Research and School

This week has gotten long. This has been the week that the school has finally started to pick up, but I am so out of practice at this point that it is hard to just dive into it. This week the proposal for my final project was due, as was a big project for my community health class. The workload here definitely picks up at the end. I am writing my community health paper about African masculinities and multiple concurrent partners as forwarding the Aids crisis. It is really interesting stuff, and there is a lot of really cool innovative research being done with it.

On a more stressful note, my final practicum is finally coming together, albeit slowly and painfully. I started out looking at a practicum in a TB ward, but the project advisors here, after approving my project every step of the way, 4 days before the proposal was due decided that it would be too dangerous and that I shouldn’t do it. Instead I am now going to be doing a practicum on emergency care in an ER. I am getting excited for it, but it has made this week pretty crazy in terms of doing a whole other set of research. It doesn’t help that this program doesn’t really have many research tools, a slow internet connection is about all that there is. I am expecting to do more research when I get on site thought, there is a full medical library at Ladysmith hospital where I will be working.

Other than school, life here goes on. I am living in the Windemere on the beach, which is beautiful. Only another week in Durban, then I am off to Ladysmith!

Sala Kashe

-Ben