It’s been exactly a week since I have arrived and every minute has been great! I’ve become good friends with all the UPenn kids. This reminds me a lot of when I studied abroad in Paris in 2008 when I was the only Rice student among 30 Northwestern students. I’m sure dozens other Rice students have experienced the same situation given that Rice few of its own abroad programs and such a small number of Rice students are present abroad at any moment. Regardless, it’s always fun to explain the residential college system and Beer Bike to people who have no conception of life at Rice (everybody?).

I spent my first day shadowing Dr. Doreen Ramogola-Masire, one of Dr. Rebecca Richards-Kortum collaborators. She spent Tuesday morning screening women who had been previously evaluated for cervical cancer at another clinic and referred to her. She runs the only cervical cancer screening clinic in the entire country! Therefore almost every other patient she saw had to have a procedure done to remove precancerous cervical lesions (I nearly passed out watching this- looks like OB/GYN won’t be my specialty).

Doreen took me over to meet Dr. Michael Tolle, the associate director of the Botswana Baylor Children’s Clinical Centre of Excellence. The clinic, funded mostly by Bristol Myers Squib and Baylor College of Medicine, is by far the most impressive building on the entire Princess Marine Hospital Campus. It has wireless internet (!!!) and looks as though it was transplanted directly from Houston. .

I showed Dr. Tolle the technologies I brought from Rice (O2 sensor and flow meter, C-clamp syringes, adherence charts, pill counter), all of which he impressed by and noted that there would definitely be a number of chances to test them. Because he was leaving town for the next week, he set up a lenient schedule to shadow one doctor each day at the clinic in order for me to get an idea of the work they do and to meet several of the docs. I will also be going on three outreach trips next week, where my pill counter and adherence charts might be of use.

Each of the docs I shadowed (Premai, Julia, and Joel) were all extremely friendly and skilled physicians. Because it is a children’s clinic, the majority of doctors are pediatricians. Premai, as an internist, runs the family clinic, which essentially is one exam room set aside for sick parents. Every case these docs see is an HIV+ patient and would be considered primary care. Premai was nice enough to run through the first, second, and third line Anti-Retroviral Therapies (ARVs) used at the clinic, all of which are provided free of charge by the government.

Because Baylor doesn’t really need any more employees (it is well staffed and well managed), I think the majority of my work will be testing of the technologies I brought and brainstorming of ideas for the next round of BTB designs. Doreen was kind enough to set me up with one of her colleagues, Dr. Nicola Zetola, on a research project for the women’s clinic. Although the focus of the project is still undetermined, it will involve basic data analysis using STATA. He was kind enough to give Monika (UPenn intern) and me a copy of STATA as well as train us in how to use it. Though tedious, being trained in this statistical package is one of the most marketable skills in clinical and public health research.

We’ve had a good amount of fun getting to know Gaborone (pronounced Ha-boronay). Although it’s a quiet town, the three hotspots for nightlife are always a ton of fun. On Wednesday we competed in the monthly trivia at the Bull and Bush. The thirteen teams competing were comprised of two UPenn undergrad teams (Cream Cheese and the Fighting Cankles), UPenn residents team (Starch), and Baylor docs team (Low Expectations). Given that the trivia was primarily geared towards British expats, the UPenn undegrads finished as the bottom two teams. Pretty embarrassing!

Botswana is definitely a country for outdoorsmen. The great scenery and wildlife make for great hiking experiences. Tamaar, Meghan, and I hiked up Kgale Hill, or rather, what we thought was Kgale hill. It turns out our taxi driver dropped us off at the hill right next to Kgale, where we followed a trail. But unlike the easy Kgale trail designed for tourists, we found ourselves on an incredibly grueling uphill climb. After 90 minutes of uphill climbing through red rocks, wild vegetation, and harsh savannah trees, we finally made it to the top and witnessed a spectacular view of Gaborone and the hills of Botswana. Though the girls we’re less enthused by their exhaustion and cuts, I was overwhelmed by a vivacity one can only experience from such a challenge.

The past week has really helped me determine what I see myself doing in the next decade. I think an ideal career would be to follow the traditional American medical education (med school, residency) with a few intermittent international experiences. Ideally, once I become a qualified physician, I would love to spend 1-2 years working at a clinic or with a non-governmental organization in a developing nation. As much as I would love to have such an opportunity now, I think it would be far more productive if I could fill the gaps in medical personnel within these countries. But who knows what will happen in the next decade…

I’ll be heading on my first outreach trip tomorrow to Molepolole (great word) with the Baylor docs. Should be another great medical experience!