Day 29

I'm so sorry for not posting for so long! I just got back from a 5 day trip to Livingstone where there was no internet! Anyway here's my update:

6/23/12

Today we finally entered the actual Italian Orthopedic Hospital. We have been here for 4 weeks now and we have yet to actually enter the building that our guest house is attached to. Anyway, we spent our entire Saturday morning getting a tour of the hospital and volunteering with the clinical officer (similar to the US Physician Assistant). He told us to come back in anytime and we can help out and even scrub in on some surgeries! So....more to come on this!!

6/26/12

Today was our second full day in Livingstone. We traveled back 2 hours to the rural health clinic far outside of Livingstone. Today instead of conducting our health surveys at the clinic, we went to the primary school (grades 1-5) directly next to the clinic. For our survey we were going to survey over 70 children from grades 2 and 5. The survey consisted of basic information about the child and then we calculated each child’s BMI, conducted an eye, ear and physical examination, and then had each child submit a urine sample and complete a Rapid Diagnostic Test for malaria. All of these children barely spoke any English, all they seemed to know was “Good morning” and “Hello, how are you?”…but I’m not even sure if they knew what this meant. Because they all spoke Tonga and Chris and I know no Tonga…we were assigned to the height, weight, and BMI station. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves at this station, we had to perfect our “sign language” skills...as in pointing to various things to get them to stand straight against the wall to measure height or put BOTH of their feet on the scale. The best part about our station was that we had to ask each child to remove their shoes. Our first challenge with this was crossing the communication barrier. We asked a medical student how to say “remove your shoes” in Tonga, it is “comozwea mabusu” (I’m not sure if this is actually how to spell it but that’s how it sounded…and we had to write this down on a piece of paper to actually remember it the whole time we were doing the school survey). We attempted to tell each kid to remove their shoes in Tonga, but most of them still didn’t understand what we were trying to say, so we also had to point to our own shoes or demonstrate ourselves removing our own shoes. To say the least, it was pretty entertaining and all the other medical students got a kick out of Chris and I trying to speak Tonga to young children. From the results of over 70 children that we had pass through our station, we noticed that almost all of their BMI’s were in the malnourished range. It was sad to see the stunted, thin children with tattered clothing and shoes that were at least 4 sizes too large. I was glad that I could make their day though…being white really makes every child stare at you and giggle almost 100% of the time.

After finishing at the school we drove the 2 hours back to our hostel and then grabbed a taxi to Victoria Falls. It is about a 10 minute drive from the middle of Livingstone. On the drive over we saw monkeys on the side of the road!! It was so cool! This was the first time I actually saw wild animals running around. That actually surprised me about Zambia. Everyone always assumes that Africa is just teeming with wildlife running around everywhere; however, I can say that I have literally seen no wildlife since being in Zambia.

Upon arriving at Victoria Falls, we found out that ticket prices for foreigners are $20 whereas only $1 for Zambians. This reminded me of European museums which are free for all European citizens and extremely expensive for all foreigners. Why don’t we have something like this in the US????

At first glimpse of the falls we were truly astounded, it was so HUGE and beautiful. We really could not see all of the falls though because it is not the driest season yet (mainly August and September), this is when the water levels are the lowest. Therefore because of the high levels of water, there was A LOT of mist coming up from the pounding of the water below. This made it impossible to see the entirety of the falls. We could only see about ¼ of it. However, it was still a gorgeous sight! We also got completely soaked trying to get better views of it.

6/27/12

We visited Victoria Falls for the second time today. When we arrived at the falls today we decided to cross over to the Zimbabwe side. We briefly crossed the border to a bridge that crosses over a large gorge over the bottom part of the falls. As we crossed the border there were so many monkeys!!!! They were so funny just sitting on trucks or chilling on the middle of the road. There were some baby monkeys riding on their mother’s back. They were very entertaining! But we were told to stay away from them because they tend to have bad tempers or try to steal your belongings. When we arrived at the bridge between Zambia and Zimbabwe we could see the outline of the falls in the distance and we found the spot where people bungee jump!! There was a couple about to bungee jump off of the bridge when we arrived. We waited about 30 minutes to see them jump and it was insane! The bridge must be at least 500 feet above the enormous gorge and white-water rapids below. I’m not sure if I would ever be brave enough to take the plunge…it looked way too scary for me.

