Dala Dala.

Keeping up a blog is hard work…I don’t think I’ve done this much writing in years.

WEDNESDAY

What a greatttt day! We had it off so we got to sleep in, that always makes a day better. Chels still wasn’t feeling very well so Mylene and I went out to lunch. We decided to go to Zanzibar Coffee House, which is supposed to be more on the tourist side, but we wanted to check it out. It took us probably around 15 minutes to get there, only to realize on our way home that the restaurant is literally 5 minutes away if we took another route. That’s the thing about this crazy town, there are a million ways to get to the same place and when you’re not familiar with it, you always end up taking twice as long as you need to. The place doesn’t serve too many options in terms of food, it was mostly drinks and sweets, but they had savory crepes so  we decided to stay. It was fairly empty except for another table. We both ordered an iced latte; Mylene got a spinach, cheese and onion crepe and I got a vegetable curry dal crepe. We both agreed that mine was a lot better! It was also really filling, stuffed with tons of vegetables. We both only ate half of our crepes and took the other half home for dinner.

 Zanzibar Coffee House menu, taking pictures like a tourist

Iced latte + curry vegetable dal crepe

After lunch, I came home to hang my laundry and found a girl sitting on top of the washing machine. I had heard from Mylene that there were people from Switzerland in the apartment below us so I assumed this was one of them. She was, but it turns out she was by herself, her friend had left the day before and she still had another week here. I invited her to come to the beach with us, seemed like the friendly neighbour thing to do, the more the merrier!

So at 3:30, off we went to catch the dala dala with our new friend Valentine. Good thing she came with us, because we didn’t know exactly where to catch the bus and she also showed us a shortcut to the market that takes only 5 minutes rather than 10. At the main area to catch the dala dalas, the only way I can describe this is actually as a “clusterfuck”. There are people everywhere waiting for their bus, people selling things in between, bikes/motorcycles coming through, and no specific system as to where to wait for the dala dala you need to catch. We asked a man where to find the 502 and then another guy showed up that brought us to the right line just as the dala dala was pulling up, and holy shit, even before we could make sure that’s the bus we needed to take people were running at it and the guy that helped us yelled at us to hurry or we couldn’t get on. Then he drags us to another bus with a final destination of I still don’t know where and tells us to get on. The three of us stood there super confused cause it wasn’t the bus we were supposed to take and we didn’t want to get on a random bus that a random guy told us to get on. But then I hear him tell the drive we’re going to Fuji Beach and he tells us get off at the Police Station, which is what I read online. So we board this dala dala, which was more of a van than a bus, but they are apparently the more legitimate of dala dalas compared to the trucks with backs converted into seats. It only cost 300 TSH/person for one way = 20 cents at home. My round trip on the dala dala was 40 cents, cheaper than making a call on the payphone in Canada!

It only took about 15 minutes to arrive into the town of Bububu. We find the police station and ask someone how to get to the beach. We walk down the dirt path and come to a beach that is completely deserted except for a couple local teenagers in the grass area and one man fishing in the water. We decide to take turns going in so someone would always be with our bags. Mylene and I took the first turn going in. The first part of the beach was extremely rocky, it was fairly hard to make it past and I thought I would fall over so many because of the waves pushing me. We finally found an area where it was more sandy but also had a lot of small plants growing. It was really nice to be able to just relax and float in the water, the first time we had done so! From the water we see two tourist guys approach Valentine, so we keep an eye out just in case they’re creepy and we need to go rescue her. Turns out they’re super friendly, two Italian dentists here on their vacation from work but also using it to volunteer at a clinic. Alessandro is really talkative and slightly animated, while Stefano is more down to earth, but still social. They acted like an old married couple, bickering about little things. We ended up spending the rest of the afternoon with them at the beach. The beach itself was mediocre, it definitely wasn’t white sands and turquoise waters, but it’s the closest beach that is safe to swim to for us. Our first venture on the island went pretty smoothly!

 Fuji Beach

Exercise area for locals, they jump the tires and hang off wooden monkey bars, pretty impressive.

THURSDAY

This was our early morning at work, we were supposed to be there for 7:30am for a meeting. The meeting was actually a presentation more geared towards physicians. The room was fairly small but it was trying to accommodate what must have been at least 50 people. The presentation was on cervical cancer screen and HPV prevention, so pretty irrelevant to OT. We went straight to the department right after and started treatments. It was yet another crazy busy day with constant stream of patients. Today we saw more children with CP, but we also got to see a couple of children with down syndrome and microcephalus. The kids with down syndrome were adorable, reminded me of some of the students at Summit School.  At first we were getting some guidance from our supervisors, but then it got too busy and we were all seeing patients on our own.

I’m still trying to learn how to properly position and hold children that are extremely spastic. A lot of times I am trying to do passive range of motion, but it is impossible to do when the limbs won’t bend. We borrowed a book called “Handling the Young Child with CP at Home” and it has been really helpful, but it’s hard to remember all the techniques without being able to practice on the spot. Slowly but surely we’ll get the hang of it! It still blows my mind how the charting system here works. The patients are given a notebook, the ones we used to use in elementary school with lined pages inside and coloured covers. In the book, all medical notes are written inside from physicians, specialists to OT/PT. The patient brings the book home after each session and brings it back each time. The department itself has ZERO chart notes on the separate treatment sessions that take place. The charting is also very simple, just a description of what was done maybe 2-3 sentences. The policies here are a lot more slack.

