February 2010
1 post
Mochudi
This week I’ve been out at the district hospital in Mochudi, which is about 50km from Gaborone. Each morning (unless I can finagle a ride), I walk to the Gabs bus rank and take an hour bus ride out there. There really is a marked difference between the district hospital and Princess Marina. First of all, everything is much smaller. The hospital itself is a series of distinct buildings...
January 2010
12 posts
SOS
Tonight a bunch of us went to the SOS orphanage in Tlokweng Village (just south and east of Gabs proper). About 240 children, ages 2 to 18 live there, all of whom have already been through the foster system and about 1/3 of whom have HIV. The facility is set up like a small village itself, with a number of houses of 10-15 kids each. Each house is run by a paid “mother” and all the...
Tau
Last weekend we went to the Tau Game Lodge in the Madikwe game preserve just over the border in South Africa. It was a pretty fantastic weekend. They were waiting for our group when we arrived, handed us lemonade as we walked through the door and took us on a tour of the facilities. We then went to our rooms, private chalets facing a watering hole, each featuring a private deck and an outdoor...
Really, it isn't all fun and games...
…we do work in the hospital, we don’t just have sundowners all the time.
I’m happy to report that the patient with the pleural effusion that I tapped yesterday is doing quite well. In fact, our overall service is pretty stable right now. We only admitted on Monday this week, so things should be pretty light as the week continues. I’m also happy to say that a patient...
Yacht Club
There aren’t any large natural bodies of water in Gaborone. But, there is a dam, which created a reservoir, and where there is water there are boats. Kind of. The Gaborone Yacht Club is located on the water, and it does look like people keep boats there, but “yacht” might be a stretch. More importantly, for my purposes, the Yacht Club serves sundowners every friday, where...
Busy busy busy
There are updates coming… we all went down to South Africa last weekend and stayed at a game preserve where we went on safari, ate fantastic food, sat by the pool and stayed in private little cabanas with outdoor showers and decks overlooking a watering hole. I took about 900 pictures, and I’m busy trying to edit that down to something that won’t bore the hell out of everyone. ...
New Private Hospital →
Hospital Update
Each medical ward (male and female) at Princess Marina is divided into 3 firms: green, blue and pink. I’m on the male green team. Yesterday we were admitting patients, which means that any patient that arrives between 7am and 4pm gets accepted by our team. There are other people on call in the evening and overnight to do admissions, and then we get all those patients as well. The...
Mokolodi
Today we went on a little safari at a game preserve just outside Gaborone called Mokolodi. We saw elephants, giraffes, ostrich, two kinds of antelope - kuru and impala, wildebeest, warthogs (including babies) and cheetah. Part of what the preserve does is rescue orphan animals, so they have two cheetah that you can pet.
A few more Penn people came today - a radiology resident and two...
Running
I went running this morning. I’ve actually been a few times since I’ve been here. Nobody here runs, which makes me quite a spectacle. People flash peace signs out of buses, they slow down and laugh at you from their cars. One guy waited for me to pass him, then turned and starting running in place while laughing at me. I guess it kind of makes sense if you think about it. ...
Princess Marina
We finished our first week in the hospital. Princess Marina is organized as a series of freestanding buildings, each housing a separate ward of patients. The main medical wards are divided into cubicles, each with about 8 patient beds in a open room. Curtains separate the patients, but they are usually left open. There is no air conditioning in the hospital so the windows are all open and...
Photos on Flickr
There are now some photos from our first couple days here on Flickr. They (and all the others to come) will be in my Botswana collection
We made it
We made it here on Saturday, and were greeted by no phone, no internet, no hot water and a national holiday so no way to get any of those things. Somehow we managed to overcome, our accommodations probably helped:
We’re figuring it out now and have even walked around the city a bit, where I discovered toothpick trees:
Today we managed to get internet working, got our cell phones,...
December 2009
5 posts
Packing
Slideshow
The Botswana-UPenn Partnership has a slideshow of Gaborone and the hospital and living facilities.
There is additional info about the program on the main BUP site.
Contact Info
I’ll have access to email while away, but my phone will be off. I should get a number once I’m there in case of emergencies.
Mail apparently can take several weeks to arrive, but can be sent to:
c/o Gill Jones
Suite 157
Private Bag 324
Riverwalk
Gaborone, Botswana
Gaborone
Botswana Flight Info
South African Airways 204
Airbus 340-300 Non-stop, 15h 05m, 7967 miles
Depart: New York (JFK), January 1, 10:30am EST Arrive: Johannesburg, January 2, 8:40am SAST
South African Airways 36 Depart: Johannesburg, January 2, 11:30am SAST Arrive: Gaborone, January 2, 12:20pm CAT