Some more gems

So my Ugandan friends make fun of me every time I try to say something in Luganda. So far I’ve got down the following two phrases, cold: “My name is Laila,” and “I’m crazy.” They both go across really well.

So, in retribution, I would like to giggle about some of my favorite Ugandan English pronunciations. First of all, in Luganda, the letters “c” and “k” are pronounced ch- and the letter “g” is hard, like a “j.” “r”s and “l”s of course, get swapped and then, there’s always “the what?”

Here are some of the words to which I’ve taken a partichular fancy:

Currichulum
Lesearch
Lift Valley
Arjument
And, there’s my favorite, Raila

I also tried to expand my Luganda vocabulary to include important things like, “Can you stop the bus so I can urinate?” and “No, I am married.” I also learned the word for water, in a process which might prove to be more trouble than it’s worth. See. in Luganda, mazi means “water,” but amazi means poop. So you’ve gotta be careful. This is what I predict, with a 95% confidence interval, will happen to me:

Laila: “Hi, I’d like some amazi, please.”
Guy: **raises eyebrows**
Laila: “Oh yeah, I’d like that cold, please”
Guy: “We don’t have that.”
Laila: “Oh that’s fine. Just go get one of the warm ones and put it in the refrigerator. I’ll wait.”

An equation

You know, I’m sort of offended. It’s never taken me this long to get a marriage proposal in Africa. Maybe it’s Uganda, or maybe it’s the fact that a year of med school has aged me into a haggard, pale cat lady, or maybe it’s Ava. Nonetheless, it was refreshing to start my proposal tally today.

I also realized that I hate these proposals. But I also love to hate them. So thank you to today’s bodaboda driver. I don’t know his name, but he found out I spoke Swahili and it was hard to stop the snowball after that. I told him that I was married, and that no, thank you, I didn’t not need a second, African, husband. He tried to call my bluff but I insisted that my burly hunk of a man would not take kindly to his wife’s polygamy. So I told him I’d mail him an American girl. When he asked for my email/phone, I declined, a generously said, “but I’ll take yours!” Now he has a flicker of hope.

Also, please enjoy today’s art project:

Africa = Waiting

We just ran through the start of another torrential downpour, and had the pleasure of being made fun of by several taxi drivers as we sprinted (penguined) past them. We’re at Mulago hospital right now, waiting to meet and interview the head of Ob/Gyn here. We decided to grab some samosas and chapatti before heading to our first meeting, because it’s almost 2 and we haven’t eaten in forever. We are sitting in a room that might be a closet, and there is another guy here, who seems to be deeply engrossed in whatever ancient textbooks he’s reading. Annet has her headphones plugged into her phone and is singing along to her South African gospel music, which doesn’t seem to be bothering the really concentrated guy. She just handed me a headphone and had me listen to some of it…and I must look super bored now, because she just asked me, “I’ll sing for you?”

Uganda Society for Health Scientists

Our first official activity in Kampala was to attend the 12th annual conference of the Uganda Society of Health Scientists. The focus of this conference was “The third decade of HIV/AIDS” and people representing institutions all over Uganda were here. Almost everyone in the conference was Ugandan, and actually, almost everyone there was also presenting a paper (except for us).

The conference basically consisted of a few keynote addresses and a flurry of abstract presentations. Each abstract presenter was given 10 minutes, and if he or she went over the allotted time, the MC would just start talking into the microphone. At the end of each presentation, the MC would announce exactly how many minutes the presentation took, and would either admonish or praise for roughly 2 minutes, reinforcing just how important brevity is.

At the end of each set of four or five abstracts, the presenters were all called up to the front to form a panel, to answer audience questions. I noticed that most of the questions asked tended to be critical of the methods, results, or interpretation of the work presented, which seemed a little different from how I’m used to seeing papers presented.

