April Showers

We've had a few days of rain this month and just brief showers today. April is usually the last month of rains before the dry season from the beginning of May until around November.....

Practically this is not a good thing for me because I collect the rain water to use for bathing. Without rain I am buying water. Today I used up the last remaining drops of the water which I had collected from the rains. There was no more running water this morning so I went to my neighbor's house to buy about 20 liters of water (for almost $1).

At work its been busy as usual. There are always about 30-40 patients a day in the outpatient clinic. But towards the end of the week, the numbers usually decrease a bit. On Thursday I went on a "supervision of study", meaning that I travel to neighboring cities of Ndanda, Mtwara and Nyangao to visit the participating hospitals in this study. We are working on the "Misoprostol in Retained Placenta" Study. Patients with retained placentas are randomly given a placebo medication vs. misoprostol at the time of diagnosis of retained placenta. About once a month I travel to the three other participating hospitals along with one of the head Maternity nurses to follow up on the progress of the study. Its nice to get out of Lindi and to see the country and as well see people who I used to work with in Ndanda. But its a long day, we leave around 9 in the morning and get back by sunset.

My last day of work will be June 17th. I'm traveling up north to Arusha the following day and then going on a safari in Lake Manyara, Serengetti and Ngorongoro. June 23rd I'm flying back to the States. This means that I have only about 6 weeks left here in Tanzania! I'm sure the time is going to fly by. There are so many things I'm going to miss and a lot of things I'm looking forward to leaving behind here in Tanzania. I've started to compile this list and I'm going to publish in one of my upcoming blogs!