean clothes once more!

Having returned yesterday from Tanzania, I’ll be publishing a short series of posts documenting my time there. They will all be written in retrospect, since internet was virtually inaccessible from where we were staying in Tanzania.

Travelling with three of my classmates from Queen’s, we spent the first two weeks at Pamoja Tunaweza Women’s Centre in the town of Moshi, northern Tanzania. Possibly the first centre of its kind in Tanzania, Pamoja Tunaweza seeks to specifically help women who have been marginalized, in what is usually a male-dominated society.

Small and still growing, the centre offers assistance according to individual needs. Some women are given support to start their own business. One woman who we met had started up a fruit stand, and another was hand-knitting hats for sale. Pamoja Tunaweza offers a few classes in business management, and once the women have drafted up a business proposal they can receive a small loan to make a the initial investment and get started. The Centre also has a shelter upstairs where women or girls can stay, especially if they are escaping from a violent  situation.

During our brief two weeks at Pamoja Tunaweza, we developed some health information hand-outs as an additional resource for the Centre. We tried to cover medical issues that would be relevant to the women who visit the Centre, such as women’s reproductive health, menopause, and common illnesses their children may need care for.

For more information on Pamoja Tunaweza, visit their website.

Algonquin Canoe-Camping

Just returned from five days and four nights canoe-camping in Algonquin. A true wilderness experience, this yearly tradition comes with its highs and lows…

High: being so removed from civilization so as to not see any other canoeists for most of the trip
Low: heavy rainfall, not a lot of sun, and total exposure to the elements
Low: muddy portages because of the rain (twenty of them!)
High: seeing moose up-close (11!), including one male with beautiful antlers
High: the joy of sitting down to campfire-cooked dinner and wine after a hard day’s work
Low: a hard day’s work!
High: telling stories and singing songs to pass the time paddling or portaging
Low: making each portage twice – once with a pack, and once again with the canoe
High: the challenge of coping with only that which you can carry with you

Pictures to come shortly!

Grand Haven, Michigan

Just returned from a weekend trip to Grand Haven, Michigan. We stayed with my aunt Doris, who has a beautiful house on the beach overlooking lake Michigan. Had a reflective and restful time walking in the surf (still too cold to swim!) and watching sunsets from the hot tub.

While in Michigan, we attended a cousin’s wedding. It was refreshingly casual – the guests were invited to wear shorts and t-shirts, and to bring a potluck dish instead of gifts.

my dad and me

Julud

Living in Julud is like camping full-time, albeit luxury camping! But that comes with the advantage of being surrounded by the beautiful outdoors. The compound had a panoramic view, thanks to its perch on the bottom slopes of a jebel (small mountain). The best way to enjoy the view: from the truly unique outdoor shower that allows you to watch the sunset as you shampoo your hair!

And there was no shortage of life… in just a few days I tallied fifteen birds that were new to me, found some ant-lion nests, saw a stick bug, and a scorpion. Now when I say that I found that last one, really I mean that it found me – with its stinger. That really, really, really hurt!

Left: the young – the baby of one of Miriam’s colleagues
Right: and the old – baobab trees can live well over 1000 years! This picture taken during the brief period that the tree actually has leaves.

One of the simple pleasures of living in the bush, is smoking a water pipe. I thought I would share this picture, since it would be hypocritical to ever get caught with it again once in medical school!

That marks the end of this travel diary. Perhaps more to come when I make my next trip!

Dilling / Happy Birthday Miriam!

Dilling is in central Sudan – to get there you take a nine-hour bus trip from Khartoum. The ride itself is an experience, with Arabic music blared across the bus speakers and only one washroom stop. Then again, if the police at the checkpoints are bored, you may stop far more often.

Possibly the greatest highlight of the entire month-long trip, was seeing my sister Miriam at work. She positively excels! With baffling confidence, she crosses barriers of culture, language, class, and gender to offer her cheerful but powerful management ability. Most impressive is her interpersonal aptitude. After only two years, her Arabic has the sophistication to joke, tease, empathize, and comfort. I delighted in watching as she often talked animately with co-workers, her face all lit up – in her element. Her organization does fantastic work: development projects that involve the entire community in building wells, starting irrigated farms, and keeping schools open. This is done in the face of political turmoil and environmental stress from the encroaching desert. Miriam comes home next week to begin a Master’s at the University of Guelph in Rural Development and Planning. Miriam, I love you a lot and am so very proud of you!!

Khartoum

Khartoum is built where the Blue Nile and White Nile join together on their northward journey towards the Mediterranean sea. Miriam and I went swimming – it has a strong current but is very refreshing in the 45 degree heat! Some unique features of the city: it sprawls for miles in every direction, each neighbourhood having its own name and character traffic is busy, no streetlights or signs, the roads are unmarked, and many crazy drivers! the ‘whirling dervishes’, who dance at sunset on Fridays as part of an Islamic tradition mosques abundant, their calls to prayer sounding as early as five in the morning Below, Miriam and her housemate Cressida sit in their favored after-work spot, enjoying smuggled gin-and-tonics!

I was in Khartoum during a tense time. On my second day in the city, rebels from Darfur’s Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) attacked a western neighbourhood. It was the nearest to Khartoum the rebels had ever come. Although crushed by government force, their message was clear – that as long as Darfur remained in turmoil, Khartoum would not be allowed peace either.

On the actual day of the attack, Miriam and I were driving back into the city from the eastern side. Far from the fighting, we still had some difficulty getting home as the roads and bridges were blocked by government troops. It was a little frightening at the time, since we didn’t yet know what the stir was about, and ended up a little lost for directions with a dead cell phone! Our saviour: a UN car going the same way, who we followed back to recognizable territory.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the nerve to take pictures of the soldiers or artillery on the roads.

Pricey Paperwork

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This visitor’s entry/exit visa to Sudan cost the following:

• Postage to send my passport, visa application, and application fee to Ottawa.
• Return postage to bring my passport back, when after two months Ottawa had still failed to issue a visa.
• One busy day in Rome that included visits to both the Canadian and Sudanese embassies to Italy. Still no visa.
• Airline fees for postponing my flight to Khartoum since on the day I was scheduled to depart, I still had no visa.
• Two days in Den Haag, camped out in the Sudanese embassy to the Netherlands.

As fate would have it, the very day before I would have given up and bought a ticket back to Toronto, I finally had it issued! I think that when my passport expires, I’ll get these pages framed.

So remarkably, I still made it to Sudan! The paperwork was pricey, but two weeks there proved that it was well worth the cost and effort.