By the second round of presentations, I started to get worn out. I noticed that tea had been set up for tea time, but that wasn’t going to be for another hour, so I figured it would be wrong if I were the only person in the room to get up and serve myself tea. But I couldn’t sit still. Usually in this situation (like a Tanzanian college graduation, for example), I play a game called “Find the lady with the most ridiculous hat,” but no one fulfilled the entry requirement. I even tried to play hangman with my esteemed colleagues, but no one else was nearly as enthusiastic about this activity. So I shuffled through all my papers again and came across the brochure for the hotel hosting the conference, the Golf Course Hotel. According to the brochure, some must-see highlights include:

-A Helipad
-Café Pap
-A Skating Rick

The cover of the brochure even boasted a picture of the hotel with a photoshopped helicopter placed threateningly close to the penthouse rooms of the hotel. I think they just wanted to make sure that their guests know about the availability of their roof for crash landings, you know, just in case.

The rest of the conference was good, and we took some time to read the posters that had populated the walls during the break.

Some of the research included a study on HIV vaccines for babies whose mothers are HIV+. Another showed that formula feeding gave better outcomes than breastfeeding of infants with HIV mothers, which was interesting and possibly pivotal, even though WHO guidelines suggest exclusive breastfeeding and NO formula as a method of preventing mother-to-child transmission (I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but it works). Another talked about DOTS therapy (Directly Observed Therapy) for people with HIV and TB, and I’m starting to think I could use DOTS for taking my malaria meds. There was even one Ugandan researcher who worked with (at?) UW, but we never got a chance to talk to him. Maybe next year.

What I learned yesterday

Mulago

I never thought this would happen, but we got made fun of today for having short white coats. The three of us had been pleased with ourselves, thank you very much, for actually getting to wear white coats of any length. Unlike all other medical schools, UW doesn’t believe in inflating our egos until the end of second year. So when we found out that we’d have to bring white coats to Uganda if we wanted to be believable medical students, we jumped at the chance (Well, I did. I won’t speak for anyone else.) But today, one of our Ugandan counterparts, a Makerere university medical student, pulled on the corner of my coat, as if trying to stretch it out to the proper length, and befuddled, exclaimed “your coat is too short!”

It almost felt like that day in 7th grade when a 6th grader (can you believe that?) made fun of me for wearing the wrong style of capris. When I got home and told my mom about what had happened, she sat me down and taught me some really biting comebacks, like, “well at least I’m good at school” or “Well maybe I’m a trendsetter.” Thanks, Mom, that definitely skyrocketed me to the pinnacle of popularity.

Anyway, I had to explain to our new colleague that in the US, we wear short coats until we graduate from medical school. We get to wear long coats when we’re actually doctors. Which makes me think, in all probability, I’ll be wearing a short coat for the rest of my life, but that’s for a different blog.

So we spent the first half of the day touring Mulago National Referral Hospital, which is where Makarere health sciences students train. We spent the morning poking our heads into each ward, being told we needed to go through the department administrator in order to go inside each ward, walking to the next ward, and finally getting so exhausted that we all sat down for a break.

Also I just watched The Last King of Scotland yesterday, so it was kind of cool to pick out the paces at Mulago where they must have been filming.

We left at noon and came back at 4 to have a meeting with Sam, who told us that we’ve a couple of administrative snags in the project. Oh, goody. Hopefully, everything will work out, and all will go on as planned…

Random

First let me tell you why I love Uganda. I love Uganda because of the way things are named. The country is Uganda, the language is Luganda, and the region of the country that Kampala is in is called Buganda. Ok, so I haven’t come across any other words that rhyme with Uganda, but I feel like I’m on a pretty good roll.

I actually have frequent episodes of amnesia, and after Farsi, French and Swahili, adding another language on is too much for my apparently geriatric brain to handle. So I’ll take what I can get. Words that rhyme help, ok? So far, I’ve picked up one word in Luganda, I think, which I’ve gathered means “ok.” There are some Swahili (ok, Bantu) words that I pick out every now and then, which is exciting, until I realize that that was the only word in the sentence I understood.

