Work begins

Wednesday, July 6

Bishop Jacob Mameo is the head of the Morogoro diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania and leads morning worship daily for his staff. The team was able to join in the staff worship this morning, and met with Bishop Mameo afterwards to exchange formal greetings.

Our arrival at Mazimbu hospital in mid-morning was marked by more formal greetings as the returning team members renewed their relationship with Matron Siguru and the hospital staff and the new team members were introduced. In Tanzania, the highest value is placed on relationships. As Americans, we sometimes struggle with this concept, wanting to dive in to our work as we excuse our impatience with the tradeoff of helping just one more person. With coaching from Barbara, we are learning to slow down and enjoy getting to know our co-workers.

Once introductions were completed, we changed from our Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes into our scrubs and headed out to our bus to unload all thirteen team bags. The next couple of hours were spent organizing, unpacking, inventorying our equipment, working to get our work spaces set up and assigning work stations. Our lunch caterers, Grace and Deanna, delivered our meal at 12:30 and we began our work with patients at 1. Lisa and Dani worked the screening desk, taking histories and making sure that our patients were a good fit with our doctors. Pati and Paige were assigned to the reception desk, entering personal information into our records and taking vital signs. Anne would then guide the patients to the waiting area for the doctor they were consulting: Andrea’s speciality is gynecology so most of the women were directed to her bench; Doug’s speciality is surgery, so he consulted with patients that looked likely to need surgery; and Leslie’s speciality is family practice so her patients were all those who did not fit into the previous two categories. Susie and Chelsea worked with Leslie and Andrea to record their diagnosis and treatment. Karne worked with Glennis in the pharmacy, dispensing our meds in accordance with the doctor’s prescriptions. And Cindy hovered, going from station to station to answer questions and help wherever needed.

We were able to consult with 24 patients today, and scheduled 9 of those for surgery, beginning tomorrow. It was a very busy afternoon, but we all felt like it was a great day and we have a great plan in place to follow for work for the remainder of our time in Tanzania.

Note to all our friends and family--we have not had internet access until now, close to midnight on Wednesday evening, so there is only time to upload the blogs about our time so far. Check our blog tomorrow for pictures that we will have to share with everyone!