Once again we got off around noon and headed for lunch at the Passing Show. Pineapple fanta + fish biriyani, yum. Chels and I had to go exchange more money since we were starting to run out of shillings, hopefully this will last us for 2-3 weeks! After cooling down and having some time at home, we went souvenir shopping again because we wanted to go back to one of the stores from Monday where they gave us really good prices and get more stuff. We were surprised that the people at the store actually remembered us, they remembered we were volunteers at Mnazi Mmoja hospital and even which items we bought and the exact paintings Chels bought last time! We also stopped by a store that sells items made by local women and the money goes right back to them. Mylene loved this idea and had bought a scarf there for 25,000 TSH early. We went in to look at the stuff and it’s good to know that what you buy goes back to the community and is unique and handmade!

We went to Africa House to meet up with our new Italian friends for drinks. Adam’s sister had told us that this hotel/bar has a really good view of the sunset but you have to order drinks. We had a great table at the front of the patio facing out into the waters. Not long after we get there, there’s a huge commotion because people spotted a huge fish (maybe a dolphin) close to shore and everyone is trying to catch a glimpse of it. A lot of people saw it jump out of the water, but all I saw was it moving through the water and blowing out some water. The sunset was really gorgeous above the water!

 Sunset from Africa House, sun touching the water

This is how touristy it was; picture of all the tourists taking sunset pictures

Afterwards, we went to dinner at Archipelago, which is just a couple minute walk from Africa House. The menu wasn’t too big, I was content with the chicken burger and fries I ordered (yes I ordered a chicken burger in Zanzibar). The patty was made of dark meat rather than the typical white meat breast we have a home, which made it less dry. So the Italian guys had came down with their friend whose a local dentist at the clinic they volunteer at. When we first met him I thought he was kind of creepy, he had shifty eyes and it seemed like he kept staring at us. Then during dinner he basically tells Mylene that we’re not doing any good at the hospital if we don’t understand the environment and how the hospital runs and how are we supposed to help if we can’t speak Swahili. WTF? I think even though we can’t communicate efficiently with our clients, we are still capable of treating the children, many of them are able to do what we ask of them through gestures and a couple of Swahili words. And I think 3 being here is still better than having  only one OT for the whole department. On top of that, at the end of dinner as we’re paying, the three of us leave and tip and he tells us not to tip because it causes trouble for the waiters cause the boss thinks they’re asking for more money and they don’t get to keep the tip in the end. This was not something that we knew, so we said although we feel bad we can’t leave a tip, we would take the money back. But then the guy just keeps holding onto our 4,000TSH and doesn’t give it back! It’s not very much money (~2.66 USD), but it’s the principle of the whole thing, what a douche! Anyways, so we like the Italian dentists, but not the local one. The day was filled doing and going to very touristy places, but it’s good to get to see and try new places!

FRIDAY

We went into work today at the normal time and are told that there are no clients scheduled to have splints made so we weren’t seeing anyone today. The PT/OTs are starting to have presentations on Fridays for continual education. Every week someone from either department will make a presentation. Today, a PT volunteer from Japan presented about the 5S, which help to enhance efficiency in the work environment. I actually heard about this previously when I had my orientation at St. Mary’s hospital in Kitchener when I did my second placement. It was cool to see that this concept was starting to be widely used internationally, originating out of Japan. There was a practical aspect where we applied the concepts to organize a messy drawer and we split up into two groups to do it. In our group was a PT from Norway (I think), a PT student from Tanzania, and a local midwife. Wow, the midwife was a bitch, she got really upset over the fact that we decided TV guides were not a necessary item and basically went against everything we said. Apparently the midwife in Chels’ group was a bitch too. When the presentation was over, the PT says maybe the students want to also present something right now. We were definitely caught off guard since we had nothing prepared, so instead we’ve been assigned next Friday to present about CP and OT.

After work, Chels and I went to find Tony Madeira’s tour office. He was referred to us by Natasha and Adam’s mom. Because Mylene and Rod were in Dar this weekend, we didn’t want do any of the half day tours they wanted to do as well since it made more sense to do those ones together. The only other tour left was a dolphin safari, so that’s what Chels and I booked for tomorrow morning! I’m excited to go see dolphin in the wild and take pictures!

I bought lunch today at an Indian restaurant, I got vegetable hakka noodles. They kind of just tasted like a mediocre pad thai. But it was a nice change from rice and to be able to eat some vegetables.

So those mysterious bites I talked about before, I think I’ve concluded that they’re flea bites. Disgusting. Cause the ones on my ankle I got while in a shop with a table cloth draped over the side and it was touched my leg. These bites are different from my mosquito ones, more itchy and very swollen and hard without scratching them. And I’m not surprised if it really was fleas since there are an insane amount of stray cats roaming the streets! But I also got these bits on my left calve, which I think are from the hospital! Theres one mat that we sit on that is ripped and the inner cottony material is showing. I was sitting on that part the other day at work and nasty insects could definitely live there, especially since I don’t think those mats ever get cleaned! It’s such a drastic change from clinics and hospitals at home, this would not be acceptable at all. Oh well, here I am with about 12 bites on one leg. It also seems to be only me that is this sensitive and prone to bites, the rest of them have one or two mosquito bites but that’s it. I guess I just have very special, very sweet blood cause I'm so sweet, haha.

Also, there are SO MANY damn ants in our kitchen, it's so gross. They're crawling up the walls in a line and all over our food and in our bread contained. But I don't think there is anyway of preventing this as long as we have food in there. At home, this would have made me freak out. But here, I'm just dealing with it. I bet most you wouldn't think I'd be able to handle that, but T.I.A. (this is Africa), my friends. 

It’s Preston’s birthday today so we’re going to go out later on tonight to Maru Maru. But we have to catch the transport taking us to the boat for our tour at 7am tomorrow, it definitely won’t be too late of a night!

Sorry for the ridiculously long post…I guess I really shouldn’t wait three days before updating my blog. I’ll try harder to keep it up to date, although I’m pretty sure there are only a handful of you that actually read this on the regular haha.