A Typical Day In Gaborone

Doesn't exist. 

Allie and I have made it through the first week of our internship. Although we have established the semblance of a daily routine, every day seems to present us with new surprises and challenges. Regardless, I will do my best to describe a "typical day" in Gaborone. 

5:45 am: Groan as the alarm goes off. Roll out of bed. Throw on a pair of scrubs. 

6:35 am: Leave University of Botswana dorms and catch a kombi to work. 

7:30 am: Arrive at Vet and Agric Consultants (unless we miss our kombi stop and end up having to take 3 kombis instead of 2 as well as an extended detour through villages on the outskirts of Gabs as happened this morning).

8:30am - 12:00pm: Observe surgeries including spays and neuters, ACL repair, femur head amputation,  and foreign body removal. 

12pm - 1pm: Lunch break 

1pm - 4pm: "Free time" because the clinic doesn't see clients in the middle of the day. Usually spent reading or reviewing anatomy. 

4pm - 6pm: Consultations. 

6pm: Leave work and catch the kombi back to the University of Botswana. 

7:15pm: Arrive at the dorms (unless the kombi breaks down in the middle of the street and we have to navigate...without an iphone or GPS...to the next stop). In which case it might be a little bit later. 

7:30pm: Cook dinner (spaghetti for the past five nights). May have to use drinking water instead of tap water to cook the pasta in the event of a water shortage (which should have happened on Monday according to the schedule, but happened on Friday evening instead). 

9:00pm: Shower, go to bed. Get ready to do it all again in the morning. 

Our first week has been full of ups and downs. Lowpoints include multiple mishaps on the kombis, water and electricity shortages, and seeing a patient die on the surgery table. Highlights include scrubbing in to close a spay incision, getting a taste of traditional food, making a field visit to treat Botswana's police horses, and having a client (a complete stranger) offer to show me and Allie around and introduce us to her friends. 

One can only guess what next week will bring. 

The Learning Curve

Allie and I have settled into the University of Botswana "flat" that we will call home for most of our stay in Botswana. The accommodations are nice...not much different than Penn's highrises. We each have our own bedroom and share a bathroom, kitchen, and living area with Fiji, a UB student working towards her PhD. Like most Batswana, Fiji is extremely friendly and has really helped us in starting to adjust.

Nervous but excited, we set out this morning for our first day of work. Our placement at the Vet and Agric Consultants is located about 30 minutes away from campus by car. We were warmly welcomed by Dr. Mike Sentoo, the owner of the practice. On a quick tour of the clinic, he showed us the two consultation rooms, the surgery theater, and the treatment room and kennel area. We were introduced to the rest of the staff (3 other veterinarians and a handful of technicians).

And then we were thrown right into the action.

One of the vets was about to perform a castration on a cat. After finding out that Allie and I have performed the fairly basic surgery before, he said we could "each take a ball." Since I have only performed two nueters, I thought it would be best if Allie (being more experienced) go first. Once she was done, she handed the scalpel blade to me and said, "He's waking up. Have fun." If I wasn't before, I was definitely nervous now. Did I mention I've only done two of these before? Fortunately, the first few steps go smoothly. I make the figure 8 knot and breathe a sigh of relief. I've gotten past the most difficult steps...I'm in the home stretch. I start slipping the knot off the hemostat, trying to move quickly before the cat wakes up, when all of a sudden the whole knot comes undone. The hemostats had been unclamped. As the veterinarian had mentioned, some of their instruments were not in the best condition and a slight movement on my part was enough for it to come undone. The veterinarian placed a suture around the vessels (a technique used in castrating larger animals, including dogs), so everything ended up being fine in the end. However, it was not quite the way I wanted my first day on the job to begin.

As my first real clinical experience, I knew coming into this that I would be slightly behind on the learning curve, but this incident also taught me a valuable lesson: I will not always be able to rely on the technology or the tools that I have already become dependent upon as a student. Perhaps more importantly, I learned that I am bound to make mistakes and that I should learn from them rather than get upset by them.

The rest of the day got much much better as Allie and I saw number of cases that we've only read about in textbooks until this point:

A dog with canine distempter virus
A puppy with inflamed third eyelid glands
A patient with a transmissible venereal tumor
Two cases of tick fever
A dog with a torn ACL
And many more...

Today opened my eyes to how much I don't know despite one full year of veterinary training and showed me that I am bound to make mistakes. However, after all of the things we were able to see and do today, I realized how much we will be able to learn just within the next few weeks.

Tomorrow we wake up early and try to learn how to take a kombi (van/bus) to work to try to save a few pula.

My room

Work -- Vet and Agric Consultants

Our first "patient"

Beginner's Vetswana

I've never been happier to sit in an airport.

Normally, I find airports extremely unpleasant and stressful as I awkwardly juggle multiple bags, make sure I didn't forget anything, navigate through crowds of people while trying to locate the correct gate and then sit and wait for what seems like an eternity before finally boarding the plane.

However, as I sit at Gate B29 in JFK Airport, I am grateful that the only thing I can do at the given moment is to sit (instead checking email or Facebooking since JFK charges for wifi) and think. Between studying for 8 (or was it 9? I've lost track) finals and having my computer crash before the last one, moving out of my apartment and packing for a 2 month trip, I'm not exaggerating when I say I literally have not had a single moment to contemplate the journey that I am about to embark upon.

As many of you know, I will be completing a nine-week internship in a small animal clinic in Gaborone, Botswana with Allie, one of my classmates from Penn Vet. I was fortunate enough to visit Botswana while on safari with my dad last summer. Though our stay in the country was brief, I was immediately impressed by the diverse wildlife and the kindness and hospitality of Batswana (the local term for citizens of Botswana).

I hope that this summer will afford me the opportunity to learn even more about the culture and customs as well as form personal relationships with some of the people I meet over the next few months. I anticipate seeing many interesting cases at the small animal clinic and applying some of what I learned during the first quarter of my veterinary school education (assuming my hippocampus was able to store it all). I look forward to witnessing first hand how animals are treated and how veterinary medicine is practiced in Botswana compared to in the US.

However, I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. First and foremost, as I trade in my lecture notes and textbooks for my lightly-used stethoscope and scrubs, I am concerned that my clinical skills will not be up to par, that I won't be able to contribute, that I will not be able to learn due to communication or cultural barriers.

I am bracing myself for a bit of culture shock. I've already experienced withdrawal symptoms after giving up my iPhone in favor of my old LG Xenon. Literally overnight, summer weather will have turned to winter weather. I will have gone from living in a city of 2 million people to a country of 2 million people, from basically blending in to sticking out like a sore thumb. After having lectures and labs scheduled for me from 9am to 5pm everyday, I will certainly need to adjust to things being done on a less strict schedule, on "Africa time." Finally, I will have to acclimate myself to the sound of English interspersed with Setswana (hopefully you understand the title of the blog now) and other local dialects.

Keeping in mind and heart the words of wisdom given to me by my family, friends and boyfriend, Eitan, it is with an open mind and positive attitude that I hope to start my 9 week crash course in Vetswana.

Plane to Johannesberg

Allie practicing surgical knots in JFK