Dreams

                   

It seems impossible. I can barely believe it, and I'm the one living it! I'm 10 days away from finishing my 2nd year of medical school. 

It seems like it was only yesterday, that I was living in Berlin, having a crisis about my future and talking with a good friend about the fact that the only thing I had really ever wanted to do was medicine, but the chance had passed me by. I was too old. I couldn't drop everything now and start over. 

Or could I? 

The phrase on the picture above is so obvious, but so hard to see sometimes. Medicine is a long term goal. It takes a lot of time and effort. You might have to give up other things, and you'll definitely have to make sacrifices in order to achieve it. But if it's what you really want, you owe it to yourself to go for it. Because if you don't, the time will pass anyway, and you might look back and realize that if you had started then, you'd have accomplished it now. 

So do it. Whatever your dream is, run to it. Be brave. The first step, the decision, is the hardest. After that, nothing can stop you. Nothing should stop you. 

Life in Chad

I was talking to a friend this week and realized it's hard for people to imagine what day to day life in Chad is actually like. So I went through my pictures and did a little research to get some data to share with you guys.

First off, some numbers about the healthcare situation in Chad, taken from the Human Development Index compiled by the UN (click to see better):

I put together the top 10 countries and the bottom 10 countries. For easier comparison, I highlighted the United States and Chad. (All info can be found at http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi ) 

Some other interesting information gathered from the same index: 

Percentage of the population with some high school: 95% in the US  -- 5,5% in Chad

Percentage of the population with access to electricity: 100 % in the US -- 6,4% in Chad

Chad hasn't moved forward in time, and people still live as they did 2000 years ago. No, that's not a typo, I mean 2 thousand years ago. The men work the fields, the women gather wood to cook, fetch water from a well/river, take care of the children, cook, sell vegetables in the market. The meager 6,4% who have electricity, have their own gas fueled generator (like the hospital). There's absolutely no sanitation or waste disposal systems. What little trash they produce which is not biodegradable, they burn. 

Mode of transport of the RICH -- most people just walk

What the villages look like

A little closer

The houses are single rooms build from mud bricks and straw. The "kitchen" is in the center of the yard, where they build the fire to cook over. You might remember the story of Adamah (beware of the photos!) who had extensive 3rd degree burns over large portions of her body. This happens very frequently and I know of 4 people (2 adults, 2 children) who died due to burns from cooking fires. 

Carrying a ridiculous amount of wood on their heads

Cooking on burning wood

The school

If they want flour, they have to make it themselves, plant and reap the grains, let them dry, and then pound the heck out of them until it becomes flour. (The women do this, the man in the video was just showing off *because I was filming.*

The market in town

The pharmacy (yes, meds straight out in the sun with temperatures of up to 35-40 Celsius)

With the exception of the main highway which connects N'Djamena (the capital) with Moundou (the second largest city) there are no paved roads, and even the conditions of that highway would make you cry if you saw it. 

And lastly, a little view of the hospital where I worked the previous two times: 

The men's ward (there's an equivalent female ward)

The central yard where family and patients hang out

The OR

And below is the hospital I will be working at this time, which is different from the previous 2 times. It's a much bigger hospital with a little bit better infrastructure, even though it is *really* in the boonies instead of the city and it takes 7hrs on a bus plus 1hr in a moto-taxi through dirt roads to get there from the capital.