The last week has flown by with many interesting stories, but given the unreliable electricity and my desire to go sit in the sun right now, I will only tell a few. I can now add malaria meds to the list of medications I have taken. Don't worry, they don't think I actually had malaria, but it was more of a precautionary thing, since I had many of the symptoms. Not a very pleasant experience, but I am back to normal now and I got to experience firsthand what it's like to be a patient in a Tanzanian hospital...a private and good one too, at that. To begin with, the doctor sat at a desk in a room with other people around and "background info" consisted of name, age and symptoms. They get right to the point;) She then handed me a slip of paper and told me to get my blood tested in a room across the courtyard. I got my finger pricked and watched the nurse put my blood on a slide. About 30 min later, the doc called me back in and handed me another slip of paper and told me to get those meds at the desk around the corner. She then said goodbye, at which point I was like "holdup, what do I have and what are these meds for?!" She told me the names of the medications (big help there, I could see them on the paper and still had no clue what they were for) and then briefly told me they couldn't see any parasites but that since I had all the symptoms of malaria they were putting me on the meds just in case. The whole experience cost 18,000 TZ shillings, or about $15. A funny thing happened though. While waiting for the test results, a friend that was with me was told that she had a phone call. She'd never been there before and really didn't think it was for her, but they kept insisting so she went to talk on the phone. Turned out it was someone that spoke broken english and she had no clue what they wanted. Ibrahim (our program manager that had taken us there) laughed and told us that they probably thought since the person spoke english they wanted to talk to a mzungo and randomly chose Anna.

Nick, a fellow volunteer, took the daladala (local bus that gets crazy packed..we're talking like 25 people in a bus a bit larger than a minivan) back from town. He had just gotten a bunch of cash, and on his way off, his wallet got yanked. When he was trying to pay for the ride, he realized his wallet was missing and went back to look for it. Some guy on the bus told him that some guy had grabbed it and ran off into a house close by. Nick was a bit confused and had no clue who to look for, so the guy got out of the daladala, and went into the house. He came out with a bunch of other guys dragging a guy who gave Nick's wallet back to him. The locals then proceeded to crowd around the thief and started kicking and beating him with rocks. Nick at first was shocked and tried to tell them everything was ok, at which they told him everything was ok and to leave and that "he gets what he deserves." Apparently the stealing used to be a big problem and the police did little about it so the people took things into their own hands. Luckily Nick was in a village, because if it had happened in Moshi, they would have put a tire around the thief and burned him alive. Crazy eh?

Last night we had an interesting experience also. We went to a cultural dance put on by a school here (turned out it wasn't so cultural, but it was fun nontheless). Towards the end, another volunteer realized her camera was gone....it turned into a very awkward end to the night and the poor kids were very quiet and uncomfortable. It was kind of a bummer that it had to end that way. As we were driving off, we saw a bunch of kids going into the nearby houses, carrying a torch...hopefully nothing happened.

Last Friday was my last day at the orphanage....Mama Lynn, the Brit who runs the place is a crazy religious lady and she randomly told us we couldn't come back one day. We think she's up to some pretty shady stuff, and doesn't want us around cuz we ask lots of questions. Anyways, I posted some pics of the kids up online, so you should take a look. They are the cutest kids. Today I spent the morning at the Mawenzi hospital, and saw an appendectomy. Very interesting to see....there was only a surgeon and a nurse (luckily the kids dad was a doctor, so he helped out some giving injections). The kid was only given local anesthesia and braved it very well. Sadly, it reminded me of doing surgery on the rats in lab...same type of tools and very minimal. No monitoring vitals either. The only difference was they sewed up all the different layers separately, rather than together like with rats. The surgeon told me that if I was here for 3 weeks and watched them do c-sections, I could do them by the end, no problem. He was joking...I hope. The surgeons here claim that they see more complicated surgeries than back home, because the patients wait til it gets really bad before going to the hospital. Whatever the case, it is amazing that they conduct surgeries with the equipment they have. Mama Betty told me Tanzania is 400 years behind the US technologically speaking, and that def seems to be the case in the hospitals...maybe not 400, but def a few.

Anyhoo, the sun is beckoning me and I'm (reluctantly;) giving in. Take care and audios amigos.