Also, I’d like to lodge a formal complaint about The Last King of Scotland. First of all, Kampala is not that clean. Second of all, Swahili is not spoken nearly as often as the film makes it out to be (in the film, Idi Amin speaks Swahili with everyone…which I haven’t heard that much here). Third, why would a doctor who came to work in a village decide to work in a palace?

And about the whole Swahili thing. I feel like Samson after his haircut. Not that my wife plotted against me or anything, but it’s like I’ve lost my special power. You see, I love haggling. I was raised to haggle. I spent years training under my father, the master of this art. I poured an otherwise unsuccessful year in Tanzania learning to do it in Swahili. And now, here I am, ready to give these taxi drivers and crafts vendors a run for their money when, bam! they blindside me with English.

No. This is not how this game works. My haggling in Africa is completely dependent on my ability to throw my victim off with Swahili they didn’t expect to come out of an mzungu. [The trick with successful haggling is that it requires a charm specific to the situation; I accentuate my identity as a student, a female, a young person, a ½ foreigner, etc——essentially, whatever works, to win this game]. But now, I’ve put myself in a country that looks like Tanzania, smells like Tanzania, is next door to Tanzania, but doesn’t talk like Tanzania, and I’m completely thrown for a loop. I get taxis down to 10,000 shillings (from 15 or 20) that I know I should be able to get for 8,000. But I look and talk like every other mzungu here, so what can I do? I pay full price for newspapers on the street. I’ve only gotten one hotel here to give our group a discount. It’s all very distressing.

Now, if The Last King of Scotland had actually portrayed this country correctly, I would have known how crucial it was to learn Luganda. [Although, that’s not really true, since nearly everyone here speaks English. And also since I was here a year ago and discovered this whole English thing and only watched The Last King of Scotland yesterday. But that would ruin the flow of my whining so shhh.] But no. Here I am, stuck in Kampala, where my very mechanism of self identity has been ripped from me without so much as a consolation prize. Actually, that’s not true either. I’ve never had a per diem in my life until now. It’s actually quite a magical thing. But it’s made me lazy! And even though I know I’m not really paying for these mzungu taxi fares and hotel costs, I still have a rotten feeling in my stomach that I could be doing better.

Thanks Dad.

Coffee and Rain

We went to Café Pap again today, because the internet was out at the guest house and we had to work on our survey instruments online. Café Pap is in a shopping complex called Garden City, adjacent to our favorite Golf Course Hotel (the one with the helipad). And I’m sorry, but if you’re going to call an establishment Café Pap, I’m going to call it Café Pap Smear. Anyway. After our (almost) daily (almost) latté, we decided it was time to try the Indian restaurant at the top of Garden City. If I recall correctly, this was our first meal that did not consist of local food. And I wish I could tell you I loved Ugandan food. I really do. But I just can’t get used to matoke and I really don’t like peanut (called ground nuts here) sauce. So, anyway, I was thankful that we were breaking up the matoke/ground nut sauce monotony to try out this Indian restaurant.

So we hiked to the fourth floor of Garden City, to this open air (but roofed) restaurant, found the perfect table, ordered our food, Jess and Annie sat through one or two more rounds of “God, I like, totally think I should be Indian” and then the rainstorm started. And this was no Seattle rain, my friends. First was the lightening, followed by some pretty serious thunder. But it hadn’t started raining, so we just took it to be a lot of theatrics to accompany our food.

Then it started drizzling. Within five minutes, we were caught in a torrential downpour that sent gusts of wet wind hurtling through the sides of the wall-less restaurant. When we finished our food, the rain had only gotten worse and we couldn’t leave the restaurant through the open air walkway that connected it to the rest of the complex. So the staff at the restaurant shuttled us through a secret passage in the back of the restaurant that led us down a staircase and to the main level of the complex. The journey only required braving the rain through one 5-foot gap, in which each of us managed to get drenched.

