Most incredible experience

After my first year of medical school, I knew I wanted to do a volunteer project abroad but wasn’t sure where or how I would go about it. Then, at my school, one of our faculty advisors told us about Projects Abroad and how they had a program in Tanzania that aligned directly with my goals for a volunteer project: working at a local hospital, leading local outreach medical clinics, and getting to experience culture and learn about diseases endemic to the region.
Our hospital assignment was St. Joseph Hospital in Moshi, a government-owned hospital located about 5 minutes’ drive from our lodge. We were able to assist the doctors with simple procedures, observe surgeries, take blood pressure and vital signs, and go on rounds with physicians in the different wards. I got to watch 2 C-sections on the very first day at the hospital! During our time there, we saw the male and female wards, the labor ward, the pediatric ward, as well as the laboratories, pharmacy, and outpatient rooms.
In the afternoons, we would either go back to the hospital or have a culture class back at the Projects Abroad office. Over the 3 weeks I was there, we received lecturers on HIV and AIDS in Tanzania, a Swahili lesson, discussion of healthcare in Tanzania, maternal-fetal health in Africa, and we got a chance to meet with Tanzanian medical students and learn about their experiences. On our last night, we even had a cooking class in the office kitchen!
On the days we weren’t in the hospital, we led small outreach programs in the local communities. The community outreaches were a chance for us to really work one-on-one with patients. Because we weren’t in a hospital shadowing a doctor, it was up to us as medical students to organize patients, take blood pressure and vital signs, and even do finger sticks for rapid HIV and malaria tests. I thoroughly enjoyed these outreaches because they allowed us to have hands-on experience examining patients with a little more autonomy than at the hospital.
On the weekends we got to travel around Tanzania and see the beautiful countryside as well as other nearby cities. We toured local markets, hiked to a waterfall in Materuni village, got to make fresh coffee from coffee plants, hike around the base of Mt Kilimanjaro, go to craft shops and markets, and go on a day-long safari at Tarangire National Park. I wasn’t expecting to make as great of friends as I did while in Moshi, and the experience was so positive that I am planning to take a trip back for more medical volunteering in the future. I couldn’t have had a better experience volunteering with Projects Abroad!