Saturday at Sun Safari

Whatup. This is me getting techie and trying to make a blog. I have a few free hours, so I thought I'd upload some photos. I am typing from the rooftop deck of an upscale hotel called Sun Safari in Bujumbura, Burundi (one of the few places around with wireless. I just ordered some fish, which came from the nearby lake, and lets just say it was completely intact when it arrived on my plate. Eyes, skin, bones, tail, head, yup.

I'll try to update this from time to time, feel free to check it out and hit me back.

So I've been in Burundi for about 2 weeks now. Most of the time has been spent in a pretty rural location, a town called Kigutu, which is Deo's hometown (for anyone not familiar w/Deo, he's a classmate of mine from DMS who is currently taking working full time to get a community-based health center/hospital off the ground in his hometown of Kigutu, Burundi. Such a project faces numerous challenges. Currently, some of the biggies are a major gas shortage in Burundi and a broken generator and thus no power on site. There are numerous tricky nuances of navigating the appropriate channels to establishing such a clinic in rural Africa, particularly in order to do so in collaboration with the existing system. It is imperative to set everything up with appropriate governmental approval so that the clinic will be supported down the road.

So these pics are a few from the trip thusfar. The kid you see in the photo came in late at night after being pushed into a cooking fire accidentally, and we debrided his hand by headlamp with Ketamine conscious sedation.
The close-up of the burn is actually about a week later, with some nice granulation tissue forming, but also some areas of 3rd degree burns which may require grafting. Not sure what channels exist for that here, but we're exploring with the help of some friends at Partners in Health in Rwanda. The two guys in scrubs w/me are Dziwe and Melino, the two docs at the clinic. Dziwe is U.S. trained in Emergency Medicine, and Melino is Burundian trained as a GP. They don't do a residency here as far as I can tell, and begin practicing right after they graduate.



















The pics to the left are of the clinic from the outside. It is a gorgeous setting up in the hills at about 1700 meters, overlooking the giant lake Tanganyika. Congo is across the lake. At night, fishermen with lanterns dot the lake and it actually looks like a city. The flag you see is the Burundian flag.


All of the stonework and landscaping has been done by the local villagers..



I'm running out of time, so I'm gonna sign off. If anybody has questions or wants to see pics of anything else, lemme know. Hope all are well.


Amahoro (peace)-


-Scott