We thought we were clear when we got into the shopping center again. Wrong. We’d forgotten that it was also open-air. Wind and water were streaming through the center of the complex and spilling over onto the floors of all the central shops and sitting areas. A couple of housecleaning staff I didn’t envy were busy on each level of the complex, frantically mopping water off the edges of the floor, onto the level below.

Hundreds of people had huddled themselves into the few dry areas inside Garden City where they could wait out the rain. All the chairs had been commandeered by people who’d pushed them to the edges of the complex (away from the open-air center).

So once again, we found ourselves at Café Pap (Smear) for what seemed like the 80 millionth time. But this time we had an excuse.

Sanyu Babies’ Home

Sanyu Babies’ (pronounced “bebbies”) Home is an orphanage housing about fifty 0-3 year olds at any given time. Kids arrive at Sanyu in a variety of ways: some are dropped off at the gate, some are found in dumpsters, some are AIDS orphans. They are almost immediately eligible for adoption, if no trace to their families can be made. Kids can stay at Sanyu for up to 3 years, after which point they are sent to larger orphanages. Boys out-number girls at Sanyu because, apparently, girls are adopted more often than boys. Despite the situation these kids are in, Sanyu has an incredibly vibrant and happy atmosphere.
We arrived during lunch time, and walked into a room with 50 kids in 50 booster seats, with 100 hands and 50 faces and shirts covered in porridge, with caretakers and volunteers running around spooning food, wiping faces, and washing hands.

Each of us found a couple kids and tried to help them shovel food into their mouths, only to realize they were taking pretty good care of themselves. My most favorite moment was when one kid was crying really determinedly, promising to start a domino effect with all the other kids. Right after he starting bellowing, a caretaker came by, slapped some food in the kid’s open mouth, and bam, no more noise. It was so swift and so automatic that the three of us just stood there, shocked, for a minute until we cracked smiles and went on with our business.
Following the lead of the other volunteers, we tried to keep most of the kids from screaming or crying, and when they were done eating, scooped them up, washed their faces, changed their clothes, took off their diapers, and brought them to the bathroom.

What seemed like dozens of kids patiently waiting for us turned out to be dozens of kids who were concentrating with all their might, waiting to poo so that they could be excused from potty time. It was the most hilarious thing I have ever seen.

After each kid had finished pooping, we put pajamas on them, and held them until they fell asleep, and then put them in their cribs. Some of them were easy, and conked out within 2 minutes of being in my arms. Others took 20 minutes to be convinced that everyone else was doing it, and that they could too, tucker out and fall asleep. Nap time was for 2 hours, and in this time, we went and found lunch.

If you want to know more about Sanyu, here is their link: http://www.sanyubabies.com/

And so it begins

Our first morning in Kampala, we had an 8am meeting with Dr. Sam Luboga, who is head of the Anatomy department at Makarere, and the person responsible for many of our connections here. We discussed logistics of our project for a bit, while Aida scribbled away, taking notes.

By the end of the meeting, Aida had been assigned to set up a meeting at Lacor nursing school, arrange a visit at Sanyu Babies’ Home, lookup government clearance requirements for our project, write a proposal for said clearance, schedule a Monday meeting, plan for an orientation, stand on her head and clap, and call us a cab.

Part of this meeting with Sam and Aida involved Sam telling us about Sanyu Babies’ Home, an orphanage of which he recently became the board director. He even gave us pamphlets. When I asked if we could visit, he lit up, asked Aida to schedule a visit, and asked, “do you want to go today?” The three of us, not jet lagged at all and totally on top of it sort of didn’t respond, so he continued, “Ah! Good! You are young, you can be up all day! A taxi will come for you at 10.”

At 10, Aida called us and changed the time to 11.

At 11, we called Aida, and she said the taxi would be there soon.

At noon, we thought about calling another taxi, but at 12:15, the director of Sanyu, Barbara, walked into the guest house, asked for us, and showed us to the taxi. And just like that, we were on African time. In the car ride over, Barbara told us all about Sanyu, the kids who come there, and how it’s mostly funded by donations and relies heavily on volunteers.

