Africa is a continent with so many dichotomies. When one thinks “Africa is…” a million sentences could come to mind but for each adjective to describe it there are half a dozen contradictions. I think the best I can come up with is Africa is crazy. Nothing here is surprising, the unexpected always happens and every time you think that you are beginning to understand, something happens and you’re right back to where you were, blissfully confused. I think it is precisely this craziness which has brought me back to Tanzania. This is my fourth time in this beautiful land, but my first time as someone interested in providing health care. This country, its needs, its people and my experiences in it are to a great extent why I decided to skip kinesiology and get into nursing. It is simply amazing to be able to be practicing as nursing student here. It’s almost as if my student practice has come full circle. The land that inspired this odyssey is the land that I get to spend one of my final consolidation terms in.
However, it has been an interesting last week or so. I feel like somehow I was mentally prepared for what I was going to encounter but not emotionally. It has a challenge to say the least. I arrived in Tanga not knowing a single person. I now have the utmost respect for immigrants and refugees, who have to uproot and start an entirely new life like that; three months is easy. Starting to work at Tumaini, the health centre, was a challenge too. There is a distinct language barrier with some staff members, and it is exhausting always having to think about the way you talk and the words you use. I have heard plenty of people talk about the challenges of working in the developing world, lack of resources, cultural differences, system differences etc. I guess, again, I knew it in my head but seeing these differences manifest themselves has indeed been a challenge. There are no alcohol sanitizing dispensers in the hospital, basic germ theory concepts are either not understood or are ignored, and the idea of having one’s own personal stethoscope is absurd. Encountering these differences in care have been difficult. The Nurses here have a high commitment to cleanliness and are very proficient, and then something is done that would cause someone to lose their license in Canada and it is completely normal. I have really struggled with what to do in these situations. I know that these things are wrong and can be potentially harmful but I’ve also read enough nursing theories on providing culturally competent care to know that you can’t just go changing people’s ways of doing things, it’s not going to get you anywhere. And even so, their care and approach to nursing is in so many ways far superior to mine, why would they even listen? Could I do what they do with the resources they have? Would I listen to some young upstart who had been here for a week? Probably not. And yet watching sometimes makes me want to scream, "Your doing it all wrong!" I just hope and pray that I have the wisdom to learn, know when to try to change things and be content with where I am.
