the end of leisure

After some very laid back weeks, suddenly I feel like I've returned (somewhat unwillingly) to my previous pace of life... the last 5 days have been really busy!

Monday night I moved, at 9pm, after hourly calls to the guy who was supposed to bring my keys, from 5pm onwords... its great to be partially unpacked, and to be settling into a home again after 3 months of living in suitcases.

Wednesday we took the bus back up to Ouaga (pictured in the photo), a 5 hour ride that even in the air conditioned bus wasn't, well, cool... I've realized that Bobo is really much nicer than Ouaga!!

Thursday & Friday we met with the Ministry of Health, and much to the frusteration of the BIPAI staff who have had many meetings with the Burkinabe ministry of health before found themselves having to re-explain everything about the project as if it were new information. However, after a shaky start, people seemed to become more enthusiastic. We put together a list of our learning and work objectives for the next few months (focusing on what we need to learn to truely integrate into the Burkinabe health care system - and ensuring that we send the message that we do respect their expertise and programs) and I spend several hours translating into French... then had to give a 15 minute presentation on it. In French. Did I mention that the last time I did any public speaking in French was in 1989!?! Talk about nerve wracking... I'm sure I sounded a bit like a dull teenager in my language choice... but despite that, they clearly appreciated the effort for me to present in French (the chair even joked that since I presented in French, then all the questions therefore should be in English!) and we had some good and, I hope, fruitful discussion about next steps.

Hopefully next week we'll be meeting with the hospital director, pediatrics director and a number of other relevant players to sort out our work for the next while. Likely to be a combination of some general peds, with identification of HIV+ kids and starting to recruit for our transitional clinic (which will be at the very least HIV & TB). We will also be working on getting to know the various NGOs and other stakeholders (did I really just use "stakeholders" in a sentance... clearly the JHSPH brainwashing worked...).

Anyhow, overall some positive movement. And we also met with the UNICEF Country Director for Burkina, who has as one of her main goals to support the rollout of pediatric ARVs, including training etc. So that should be a great partnership!

We've been really enjoying having good internet access for a few days here at the sofitel... tomorrow its back to the internet cafe again sadly. One of the tasks for next week is to see what needs to be done to "help" get our phone lines going.

Anyhow, more later. Take care! L.