Sowbona!

That is how you say hello in SiSwati. We've been practicing greeting the people here with much help from our new friends. I'm still not sure how to spell these things, but I don't think I'll ever be so I'm just spelling as it sounds. The first person says "Sowbona!" (or Sowbonai if to a group of people), then the second person replies "Yebo" which means 'Yes'. Then they say "Unjohnay" which means 'how are you?' and the other replies "nepila" which means 'good'. Also "Sayabona" means 'Thank you'. Thats all we've got so far, lol!

This morning the sun rise was about 5 am, which is much earlier than we are used to. We woke up thinking we had missed our alarms that were set for 6am. The rest of the day gets some what confusing. Time in Swaziland is very different from American time. Things go much slower here and there is no 'urgency' to do anything. People do what they need to whenever they get around to it. For example, someone may say they will meet you at 7 to get breakfast, but then not actually meet you until 8. And it not big deal. I noticed alot more cultural differences, but I'll get to those later.

After we ate breakfast we called Dr. Costa Maonei to meet up with him for the day. He gave us a full tour of the hospital grounds and introduced us to most of the doctors and nurses we will be working with. It is very hard to remember their names, and it kind of seem like you insult them when you don't. We feel bad about it but most of them are not familiar sounds to us. There are a few with names we know well, like Colleen, Christine, and David, but otherwise its very different. Not to mention I'm not the greatest with remembering names initially anyway. When he finished showing us around, he told us to go "wonder" around a bit to get to know the place, then find Dr Gezahegne to spend the day with. Once we met up with him, we saw some TB patients  and then he dismissed us because he was finished and going on break. We then looked for Dr Costa but he too was on break and would come back at 2pm. It was only 11:30am. We killed some time by going to the store to get some things since Rachel's bag still hadn't arrived yet.

At 2pm, we went to the TB clinic and observed Dr. Costa with patients. This hospital is the only one in Swaziland that keeps charts on their patients. He said they took the idea from the US, but it is not nearly as detailed as ours (the charts are much smaller!!). Watching the interaction between doctor and patient was very interesting. This is going to sound bad, but the way the doctor talked to and treated the patient would not be tolerated in the states. He was harsh, blunt and sometimes downright mean, even yelling at the patient. Not to mention they had waited all day to see him who knows when. I'm not criticizing or praising this behavior, I'm just explaining what I witnessed. This encounter opened my eyes to the difference in health care in America from underdeveloped contries. I could go on and write an essay about that right now, but I'll save it for another post when I've had time to let my thoughts on this develop more clearly. But in short, here it is a priviledge to get to see a doctor. In the US, doctors are treated like waiters or customer service personel. Again, I'll expain this in detail later when I'm more rested and I'll let that thought linger in your minds until then.

I'll try to start sharing some pictures soon! I haven't felt comfortable yet just walking around snapping pictures, but maybe tomorrow I'll have some pictures of our living quarters.