Arriving in Kampala

We arrived last night at Entebbe airport, after a 10 hour flight from Seattle to Amsterdam, followed by a nine hour flight to Entebbe, with a short stop in Kigali, where I looked for Paul Farmer (just in case). The flight attendants were all naturally gorgeous Dutch women who only wore mascara, except for the older one who was basically deaf and kept shouting apologies to the whole plane every time she tripped over or hit Annie’s feet. She even shouted to the whole plane that she didn’t hit Annie’s feet the one time she didn’t.

The kids sitting near us on the first flight were these really cute British kids whose cuteness gradually diminished as it became apparent how bratty and spoiled they were. Which, when you think about it, is an unfair judgement, because their behavior is a result of lazy parenting and not something they did wrong to the world. One of them screamed and cried the entire time, another kept going back and forth between his mom and dad to get one of them to play with him, and the other rocked her chair (and Jessica’s pull down table) for a full 15 minutes until Jessica’s salad fell off and onto the floor. Neither of her parents noticed this, and when I bent down to clean it up, this kid looks at me with the freakiest evil grin I’ve ever seen. To avoid strangling their parents, I shoved my headphones as far into my ears as they would go. The kids got cute again when I couldn’t hear them.

Aida, Dr. Luboga’s assistant, and possibly an angel, met us at the Entebbe airport with our taxi driver, Nyanzi. We were, of course, the last people to come out of baggage claim, but this was because one of our bags was lost (or really because I’m Iranian). But I consider that to be an acceptable outcome, considering we had six checked bags, of which four were filled with medical supplies.

When we walked outside to the parking lot, I realized how I grateful I was to return to the warm air, smell of red earth and recent rain, and hakuna matata.

Aida and Nyanzi dropped us off at the Makerere guest house in Kampala, about an hour away from Entebbe. It was past midnight when we arrived, after 30 hours of traveling, so I collapsed into bed, pulled my mosquito net around me (oh, how I’ve missed flailing to turn off my alarm and getting caught in the net), and zonked out.

My Tanzanian Bundles of Joy

I’m in France now, and I miss my little kiddos more than anything. Here are some pictures (now that I have fast internet) that I couldn’t upload before:

Good Luck, Neema, and Dinna braving Camel Ride #1 at Snake Park

Winnie is too afraid to sit down and take her eyes off of Mr. Hungry Snake

They only like me because i feed them before their grandma has dinner ready.

This. Bucket. Is. So. Heavy.

After waking me up so we could play some games.

Alex being cute and gangster all at the same time.

After getting over the fact that a white doll had no hair, Ernest decided he loved Gina.

Me with Alex and Ernest.

My secretaries have been coloring. They just got done making my Anatomy textbook prettier.

Should Alex’s affinity toward gangsta worry me?

Me, Quinnie, and Alex taking our turn on the camel.

Wrap-up

It’s my last day in Tanzania. Weird. I’ll admit, there were days I wished so badly I could say that. But the majority of my time here, and especially right now, I cannot believe I’m leaving.

People keep asking me if I’ve changed at all. My first inclination is to say no; I’m still Laila, still obscenely short, still loud, still allergic to authority, still obsessed with fistula and with Ob/Gyn and with public health, still struggling with being PC, etc. But I also realize I have changed. I can’t articulate how, but I know there are lots of little things that have been tweaked. Before I came here, I thought I would revel in a life where I lived like a local, excused the necessity of electricity and running water from my life, and accepted simplicity over complexity. To some extent, I did. To a much larger extent, however, I discovered just how much I depend, and am now not ashamed to depend, on the amenities of the developed world. I cannot bleeping wait to have a tap that provides (clean!) water, to have electricity that only goes out in storms, to have…this is going to go on I’m going to make a list.

