This is NOT the Africa I Had Imagined...

( Click Photo to Enlarge)

When we finally arrived at the Tenwek Hospital Guesthouse it was Saturday afternoon - it had been 4 days since we had left Nashville. We were introduced to the Guesthouse staff and we were given our room assignments. The Guesthouse was located on the hospital grounds about a 10 minute walk from the hospital. The second wave of Vanderbilt clinicians were to arrive in a couple of days and our first priority was to get settled in and start unpacking all of the equipment we brought with us and find all the equipment that had been shipped over from the States for us to use during our cardiac week.

Everyone on the team was so excited to have finally reached our destination. Although it was the middle of the rainy season, it was a cool crisp day and it couldn't have been more beautiful.

The following morning when we stepped out of the Guesthouse on our way to the operating rooms at the hospital, we were greeted with a view shown in the picture above, taken from the front porch of the Guesthouse. I had imagined Africa to be a big arid sand-box with sand blowing and camels everywhere. Instead we were greeted with a crisp, clear 50 degree morning with fresh dew on the lawn and endless rolling green hills and low lying clouds in the distance. It was simply breathtaking.

With camera in hand I took off for the hospital to begin digging through all the supplies to get ready for our first day of surgery the following day. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined what I would have an opportunity to see when I got to the hospital that day...