Learning from experience

No guidebook can inform you how to practically live your life day by day in a foreign country - especially one so far removed from Scotland as Tanzania is.  How can I fit in when people don't understand my background and I can rarely speak to locals enough to tell them since they don't speak the same language, I go to the market and only recognise half the foods, I like milk in my tea and no sugar, I don't like reggae, come from a culture where achieving tasks is how we value success rather than how many babies I have, I need to apply suncream every few hours and drink 10 x more water than anyone else?!
 
I have learnt that it is all about learning and mentality.  If you come here thinking I'm an apple and you are an orange, you wont get very far.  You need to come here with the mentality that we are all fruit. (sorry for the bad comparison but I couldn't think of anything better off the top of my head!)

Every day you need to see as an opportunity to learn.  For instance, I learnt yesterday that I should always check fruit here before eating it after discovering I had just eaten a maggot-filled mango...  Also learning from others...while in Zanzibar there were 2 instances where people I met had lost their luggage...I still decided to check in my bag at the wee Stone Town Airport any way since the plane is tiny and I wanted as much leg room as I could get.  I went to Tanga, my bag went to Dar Es Salaam.  Learning from other people's experiences is important too!  (I got it back the next day.)

More serious, hospitally instances, a lot of the staff here have very little training.  The hospital relies a lot on them 'learning on the job', which some do better than others.  This has its positives and negatives but a definite positive for us daktari mwanafunzi (medical students) is that they believe a lot more here in letting us do things as a way of teaching us.  So last week the surgeon let me do half his operation!  Cutting, draining, stitching back up...an amazing opportunity for me.

 I am due to leave here tomorrow and go on to pastures new.  I will leave with mixed feelings.  Sad to leave my fruity chums but looking foward to having more learning opportunities as I go on to Lutindi Mental Hospital.