I continue to be AWOL, and I apologize for that. The longer I'm here, the more time I spend at work, exploring the countryside, and hanging out with new friends, both expatriate and African. Anyways lots of things happened these last couple months, so like before, lets walk through some pictures which depict some (but not all) of what's been going on
Wow, I realize how far behind I am. We went on a safari at Akagera National Park a while back, me and some other German and British medical students rotating at the hospital. This is probably the best picture I took there. Its "just" zebras, but on this safari we also saw baby leopards playing, 5 lions, and lots of the other typical safari fare. We also got completely destroyed by tsetse flies and rattled by the "African massage" of driving on the terrible road. So it was a mixed bag. The baby leopards were really magical, but we had no good cameras to get pictures of that from afar
Here is Chris, one of the Brits, blowing on our campfire. We spent the night camping in the Park, and it was beautiful. And far less terrifying than my past bush camping experiences, since the campground was surrounded by an electrified fence
Campground in the morning. Funny thing was we actually bumped into the head American doctor in the ED at the campground. Rwanda is a very small place to work in as an expat.
I wasn't working when this happened, but this bus rolled off a hill and about 15 of the 30ish passengers were killed as it crushed like a soda can. Everyone soon after ended up at the CHUK Emergency Department. I think mass casualty events are one of the things I most look forward to, being an ED doc in the future. For the record, Rwandan roads are normally super safe, at least compared to their neighboring countries. But when something does go off road in the land of 1000 hills, it tumbles far
Did I mention Car-Free day in my last post? The main thoroughfare through the city closes once a month to encourage people to get out and be active. People run, bike, rollerblade, and at this plaza, what looks like thousands of people participate in a massive exercise class. Its really amazing to witness and be a part of
A bike ride up Mount Kigali gets us some fans running along
Chris and Robin, the 2 Brits, posing with an ambulance (in Kinyarwanda: Imbangukiragutabara) on their last day at the hospital
A final adventure with Chris and Robin and the rest of "Safari Crew" before Chris and Robin set off on their bike tour of the country. This is at Lake Muhazi, I posted pics from here before, but this time when we hiked we actually made it to the top, which was really rewarding
Don't tell Mom, I got a motorcycle. I figured, if the best way to get around the city is on the backs of other people's motorcycles, wouldn't it be safer to drive myself instead of trusting a stranger looking to collect as many fares as fast as possible? The even bigger reason is that there's so much of the country I want to see, and despite public transit in Africa being generally way better than in the US, its still nice to control your own trip and pick the paths less traveled. And its going pretty well so far
Another trip with the "Safari Crew". This is at Lake Kivu, on the border with Congo. Getting there on motorcycle was my first big adventure with it
So I got a message from Alex, an old friend I met in Tanzania when I lived there (we met on Zanzibar where he spent the year learning Swahili, spent Christmas together, had a visit from him at my old field site in Ifakara, but haven't seen each other since). He said "Hey man I saw your pics on Facebook, are you at Lake Kivu? I'm outside Kigali for the summer, lets hang out". So we've been hanging out every weekend since then! This is us walking along together during another Car Free day
Here's another Alex! This guy, Alejandro, was my roommate two summers ago in Uganda. He's back for a summer elective and decided to come spend the weekend. It was really a blast. I'm eager to be colleagues with guy in the future, its been exciting to see
Here's the first Alex again! After Alejandro left to continue carrying the Infectious Disease department at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, there was a couple days on national holiday in Rwanda, so Alex1 and I went on a trip by motorbike to Byumba, the highest "real" town in Rwanda. It was a gorgeous ride there, and we pushed further off the beaten path to visit Lake Nyagafunzo. It was all good and fine, but the way back we meant to go straight to Kigali, got a little turned around, ended up on some difficult high mountain roads, and somehow found ourselves back in Byumba. Not sure how that happened.
A pig roast back in Kigali at Gardens for Health International, an NGO helping to grow and distribute crops to local farmers to help them diversify their harvests and diets. My friend Eric (who I actually sat next to on the plane to Kigali) was leaving GHI to work for One Acre Fund, and this was his farewell event. I put way too much hot pepper on my meal and my face melted off
These last two pictures are at "Zipline", an NGO that has started using drones to deliver urgently needed medical supplies (currently blood products, but with plans to expand to other things). They have a "nest" now that serves the Western half of the country. Planes go out and drop blood, plasma, or platelets at 12 different district hospitals, which parachute down as the planes return to base. They are expanding to have the planes reach more hospitals, and will eventually open up another nest in the East to cover all rural hospitals in the country. Hopefully someday they will expand to other countries too. The advantages are that not every hospital has reliable electricity to store blood products, some don't use them regularly enough to justify storing the many different blood types that would be needed, and driving the blood out would take hours. Instead, the maximum time for a drop from a Zipline drone is 45 minutes. So cool.
We got a nifty little "iStat" machine to measure labs in the Emergency Room. Unfortunately some times it gets too hot inside, and here Bernard it stepping out to let the machine cool down so we can keep using it. He is one of the senior residents, and I'm collaborating with him on a project investigating the epidemiology of chest trauma at CHUK
Found some new friends who love to mountain bike. This first ride with them was particularly beautiful, but grueling
The Sheetz vs Wawa debate rages on in Africa. Well, just kidding of course, but the more interesting thing about this picture is that this is a secondhand shirt that came from Pennsylvania one would guess. Secondhand clothing is now illegal in Rwanda: the government believes that stopping the import of poor quality charity clothing will encourage the local clothing industry to grow, making more jobs and enabling the country to be less reliant on giveaways from the west
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