Well. Here we are. Just me and an empty page. And you! How to begin? How about hello? Bonjour? Dahmela?
Well to start, Andrea Ulrich and I have successfully arrived at our new home at Maluti Hospital in Lesotho after two and a half days of airplanes and layovers. How great is that? I’ll tell you—pretty awesome ‘cause I don’t have to sleep in an airplane seat anymore. Take a look at our sweet set up!
Just kidding, it’s really pretty fantastic actually. We have two rooms in one of the two dorms at the VIVO (Visitors and Volunteers) Center of Maluti Hospital. Each with two twin sized beds, two pillows and a big, fluffy, warm blanket to bury ourselves in during the chilly evenings. Below is my bed area—Andrea and I have two rooms and we’ve turned one into a bedroom and one into a living room. Not too bad after a little decorating, eh?
After just a two nights and two days, I can already feel myself settling down as if I’ve been here a full week! By two months I’m sure I’ll feel like I’ve never lived anywhere else. Victoria, the woman in charge of the VIVO Center, and her husband live in a caravan-turned-storage-unit-turned-home next two us and they’ve truly brought us under their wing taking care of us and making sure we’re settling in perfectly. Victoria’s good friend Margaret has also been here (taking care of Victoria’s three dogs while she was away) and has also extended warm welcomes making me feel incredibly at home here!
Anyhow, let’s backtrack a bit! After landing in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho) after two and a half days of travelling (phewph!), Andrea and I take our luggage and head out to meet our driver – Simon Bushy (pronounced “Booshy”). He’s got a wonderfully playful sense of humor and immediately chases away the butterflies in my stomach of being in a completely foreign country with limited communication home. Bushy takes us to do a little shopping (ATM, groceries, local cellphone) in Maseru before we head out to Maluti Hospital at Mapoteng, high up in the mountains. We are welcomed to our new home at the VIVO Center by Victoria, shown our rooms, and then promptly pass out in our beds.
The next morning, we’re informed there is no running water at the top of the hill where we live, which is unfortunate but not unusual. There are, of course, work arounds and though inconvenient, it wasn’t as bad as you might think (although perhaps I’ve just already forgotten what “normal” is). We’re to fill up big bottles of water from a reservoir to use for everything from flushing toilets to washing dishes. We’re promised the water will come back on soon. Hopefully.
The rest of the morning is spent getting a tour of the hospital and meeting a thousand new faces with a thousand new (difficult) names. We also met with Dr. Rodriguez who is the Medical Chief of the hospital. Every one smiles to have us there eagerly asking what we’ll be providing for the hospital and how long we’ll be staying. For those who don’t know, we are working as interns at Maluti Hospital for the Beyond Traditional Borders program at Rice University. We’ve brought and helped create several projects developed at Rice by engineering teams targeting low-resource medical centers and hospitals in the developing world. Andrea has a detailed post of the projects we’ve brought and will be demonstrating here at the hospital for the next two months.
The rest of the day (starting around lunch) is for me and Andrea to relax and enjoy the weather. We make sandwiches to eat outside our cabin, rest, then open Adventist Sabbath at sundown (completely new to me, but dinner’s provided so there’s really no complaining) with Veronica and some of the others we met earlier today, and eat dinner together. After dinner, we drink tea (really good tea: Rooibus, I highly recommend it) and chat until Andrea and I decide to go back to our rooms and now I’m writing.
Phewph! It’s been wonderful to be here, I can’t believe I’ve only been here a few days! Andrea and I have scheduled a presentation with Dr. Rodriguez and many of the doctors of the hospital Monday morning at 7:30. Wish us luck!