I’ve been in my new hospital now for two weeks and I’m beginning to get used to it. Things are partly familiar because I worked here in the past, but my responsibility has changed with my long-term stay and increased management tasks.

The hospital is open 6 days a week. Friday is our normal day off, although we’re opened then for emergencies only. As a rule, I work from Sunday through Thursday, and I run visits for in-hospital patients on Saturday. An average working day is like this: visit the ward at 8am, start surgeries at 9am until about 1pm, which is lunch time. Since I live in an apartment on the hospital compound, I walk home in 5 minutes so I can eat the meal that our help has prepared for us. In the afternoon, I do out-patient care. I mostly see people that have already been checked out by someone else who referred them to the surgeon, but occasionally a patient returns for a post-op check-up.

As far as surgery goes, I haven’t done much unusual yet. There’ve been a few inguinal hernia’s and some smaller things. This week, a few surgeries are more demanding with two cases where women leak urine after uterus surgery. During surgery, the urethra and the vagina were connected, which is an increasing problem in this country where underqualified people still perform many surgeries. The solution to this particular problem was to reconnect the urethra with the bladder. So far, the women are doing well.

My personal life is not too busy. One of my housemates left for a few weeks in the US, so for the moment we live here with the two of us. Evenings are filled with conversation, email and reading.

The weather has clearly turned to fall. The temperature during the day is great, just above 70F. It cools down in the evenings, and the day before yesterday I even went to find my fleece sweater, but it is not really cold. However, people over here think it is pretty cold, so you see them wearing all kinds of unusual combginations of scarfs, sweaters and hats.

The mainentrance to the hospital. Offices and the children’s ward are on the second floor. This photo was taken on a Hindy holiday, so it was a quiet day in the hospital.

The 'parking lot' of the hospital. People often travel down from the villages in groups on these 'vangari’s': bicycles with a flat board which can carry a few seated persons, or even a patient lying down. The drivers wait until everyone is ready for the trip back.