Things I will gladly take back (call me less noble, it’s fine by me):
Running water and Western toilets
Electricity and Internet
Police who don’t stop you for bribes for their midday vodka
Washing machines (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Paved roads
Cheese, olive oil, whole grain pasta…hell, American grocery stores
A car, and the ability to be out after 7pm

But I don’t want to give anyone the wrong idea. I have to have a coping mechanism for leaving, because I really can’t believe I am.

There’s also a list of things I will miss:
The amazing capacity of children to be happy playful screeching bundles of hilarity, wisdom and joy…mine especially
Ugali and various mboga
Women (and men) singing as they work
Falling asleep to the sounds of crickets, owls, cows, and (yes) roosters
Daladalas, and how cheap transportation can be (though dangerous)
Avocados and mangos
Buying (pirated…but there is nothing else!) seasons of almost any TV show for a little over $2
People who gladly offer to correct your grammar
Being called “sister” or “mama” instead of “Ma’am”

Just some thoughts. My head is in too weird a place to be writing now, so I’ll leave the rest until later. And I’ll fudge the dates on my future blogs so you won’t notice

Bugs in my blood

It seems that every time I go on safari, it is a prerequisite that I have malaria. Otherwise, what would be the point? I’d actually want to see the animals!

Admittedly, this time around was a tea party compared to the last time, which was three 5-day stints of horrendous misery. Yes, three, because it took me a while to realize it was all just malaria—it finally occurred to me that I did not, in fact, have bad enough luck to have Swine Flu followed by Altitude Mountain Sickness followed by Traveler’s Diarrhea.

“Just malaria” didn’t seem to have the same calming effect on my parents as it did on me. I tried to keep it from them that I had malaria, but as my mom was with me when my results came back positive, it was a little hard to keep it from her. I’m not going to say she cried (she did) but she was incredibly worried, which made my nurse friend Sr. Massawe, and me giggle. Because, unless you’re lucky enough to be heterozygous for the Sickle Cell trait, or have developed immunity to the parasite, you will get malaria. It’s a fact of life here. And um, hopefully, you take it seriously enough to get treated and you don’t die.

Anyway, I did manage to swear my mother to secrecy about the malaria and not tell my father (who I knew would take it worse), as I was treating myself by the time she left and was over the malaria by the time she got home. Somehow, a couple of months later, after two certain missionaries came back to Seattle (ahem), my dad called me to tell me something to the effect of “the cat’s out of the bag” or “your skeleton fell out of the closet.” Then came the lecture. Of course, no one who’s not here (I love double negatives) understands why, on God’s green earth, I would not take my malaria prophylaxis. My response is so automated now that I want to imprint it on my forehead: “Malarone is $200 a month and too expensive (and inadvisable) to take for a year. Doxycycline makes me vomit and has to be taken the same time every day to be effective. Larium isn’t strong enough to be recommended as first line. If I did happen to get malaria while I was on the prophylaxis, my symptoms could hide for a few months and then I’d be at home with malaria, where it’s a big scary disease. And no one who lives here takes any anyway.”

The rest of the conversation goes something like this:

D: Why aren’t you sleeping with a mosquito net?
L: Dad. I sleep under a mosquito net.
D: Well you should get some duct tape, or whatever they have over there, and tape up the holes.
L: There are no holes in my net, Dad.
D: There must be holes.
L: Okay, Dad.

The second time I had malaria was during my safari with Aliyah. After Aliyah left, I talked to my dad on the phone, and as if he knew, he said “So, any more malaria?” Stupidly, I responded, “No, not since I took my treatment last week.” Whoops. Of course, the above conversation was repeated, with exasperation on both sides (“how could you get malaria AGAIN!?), and I dutifully tried to convince him that it was better to have malaria here, where it’s easily recognized and the treatment is available at every pharmacy. If it’s in stock.

Luckily, I don’t think there’ll be a third time, as I just had a negative blood smear (Sister Massawe just called to tell me “Congratulations!”) and I’m leaving tomorrow. But I bought a course of Coartem treatment to bring with me, just in case.

