Mambo dear readers!
I have fallen in love with Tanzania! The culture, landscape, people, and food are made to fall in love with. Every day is filled with precious, exciting, and indescribable experiences and feelings that will now remain beautiful memories forever!
My name is Antonia; I am 20 years old and a midwifery student in my fourth semester at the University for Applied Science in Upper Austria in Linz, and I was allowed to do my internship abroad at St. Joseph Hospital in Soweto, Tanzania. I started this journey alone and can only say: THAT WAS THE BEST DECISION EVER! Of course, I was never alone!!!
I lived with many volunteers from different countries, became Rafikis (friends in Swahili) with locals, and met many, many, many GREAT people every single day. I developed an amazing friendship with many of them. I had an incredible amount of fun with Antoni from Australia, Isaac, Chloé, and Romain from France, Amy from England, Sara, Svenja, Tanja, Petra, Ronja & Jeremias from Switzerland and my favorite German girls Caro, Rici, Antonia, Hanna, Elisa, Remo, Judith, Sophie, and Eva. Our home for this time was the cottage, where there were single/twin or dorm rooms, a communal kitchen with an outdoor area and laundry room, where laundry was diligently done in buckets by us for MANY HOURS.
Living with these great people evolved from a friendship into a family. The Cottage Family! I lived with them in the town of Moshi at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. Kilimanjaro was a little shy sometimes, which made it always even more special to see it in its glory. Moshi is filled with street food, cute little shops, warm and lovely locals, chickens, monkeys, cats, dogs, and sheep on every corner and lots and lots of bajajis, daladala, and bodaboda - the most interesting and funny means of transport that exists. Cooking together, shopping, riding one Bajaji (auto-rickshaw) with eight persons, painting classes, karaoke & dancing nights at Amuzz (a local club), sleepovers, trips to Zanzibar, and card games, beer-pong, and rage-cage with Kilimanjaro beer were part of everyday life. Of course, everyone had different placements in different institutions such as kindergartens, schools, homes for the disabled, microfinance organizations for women, or hospitals. We worked until the early afternoon, then we had fun together until late at night!
My placement was 8 weeks in the delivery room & postpartum ward in the sweet, small private hospital St. Joseph Hospital. A delivery room with three delivery beds, two postnatal rooms with 20 beds each, and the main operating theater with two OR’s were my workplace. Every midwife, nurse, and doctor gave me an incredible amount of love, attention, and showed lots of interest in me and taught me a lot. I quickly became part of the team and was introduced to every visitor/donor/volunteer as a member of St. Joseph Hospital.
I was allowed to do all kinds of tasks and procedures and decided for myself whether I felt comfortable doing them. I also always asked a midwife to be present at the childbirths and certain tasks and to be guided or get help if needed, which worked out really well. So many Watoto (babies in Swahili) were delivered by me.
The national language in Tanzania is Swahili, but all the doctors and midwives in the hospital could speak English very well, so communication was very good. However, it is important to know the English medical terminology and to make the effort to learn some Swahili.
For me personally, it is especially important to mention that in the first few days of the internship/semester abroad, everything is overwhelming, new, and possibly not great. But that's exactly when you should give the new country a chance to convince you of the positive and its own magic. During the first three days, all I wanted was to get on the next plane back to Austria... luckily I decided to stay. THAT WAS THE BEST DECISION EVER!
This experience in Tanzania has taught me to embrace new things, to enjoy them, and to feel completely myself. I am now a lot more open-minded, communicative, self-confident, and free, and I can recommend everyone to go for such an experience!
Asante sana, Tanzania!
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