Tonight the Browns had a group of interns over for dinner. It was really nice to spend time with them outside of work. 4 of them are Namibian and Oshiwambo and the other one is from Zimbabwe. We learned about their culture and a little bit about their childhoods. Most of them went to medical school in South Africa where English is the national language, but one of the Namibians went to school in Russia where school is taught in russian (which if you'll recall has an entirely different alphabet) We talked about how hard that was for her and about how in her 7 years of schooling she was only able to come home twice. Can you imagine learning medicine in a foreign language (and alphabet!!) They talked about the corruption in Namibia and Africa ... read more

This weekend we took a four hour bus ride on the intercape mainliner to the coastal town of Swakopmund. Namibia used to be a German colony and Swakopmund reflects this heritage. We stayed at a place called Brigadoon B and B that was really nice and served delicious breakfasts with bacon and eggs in the garden. Our first night we had dinner at a place called Kucki's pub. I had a local fish called kingklip which was white and flaky and really delicious. Katie had a lovely surf and turf. We tried another local beer called Hansa which is really nice. Then we headed over to the pier to watch the sunset. Swakop is on the west coast of Namibia which makes it on the other side of the Atlantic from the US. It was spectacular ... read more

The last 2 days my team has had the consultant, Dr. A, rounding with us. There are only 7 trained pediatricians in the country and he and Dr. Brown are 2 of them. Each team has a consultant (pediatrician) overseeing the medical officers and the consultant rounds with the team once a week. Dr. A is a little arrogant and he grilled me a little bit. I think he wanted me to be wrong but I think I did a pretty good job answering his questions. It looks like my kid does have HUS, no casts in the urine and +schistocytes on the blood smear. Katie has a kid with TB who has a granuloma compressing his right mainstem bronchus and he sounds like he is wheezing. He has been slowly getting better with treatment and ... read more

This morning we went to church with the Browns. They go to Westside Baptist Church. It has a mosly black congregation so it was nice to meet some local people. I didn't even get struck by lightning upon entering the church, so that was nice. After church we did some laundry and then walked to the grocery store down the street. There are lots of european cookies which are nice and they have lots of different tropical juices. (I'm drinking lychee juice right now) Otherwise we just hung out and relaxed and I worked on updating this blog :) We are having a great time but missing everyone at home. Send us messages and tell us what's new!... read more

We started the day with a visit to the prem unit (NICU) at Central Hospital which is the sister hospital of Katatura. During apartheid Katatura was the black hospital and Central was the white hospital but now they are both mixed. The facilities at Central are much nicer, though. One of the medical officers was giving a presentation on a baby there with Trisomy 18. We also were able to take some nice pictures of the city from the hospital. Then we went back to Katatura and I had an interesting morning. I was showing the interns here how we do saphenous sticks (blood draws from the leg) in babies and then I asked one of the interns to show me how to do a blood draw their way. I was thinking she would show me ... read more