Teaching in Oltukai

After months of planning, re-planning, getting permission, re-getting permission, setting up, cancelling, and re-setting up, Sister Massawe and I finally made it to our maternal and family health teaching session in the Maasai village of Oltukai yesterday. I didn’t expect it to go nearly as well as it did.

We had arranged to get to Oltukai at 10am, talk to the elders and head of the village, and start our lesson at 11am. We got there at 11:30. Right on time. After we talked to the elders for a little bit about what we wanted to talk about, villagers started trickling in, and came and sat in a semicircle around us. Well, the men formed a semicircle, and the women instinctively formed their own huddle, away from the men.

After we started talking, more villagers came, hoes and shovels balanced on their heads, curious enough about what this mzungu had to say to leave the fields for a bit. We introduced ourselves to our audience, who got a kick out of my introduction in Swahili (rudimentary enough for the Maasai who barely speak Swahili to understand), and clucked along while I spoke. Needless to say, I had Sister Massawe deliver most of the lesson (given in Swahili, which had to be translated into KiMaasai). She is really an incredible speaker and teacher. She’s actually more of a performer, and everyone had their heads cocked to one side, interested in what she had to say. Except for the one guy who laid down and covered himself in a blanket.

The first thing we did before actually giving the lesson was to give a survey. I had written it in Swahili, but since the people we were teaching were illiterate, or at best semi-literate, the survey was oral. Each person received a piece of paper with 1-9 written on them. Question #1 asked their gender. For male, they drew a dash; for female, a circle (I thought vertical line and circle might inspire too much joking).

Though I assumed this would be simple, I had to walk around and help most of the women draw a circle, realizing that many of them had never before held a pencil. The remaining questions were all yes/no format.

“Do you think it is important to plan with your spouse how many children you want to have? To know your HIV status? To use contraceptives?

“A check for yes, an “X” for no.”

This, most of them had down. Those who didn’t passed their paper to a neighbor who would fill in the appropriate symbol. Of course, this introduced a variability in my results—it’s more likely the person who could write got two “votes,” or chances to express their opinion, when their neighbor silently handed their paper to them. With each question, I walked around, to make sure everyone was answering. After a couple minutes the first time, a few of the semi-literates would sigh and say with a cheeky grin, “We’re waiting for number 2.”

The purpose of this survey was a sort of “pre”-assessment, to be followed by a “post”-assessment to see if anyone changed their mind after hearing our lesson. I wasn’t expecting to see much of a result or change. If anything, I expected to see the answers they thought we’d want to see.

But the Maasai, being shameless specimens of honesty, actually gave us their own answers. The men, almost unanimously (and individually) said family planning and birth control were not important. They even laughed when we asked the question. The women unanimously (but also collectively) all said yes. When we asked the family planning question again after the lesson, everybody said yes, couples should plan their families. This last bit, I hope was a true change of mind resulting from reasonable teaching, and not just feeding us what we wanted to hear so we’d go away.

We’ll never know, but I got the sense that they had gotten something out of it. One of the last questions we asked in the first part (after explaining the concept) was whether they would like to access a maternity waiting home, if one existed. The translator/head man got so excited while asking this question that at the end of it, he said, “It’s a good idea, right? Everyone draw a check!” Not exactly the point, or scientific in the least, but admirable.

I love having an interactive audience. It’s something I was used to in, say, kindergarten through fifth grade (or the circus), that soon became less cool and was dropped from school assembly requirements when we got to middle school. I forgot that people could ooh and ahh (or in this case, eeew and ahh!) upon hearing things like fistula results from obstructed labor, or that kids of HIV-positive mothers can be healthy.

At the end of our session (held outside because it seems to be against Maasai law to do anything inside), the head men thanked me for coming, invited me to come back and be their doctor any time I wanted, and hitched a ride to the main road.

All in all, I’d say it went pretty well.