The beginning...

Our adventure has been off to something of a slow start.  We decided to do a courtesy visit on Monday to the lady that had been co-ordinating our placement.  This turned out to be a jolly good idea because no one knew who we were and the planning started from scratch again...  Enter Mrs Saburi who has been most helpful but had to start getting permissions etc for us to be let loose on their patients.  This was all arranged by Thursday which involved an awful lot of hand shaking and unpronounceable names and an epic walk about the hospital.  So, during our time here we will be visiting:

Opportunistic Infections Clinic:  An outpatients clinic serving 300-400 patients per day (run by 4 nurses!).  HIV +ve patients come from far and wide on a 3 monthly basis to receive their antiretrovirals and counselling where needed.  We were so overwhelmed during our short time there on Thursday by the sheer volume of people waiting to be seen and their patient and smiling demeanour.  We were also surprised by the number of children attending the clinic.
Mbuya Nehanda Maternity Clinic:  Natalie was quite excited to return to where it all began!  She was born here 28 (ha ha) years ago.  It does exactly what it says on the box and the we were welcomed by the Matron  who agreed to meet us on Tuesday after we agreed to wear sensible shoes.
Annexe: Psychiatric Inpatients and Outpatient Clinic.  We met a very enthusiastic and newly appointed Matron Muroiwa who was very keen to show us around but we were ushered away by Mrs Saburi!
Casualty: We were a little overwhelmed by this one too.  Again silent people sat in endless rows just waiting.  We noted several patients in the waiting room that in the UK would have been rushed right through but were left on stretchers and chairs in corridors.  Matron will be expecting us next week.
Medical/Surgical Ward: Yet to be decided which ones we will visit.

We anticipated our little walk about to take an hour at most but it soon became apparent that the pace is somewhat different here.  We waited...a lot.  For Matrons, for Sisters, for Co-ordinator's...  but it seems to be the way so we happily fitted in and our visits took 4 hours.
The day had many pleasant aspects.  We were surprised by the cleanliness of the hospital, at one point having to trod carefully as the polished floors presented something of a slip hazard and the enthusiasm with which the staff welcomed us to their departments.