QOTD

Sika | October 9, 2007

“We’re Doctors without Medicine, not Doctors without Borders.”

30 September

Sika | October 2, 2007

Chichewa words of the day: bwana, azungu: Bwana literally means boss, and if you’ve seen as many movies about apartheid era South Africa as I have, you probably already know that. But since I know very few people who were as obsessed with apartheid as I was, that knowledge may have understandably escaped you. I [...]

Interlude

Sika | October 2, 2007

Chichewa word of the day: Ujeni. Ujeni is a word that means approximately whatchamacallit or thingamajig or whosits whatsit. This is relevant because at this moment my puppy, whom I’ve named Ujeni, is sitting on my lap and is rather perturbed that I won’t let him eat my computer. He got that name because of [...]

29 September

Sika | October 2, 2007

There’s a story I want to tell from the Male Medical Ward that I feel touches on many of the aspects of life here that I forget to talk about. And also confirms for me, at least, what I was thinking earlier about nurses and why they appear to be callous.
One day on the [...]

Update: Housing

Sika | October 2, 2007

I realized that I haven’t written anything about what’s been happening here with me. When I arrived in Zomba, my house wasn’t ready, even though we had been told the day before that it was. The remodel wasn’t completely done, but more importantly, Escom had not put in the electric meter. Now that sounds like [...]

Update: Work

Sika | October 2, 2007

Work
For the last two weeks I have been doing my orientation at the hospital, which is why I haven’t had much of a presence online, besides the connection problems, with which wakko, Shannon, and pearl helped quite a bit. I still get transport to and from my house everyday, but then instead of being on [...]

14 September

Sika | October 2, 2007

In a culture that is completely open about ailments of the stomach (diarrhea, in case you were wondering, is kutsegula m’mimba in Chichewa, which literally means opened stomach), where when someone asks how you are it is completely normal to answer, “I am a little fine. I have kutsegula m’mimba,” being seen with toilet paper [...]