First (two) malaria-victim(s)!

Yep, poor Lillian has already been attacked by a malaria-mosquito, 7 parasites seen/ 200 white bloodcells...
But luckly she recovers quite quickly and now she's happily walking around and swimming most of the time here in Mwanza. Another intern has been attacked by malariamosquito as well, so we all decided to buy the treatmentmeds for malaria, just in case. I really don't plan to get it, but unfortunately the mosquitos really love me, despite of the huge amount of DEET I bathe myself in every evening.

Last week in hospital: we (Lil and I) went on outreach on Wednesday, to a little village 2 hours driving. The dispensary was a small house, consisting of 3 rooms. It was soooooooooooooooooooo incredibly crowded!!! Sometimes I'm still surprised about how things go here. We did some vaccinations on little babys, African kids are just so lovely!!! Well, actually, Lillian was feeling sick already, so she was just waiting for the day to pass so she could be in bed again. In another room mothers could get free bednets for the children and the third room was for examination of pregnant women. On the way back our landrover got stucked in the mud. It's rainy season now, and the roads are so bad! But it was a good time to take a lot of pictures, maybe I will put them on the site if the connection is okay today.
Well, everybody was helping eachother, all the strong men and boys pulled over the car and put some wood/leaves etc. under the cartyres, so after half an hour or so we were able to move on with our travel back home.

This week the American surgeon Carl and his wife left the hospital, too bad. It was really nice to know them, he made you do a lot of things in the theater. Another funny thing about the operation room: the windows are open, but they have those screens against flies/grasshoppers etc. Well, there are still some open spots in the screen, so sometimes we do have flies in the operationroom, quite annoying when you're operating. They sit on the wounds, sometimes in the open part of the body you'd just cut open..... Well, luckly we have a fly swatter in the OR as well, so sometimes somebody's task is to chase away/ kill those flies... You really can't imagine that happening in the OR in NL!

Yesterday I ate my first grasshoppers!!! They really love it over here, and it taste alright actually, a roasted sweet something. It's just the idea of eating insects (and also those eyes which stare at you the second you put them in your mouth...) We've also already taken the bike-taxi, just sitting at the back of the bike on a really comfy cusheon. It's really handy, cheap and fun, coz the dalla dallas (the local busses which go to the ferry) are in the center of Sengerema. A 20 minute walk from our house. By bike you reach it in 5 minutes!

Well that's it for now, I wish you all a merry merry Xmas, we're going to spend our Xmas here in Mwanza at the Christmas Tree Hotel... Curious how that's gonna be!

Photos: this website under section Foto's and on karenlow.mijnalbums.nl