We’ve made it to Lesotho! After three connecting flights and over two days of traveling, we finally found ourselves on a tiny bush plane, roaring past the highlands as we passed the South African border and flew into Lesotho.

Melissa and I are two Rice interns for the Beyond Traditional Borders program. We have brought a total of nine different prototypes to be field-tested in a low-resource hospital in rural Lesotho. For clarity’s sake, I will define the technologies in a separate post next week.

The small airplane landed so gently that it didn’t wake me from my napping stupor. I didn’t realize we had arrived until Melissa notified me we were in-country. Stumbling down the walk-way in a jet-lagged induced stupor, we somehow passed through customs and collected our baggage. Throughout this process, nearly everyone we met greeted us warmly. What a great welcome to our new home!

A driver from the hospital, Simon Bushy, then picked us up. He was absolutely hilarious and helpful as well. With his advice, Melissa and I were able to take care of necessary travel agenda items (going to an ATM, buying a local phone, and picking up groceries) while in Maseru.

Maseru, the capital of Lesotho, is separated from the hospital by about 75 km  (that’s about 45 miles for all you American folk). Passing through the Lesotho countryside, we were able to look at the surroundings for the first time.  The landscape is absolutely amazing.

When we made it home, we were introduced to the VIVO (Visitors and Volunteers) Center, where we will be calling “home” for the next two months. It’s so nice! There are two separate bedrooms – one we have converted into a bedroom, and the other a living room. We also have a full kitchen, which is awesome!

After collapsing asleep, we awoke on Friday for our first full day in country. That morning we met Victoria, her husband Kirby, and a friend of hers, Margaret. They are all very warm folk, helping run the guest houses as well as the nearby farms. They are all originally from Johannesburg (or as they call it – “Joburg”) in South Africa.

That day passed like a whirlwind. Victoria introduced us to everyone at the business office of the hospital. We then met a wonderful Dutch radiographer, Joyce, who then proceeded to give us an extensive tour of the hospital. Names and faces rolled into one another, and I’m pretty sure I’ll spend most of the next two months trying to remember everyone’s names. A few healthcare workers stood out, such as the head lab technician, Sam, and an Argentine physical therapist, Debra.

We finished our lab tour with a meeting with the medical director, Dr. Rodriguez. Originally from Argentina, he moved to Lesotho and has worked at Maluti Adventist Hospital for the past ten years. He’s absolutely brilliant and very friendly as well. After speaking to him, we decided on a game plan to come prepared to a doctor’s meeting on Monday meeting to present all our technologies to the doctors. Hopefully, after that meeting, we’ll hopefully be able to find doctors who will work with each of our technologies.

We then unpacked and verified that all of the technologies are working, even after three days of shuttling back and forth on four connecting flights. Despite a few loose screws and tools, Melissa and I were greatly relieved to find that everything still works!

More later. 😉

Signing off in Lesotho,

Andrea