Week in Review

After Monday madness, my usual week goes as follows:

Wednesday, October 7
Drive with Hashim (our project driver) to Shinyanga for a day visit. Shinyanga is one of our study sites and is two hours away from Mwanza. We left at 9:00AM (after stopping by Standard Charter to take out some of my own money for project spending, a bad habit I’m trying to break) and arrived at 11:30AM. The site was quiet but we got a lot done. I check some folders to make sure our participants are being followed closely. One of the problems we are facing is poor retention, so this is always an area which I need to focus on while doing field work.

Thursday, October 8
Drive to Kahama in the morning at 7:30AM. This is our second site, about 2 hours from Shinyanga. The drive is on a paved road so it’s not bad. There are many bicyclists on the road, and also lots of baobab trees dotting the countryside. These trees are amazing living things, some are as wide as 2 meters. They are beautiful in an otherwise barren landscape. Although rain season has officially started, this part has not been receiving the rain just yet.

On Thursday afternoon we returned to Shinyanga. Although I was very tired, we were invited to a good-bye party for our staff member Rachel who volunteered to move from Shinyanga to Geita site (our third site) due to shortage of staff there. It was organized by the team leader, and the whole team (of 15 people) came out, and had a really good time. we danced around the table to the tunes of someone’s phone and presented a gift to Rachel. It was simple, heartfelt, and was so nice to see this kind of community among our staff.

Friday, October 9
Drove back to Mwanza at 7:00AM with the specimen from Shinyanga and Kahama. Upon arriving at 9:30AM, I had to prepare interview and test questions for 8 interviews: 6 for the tracer post, and 2 for the nurses post. This was not done as I would expected by my colleagues, so I got frustrated and snapped at another for having to do this right when I get back from the field. Two of us interviewed 8 people straight through, not having breakfast or lunch on my part.

Friday night: bacon and arugula pizza with Rafael and Suzanna. Rafael made a great homemade pizza and truly it was the only thing I was looking forward to in the whole week. So nice to have home cooking.

Saturday morning: went to the gym with Rafael and Haji at 7:15AM. We do the usual arms and chest, but Rafael added a new twist to our routine by having us do leg exercises. The combination of having only one meal the day before plus not sleeping well resulted in me throwing after a very intense workout. As always, I felt much better after getting it all out, and went back to R&S’s place for scrambled eggs with bacon, toast, and fruit shake. It was a nice reward for the hard workout.

Saturday afternoon: Spent all day at the printer trying to print the posters for our conference next week. First excuse was no electricity, so they posters were late. Second excuse was because the file I gave them was too low resolution, so they had to redesign it. After four hours of waiting at their office (I insisted to wait there because I knew if I’d left, the work would have not been done), the results were atrocious. Lines were squiggly instead of straight, the graphics were still pixilated, and words were bold where there should not be bold.

Saturday night: Poker night at Emily’s