Some of the medical students told us that we had to take the trail down to the “boiling pot” at the bottom of the falls. We hiked all the way down a well-made trail that truly got us into the African jungle. It looked like a scene out of a movie, monkeys climbing up tropical trees, small waterfalls sprouting through the rocks above, palm trees spread randomly across the landscape, it was awesome! The hike back up to the top was definitely a workout!! We then went on a trail that went behind the falls so that we could watch the sunset over the falls. It was an amazing sight!!!! We sat on a rock protruding out over the rapids right at the top of the falls, literally 20 feet from the drop-off. While we were waiting for the sun to go down we noticed that there was a fisherman in the water with a net trying to catch little fish. He was IN the water!! As in the water DIRECTLY ABOVE the falls…as in a HUGE drop…basically a guarteed plunge to your death. Is it really worth it to fish at the top of the falls?? At one point this man went literally 10 feet away from the drop-off, just standing in the middle of rocks and rapids trying to catch fish. When he was this close to the edge I was so freaked out for him, Chris and I were sure that we were going to have to report his death to the officials at the park. After a few minutes of watching this man we suddenly didn’t see him and I had really hoped that he walked behind this rock (instead of falling over the edge…). Anyway, his friend came up to me then and asked in a freaked out tone if I had seen where his friend went. I laughed and told him that I really hoped his friend was behind the rock ahead of us, but I wasn’t sure. Finally though the fisherman appeared again and somehow managed to cross over all of the rocks and rapids to reach land again. We then proceeded to watch the sunset…so gorgeous! 

Anyway, we are now back in Lusaka after another great 7 hour bus ride from Livingstone. Today we updated our business visas after having a few arguments with the immigration officials in their office...

Tonight we will be going out to dinner with some NGO officials from NASTAD (National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors). Tomorrow we will spend the day volunteering again at the Italian Orthopedic Hospital and then probably catching up on some laundry and grocery shopping.

Here are the pictures from the last few days:

This is the Nyawa Rural Health Centre, 2 hours outside of Livingstone. Many, many people were lined up outside waiting to be seen.

This is Hims!

Here's our handy-dandy bus from the medical school that we drive around everywhere in.

These are the Zambian version of water towers, they are literally everywhere! (which I guess is a good thing haha)

Part of the village across from the Nyawa clinic.

Here was our lovely room in the hostel for the past 4 nights! Yes, that is a slab of concrete and a 2 inch thick mattress...

This was the hostel courtyard and the rooms.

Here are some of the people waiting outside of the clinic.

This is at the Nyawa Primary School. All of the children ran up to see all of us, so we told them to gather around and wave to the camera!

Chris and I outside of the school.

Hims right before he addressed the entire class. These kids were so cute! We all went around the room introducing ourselves and telling them where we are from, and each time one of us began talking all of the kids stood up and shouted, "GOOD MORNING SIR!"

Here's Chris and I measuring the height and weight of the 2nd and 5th graders for our health survey.

These are the kids lined up for their Rapid Diagnostic Test for Malaria (basically just a finger-prick).

Our first view of Victoria Falls!

The rickety bridge that we had to cross to see more of the falls, we got completely SOAKED crossing it!

This is the view from the bridge between Zambia and Zimbabwe. The rocks on the right are Zambia and the rocks on the left are Zimbabwe. The water down below is the "boiling pot."

This is the woman we watched bungee-jump!

The view from the rock we sat on at the top of the falls.

MONKEYS!!!

This was the fisherman who I literally thought went over the edge of the falls!!

Us waiting for the sun to set over the top of the falls, it was so beautiful!

Well that's it for now! I will try my best to continue updating this every time I get internet!

Until next time,

Jenn