Toad invasion??

So it about 10pm here and I just returned home from a long day at the hospital.  As I was walking towards my house from my car I saw and quickly skirted around a few of the toads that are ever present at night around the water drains here. Those who know me know that I'm not a big fan of bugs, critters and anything slimy that jumps, or even doesn't jump. And yes I know that I am far bigger than any of these animals and insects and so I shouldn't really be afraid of them... I prefer to categorize my feelings as a healthy dislike.  Unfortunately sitting on my doorstep was not one but two decently sized toads. And of course (because life sometimes just isn't fair) as I drew closer to open the door, they in turn jumped closer to it, so that if I had opened it I would have had two new roommates. So instead of doing that I walked around to the back of the house and attempted to enter through the garden. Now of course if there were two toads on my doorstep, lets try to guess how many where in my back yard... sigh.... so after stepping on a few I quickly scrambled inside. Otherwise another uneventful day of data collection and entry!

cheers

B

Excel 1 : Bunmi 0.25 humm make that excel 1: Bunmi 0

So Its now excel 1 bunmi 0.25 in the battle of bunmi versus the excel database. For those of you who dont know my predecessor placed most of her data in a pretty supped up excel sheet, and I've been asked by my PI to do the same. The only difference between us though is that she had maybe 200 data fields (i.e columns), where as I have..... here is where I went to check my spread sheet to wow you with my over 700 columns but low and behold my file has been corrupted.... sigh..... well this is not too surprising considering I was working on a desktop at work. Anyway I HAD over 700 columns. Which is alot of scrolling... I made a macros (simple program) to help speed up the data entry process, but I'm definitely thinking of switching to MS access to make my database. excel just isnt cutting it!

ekk mouse in the cereal

So the mouse has returned. Not only has it returned but it decided to make a home for it self in my granola cereal. Gross gross. My roommate actually saw it come out of the bag this morning before scurrying away. Sadly, I had already eaten the granola for breakfast....

B-day!

Well yesterday was my birthday!!! I cant believe I'm 26! I went with some friends to the Grand Palm Hotel for dinner. They have a great steak house! Other than that my b-day was pretty low key, it was on Monday afterall and we all had to go to work the next day. I added a pic down below where I think you can see me relishing my steak!!! Ummmm red meat... why did I ever stop eating it???

Anyway work has been going well. I finished piloting my data collection form at the end of Sept, so I'm now working with what I hope is the final form, pending my PIs final approval. Thankfully I've only had a few problems with the form. What I'm not looking forward too is coming in on the weekends which I will probably have to do from now on. If I don't come in then the nurses won't weight the babies (they're used to not doing this on weekends). UGGH. But at least the NNU is alot quieter on the weekends and I get more times with the files before a doctor/nurse/health assistants wisks them away to parts unknown. I just did my first weekend and it wasnt soo bad. Plus I'm not really going anywhere for a while anyway. I think my next trip will be back to the US for the Harvard Check-in/mini conference.
On Sunday I was only in the hospital for the morning, which allowed me to join my roommates (my new roommate JP just arrived yesterday) and 3 Clinton Foundation bigwigs for a game drive at Madikwe Game Reserve which is just over the border into South Africa. It actually took only 15 mins from my house to the south african border and another 45min to the game reserve. I had no idea it was soo close! Anyway I finally saw a giraffe, and a rhino, neither of which were at Mokolodi game reserve! Well I'm off to go read more about excel!
adios
B

Mice!!

Yikes we have a mouse in the house! As most of you know i"m very anti critters. I've been tolerating the myriad of bugs here in Botswana (see below pic taken by my roommate), but I really hate mice!!! I cant wait till my roommate gets her cat.

Oct 8th

Well it has definitely been a while since I've posted. Since I've received numerous emails asking me about my life here, I've finally eked out some time to reply! Looking back....

Mid September I attended the Botswana Clinical Society Conference. Overall it was a pretty good conference with some interesting presentations. The PMTCT presentations were especially interesting. The ministry of health was also pretty involved in the conference, so we were able to get real data regarding distribution of HAART, as well as data on the infant circumcision project. Here's a pic from the gala dinner, with my roommate, and Raabya and Charlotte from BHP.

I actually made some good contacts too!

Anyway a week before that I went with becky and wemi to Oodi. Its a village known for its weavers. We also went to mochudi to visit the art museum there, but unfortunately it was closed :( Though the museum was closed becky and wemi had fun practicing martial arts.



Last week I went to Durban for an Advance HIV Education conference. This was a conference sponsored by DIAIDS as well as local pharmaceuticals. I actually got to meet 8 of the other Doris Duke fellows! This conference was focused more on the clinical aspects of caring for HIV + pts. It was interesting to see the differences in care given to people in SA. What was especially interesting wass how HAART therapy for pregnant women hasn't been rolled out there. It has been a part of the Botswana PMTCT program for over a year now. We stayed in the beach front area of Durban, which was ok, but I definitely didnt feel too safe walking at night. Anyway it was great to catch up with Emily and Zach, two other Harvard Doris Duke fellows. Here's a pic from Moyo a restaurant Dr Ojikutu (my us mentor) took all the fellows too. I wish I had taken more pictures while I was there, but you know... everyone had a camera.... so hopefully I'll be able to get all the pictures from the other fellows eventually. The day before coming back to botswana I went to Ushaka marine world. Its was a pretty small aquarium compared to most that I've been to in the USA, but there are definitely some pretty fish there.



So bringing the blog up to the current date. I've started data collecting in ernest! Essentially I'm rounding on about 40 babies everyday. So its pretty time consuming work. Sadly there's 3-4 deaths per week... I'll write more about that later. I just wanted to get up to date with the blog, and I'll try to post regularly from now on!!!!
cya B