Electronic Karma ran out, long time no update

First of all, sorry for the long radio silence, but here is what happened. First my camera broke, got it fixed in Mwanza. Next, my external hard disk with all my pictures on it decided to freak out, so I had to scramble and salvage all the files. Once that was done, and I wanted to make a backup of all my stuff on my laptop, my laptop hard disk died. Nothing that can't be fixed, and I have back ups of most of my files at home, but that would mean all my videos of this trip would be gone. And typing long and frequent travel blogs on a phone is not as appealing as working on the laptop.

But even with so little good (electronic) karma, my last two weeks in Shirati were a blast. Some new Dutch students arrived and it's always fun to show new peeps around. With movie nights, climbs up Oboke mountain and even some "20 questions" games, we filled our spare time with as much entertainment as possible. Because it seemed like the higher powers had decided to unleash as much heartbreak in their first weeks and my last weeks. Dead babies, necrotic bowels, debilitating tumours and even alleged murder of an 15 month old baby girl were not the warm welcome I had anticipated for the newcomers.

On a personal level, the deep lows where quickly followed by high highs, when Dr. Pim expressed his confidence in my surgical abilities, by giving me the knife. "Now cut." 25 minutes later, my first open herniography procedure succesfully came to a close. Next step would be a solo C-section, but with more than one life at stake, I politely declined. I was not only able to learn here, my inner teacher came out as well in these last weeks. The new Dutch girls have not yet done any surgical internship, so after they stopped fainting (to be fair, it was extremely hot that day and the floor was covered in blood and poop after an exploding bowel loop) we had a little crafts moment with needles and mouth masks. After suturing multiple mouth masks and adorning the IV stand with surgical knots they were ready to suture their first cut wound. I couldn't be prouder. If this doctor thing doesn't work out, maybe I can still reconsider a carrier in education.

My farewell was fast approaching, and I hurried to finish my speech in Swahili. On friday, after church, I was supposed to say a quick than, you to the hospital and quietly sit down again. But after I declared I was going to speak in Swahili, Dr. Chirangi insisted I should speak from the spot the pastor just delivered his surmon. O boy. Luckily it all went well. I was later told that he put me up front because he thought I was going to speak for at least an hour. "What made you think that?" I asked. "Because you used the word 'hotuba' for speech." Apparently a hotuba is something like a presidential announcement, not a 10 sentence thank you note.

The only way you can truly celebrate a farewell here is with a lot of food and even more konyagi. The 'spirit of the nation' as they call the liquor, mixed with Dutch Kingzen and American thirst led to an epic goodbye party, which made me realise I suck at drinking games, and that everything spins after you have to finish your glass of konyagi in one penalty gulp.