BLOGG(RED) Day 28

Friday. Palliative care for a day today, supposed to be with Dr. Bartholomew who is great, but unfortunately due to short staff, he had to go on a community visit and we did a ward round with the palliative care nurse. Needless to say, we didn't get too much out of it (no offence to nurses). This one patient with a kaposi's sarcoma on her leg which had metastasized to the lungs... The nurse kept saying "cancer of the leg" - we asked: what cancer? Skin? Muscle? Bone? Her reply: no, no, cancer of the LEG. *headdesk* (from the notes it said kaposi sarcoma).

Other things we learned from this round included the pain medication that are prescribed... Seems they just use morphine, and nothing else for breakthrough pain. Patients don't seem to get much here. Some of our patients were surgical patients on the surgical ward... We visited there and I realised why I don't want to be a general surgeon... The smell of poo everywhere is horrible. I think I'd rather be a thinker than a cutter and poo-smeller.

Finished palliative care, came home and packed for the weekend at Peponi! Took a dalla-dalla into Tanga and tried to cash in my traveller's cheques but none of the 4 banks in Tanga could accept them. This is frustrating... $450 USD frozen... Lucky I didn't bring more in traveller's cheques! Tried for hours to do a bank transfer to I could withdraw the funds from my account... But it just took way too long, so I did a credit card cash advance of 400,000 TSH. I converted this to $250 USD (to add to my $200 USD to use for Mt Kilimanjaro) leaving behind around 56000 TSH for spending.

After banking I had a beef burger lunch at Food Palace in Tanga. It was alright, tasted a bit weird. I'm sure the burgers at Peponi (or so I hear) would be a lot better! We had to wait a bit for Pam who came later, and we had a lot of trouble organising a dalla-dalla to Peponi. Its supposed to cost only 500 TSH per person... But they were demanding 30,000 TSH for the group in the dalla. We managed to argue with them and agree to pay 2,000 TSH per person, and they said they would wait for us until pam arrived. When she did arrive, they conveniently forgot their previous agreement and demanded 30,000 TSH anyway. We gave up and tried looking for taxis. All this was made so much more difficult because it was pelting down with rain and we were all soaking wet. Its nice to have rain in hot Africa but this rain today really hindered our ability to figure out transport. In the end the 6 of us squeezed into a tiny taxi, we were all numb, uncomfortable, etc and paid 30,000 anyway. Could have just gone in the dalla-dalla which would have been so much more spacious!

The ride went for 1.5 hours. The roads were so bumpy, it was pouring down like mad with rain, and the road was really crap. Gravel road, really muddy, lots of potholes filled with water, extremely slow - could only go about 30km/h all the way there and it was not comfortable. After 1.5 hours in this cramped car we got to Peponi. What a relief! The bandas there was very nice, beds are comfortable (but way too soft), running water, hot showers, flushing toilets!! What luxury!!! We unpacked, relaxed a bit, took turns to have the nicest shower I have had in Tanzania so far, then went to dinner. I had a delicious fish masala (almost as good as the one I had in exotica on Tuesday), and then a gooey chocolate brownie for dessert.



We went back to the bandas after dinner and played some card games before bed. We put music on and were being a bit noisy I think, the owner knocked and told us to keep the noise down as people were sleeping. We were so embarrassed! Nice view of the beach at night...