First day of outreach

Today was my first day working with the people from the antenatal outreach group. It was a pretty slow start to the day; I've found that life here is a lot more laid back than in the US. Once I got to the clinic in the morning, I was informed that I was going to be the one carrying the testing kit for what is called RCT or Routine Counseling Testing. Essentially, it was my job to test for HIV in some of the patients that we saw. I only ended up performing the test one this afternoon, which thankfully was negative. The ladies working with me were nice enough to train me on the various vaccines that all of the children were getting. It was interesting to finally get some hands on experience in a non-clinical setting, the outreach post was just a set of benches about a fifteen minutes ride from the clinic.

Its interesting to note that to get to this site, I had to ride on a boda boda (motorcycle taxi) along with another member of the team. So that actually makes three people if you include the guy driving the thing, in addition we had to strap two boxes of supplies to the back. I feel like I've gotten used to doing this after being here for a week; after all, 3 people is usually the norm and I've seen as many as five at once. Not to mention the drivers usually don't go very fast due to the weight.

I'll be heading back to the clinic tomorrow to do more of the same work and I'm tentatively scheduled to visit our base on one of the outlying islands this Friday. I assumed that once I got here I would have no shortage of things to do, and I was right. I mentioned over lunch the other day that I was a first aid/CPR instructor and now I have three separate requests to teach courses. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to design my own course, since the traditional version of the red cross isn't exactly compatible here. So far I know I'll be teaching a group of women in July, the staff of another organization in September, and a new friend of mine here at the compound also wishes to learn on his own.

I also heard back from my US based boss, David with We international. It looks like I'll be leaving this post sometime in the first or second week in August, with a promise to return in the first week in September.

I'm still trying to iron out the kinks in my medical school applications, my goal is to submit them by the end of the weekend. Then the waiting begins....