So, it's time I attended to the task at hand. For a long while, there was a great silence on the African front. This was greatly appreciated by me, since it would have distracted me from the crazy semester I was dealing with. But I really have no excuse for ignoring this blog anymore, so here goes.

For those who may be just tuning in, I'll be in Africa for 2 months with a program called Engineering World Health which is sponsored by Duke University. I'll be doing the summer institute program. The first month will be spent taking classes: mornings will be filled with Swahili lessons while afternoons will be spent becoming familiar with the finer points of fixing "broke-dahn" medical equipment. The second month is when the action starts; I'll be sent out with a partner to work in a hospital somewhere in rural Tanzania. These hospitals lack many resources and are often unable to staff many people capable of servicing broken down medical equipment. Having a few extra hands around during the summer to help fix things and bring donations provides a much needed shot of energy for these hospitals.

So I'll be learning Swahili, using my bioengineering "skills", and working in the developing world it in a situation which is physically, mentally and culturally challenging. For those of you who know me well, you probably think my head runs the risk of exploding whenever I think about this.

On Saturday I got my assignment. I'll be working with one other guy from Penn State at the Machame Lutheran Hospital in Moshi, Tanzania. It's a small rural hospital literally located on the slopes of mount Kilimanjaro. This is the description I was given:

Machame is a small Lutheran Hospital located about 20 km outside of the City of Moshi in the neighboring hills. It is located up the mountain near a very small village and serves the poor patients living on the hillside that cannot easily access medical services in the City of Moshi. The Hospital has 120 beds and sees approximately 2,000 inpatients per year and a much greater number of outpatients. The Hospital building is very old but has a recent addition. Most funding comes through grants sponsored by the Lutheran Church. The Hospital hosts a number of medical students for training and provides services in most medical specialties, including pediatrics, ob-gyn, internal medicine and surgery.
Hospital departments include an 8 bed ICU that also serves as the emergency department. The ICU is very under-equipped and only has one working patient monitor. The two operating theatres are well stocked and function continuously. There are 2 working x-ray devices in the hospital and the clinical laboratory can complete most essential blood tests.
The Hospital does not have an official equipment budget and uses cost-sharing to purchase equipment. It is estimated that 20% of the Hospital’s equipment was donated and that 60% of the instruments is currently working.

A quick google search didn't yield much, but I was able to find this image taken from the hospital grounds.

That's Kilimanjaro in the background. It struck me that I'll be going during what is technically winter, to what looks like a pretty cool place, so I can kiss any ideas I had about "summer in Africa" being superhot goodbye.

Edit:: Props to Rachel for making the closing observation. When I say "it struck me" I guess I really meant to say, "Rachel told me". My bad. Blogging power went to my head.