Excursion to a hospital in Tanzania
“What are we waiting for?” Sebastian, Ferdinand, and Anatol were sitting outside the operation room, ready to follow their mentor Dr. Alex to see the surgery. They had been waiting now for over 45 minutes with no apparent explanation for the delay. When it was starting to get too long to be just a regular holdup, their curiosity kicked in and they asked Dr. Alex, who was sitting next to them. The answer they got was very shocking. They had expected it to be something major that was holding up the operation, but in reality it was seemingly trivial from a European’s point of view: cloths to cover the patient. They had been washed in the morning, and they were hanging outside waiting to dry from the hot equatorial sun. It was unbelievable! The doctors were ready, the patient was ready, the operation room was set, all they were waiting for was a few cloths to dry to cover the patient. Lives could possibly be lost, just because sheets did not dry in time.
This was just one of the astonishing experiences that Sebastian Mustafa, Ferdinand Goess, Sophy Alexander, Anatol Gawrzak, Kami Krista, and Elisabeth Reinisch had during the Easter break of 2015 when they went on a truly amazing trip to Tanzania that was organized by the dedicated and passionate Mr. Patton, accompanied by Ms. O’Donnell. The trip was planned by Mr. Patton with three goals in mind: it shows students a way that science can be applied (in this case medicine), it exposed them to a completely new culture, and it included elemenst of service.
