Rwanda introduction...for mom especially

Greetings from the land of a thousand hills! Many of you know that I'm here in Rwanda doing a public health internship for a few weeks. I'm here helping with a monitoring and evaluation project of a program that uses Community Health Workers (translation: lay health workers or those who have received only very limited health care training) for implementing a series of protocols to treat children (less than 5 years) for the most common childhood illness - and the ones that kill the vast majority of children worldwide. I'll leave it at that for now as I'll likely be talking a whole lot more about it later.

I flew into Kigali on Saturday evening and I just want to assure my mother (and father) that all is well. Really, I have this really nice apartment and things are fabulous. Here are some pictures to show you...

My bedroom with fabulous sleek fuschia bedspread

Bathroom - no hot water but it's always quite temperate so no problem

Living area - I haven't actually tried the TV, although I'm fairly certain the only thing on right now is World Cup games and World Cup related broadcast

Kitchen (the fridge is almost, but not quite as small as our fridge in Boston Cami)

The Laundry room

And this is my favourite part!! Looking out from my room this is what I see!!

View from the balcony - looking out over the valley towards the main centre of the city (Rwanda is basically hills and hills)

I've been up north over the last three days helping out at the training meeting for the people who are actually doing the survey for the evaluation - more next time!!

Nothing for months - and now a turkey!!!

Apologies to all of you who thought I was really going to blog something about my actual life. I have the best of intentions all of the time but by the time I get around to blogging things, it all seems so over and done with. I made a promise however, to a certain small friend of mine that I would prove to her via photographs that I do have real, live, wild turkey living in the ravine in the back of my house. This is for you Anya!!

P.S. He is really much bigger than you

The Adventures of Rajah (and notes on an up-and-coming artist of my acquaintance)

Meet Rajah, a well-loved friend (so well-loved that the outer layers of his nose have rubbed off):

He's an important part of everyday life for a certain young friend of my acquaintance. In fact, this certain young friend INSISTS that Rajah MUST be present for proper bed time protocol to be followed. Unfortunately Rajah is almost invariably missing when it's time for bed. He has an almost uncanny ability to be present minutes before bed (eg during bed time story reading) but then suddenly disappear when the actual moment of getting into bed arrives. It's quite a talent!! (Perhaps he takes after his namesake - a tiger from a Disney film).

Usually a house- wide search for the missing "tiger" ensues involving my young friend, his siblings and any hapless adults who happen to be present. Rajah is usually eventually found but sometimes in the oddest places:

Sneaking in from a quick trip outside:

Tigers love warm laundry

Hiding out underneath the couch cushions (a frequent spot):

Hanging out with a bunch of other toys

Attempting a 60's revival

Rajah has famous friends!!

He's very tricky, sometimes he hides in the bed, where he's supposed to be all along!

Sometimes he's actually been tiger-napped

And sometimes he just wants a bedtime snack

But after all is said and done, Rajah usually finds his way back where he's supposed to be and he and my young friend (FINALLY) get to bed as happy as ever.

Notes on an Up-and-Coming Artist:

Actually, Enoch took most of the photos you see above. I told him what I wanted to do because we'd had so many Rajah sagas when I was living with them that I felt it deserved a blog entry. Enoch loved the idea and wanted to use my camera. We discovered that he actually has quite a talent for it. He took a bunch more but here are 5 of my favorites - fabulous for a 4-year old!!

I call this first one: "Still life in shades of blue"

Next: "Sunday Feet":

I actually stuck this one in because I rarely like photos of myself and I liked this one
Next: "Surprised sisters"

Finally: "Portrait of the artist as a young boy"
Kind of fun eh?

Updates - my (apparently) semi-annual blog

My cousin Sara was quite right to not hold her breath while waiting for the next edition....it's been a really long time since I've blogged. I always use the fact that I don't have any kids or pets to take cute pictures of as an excuse for not blogging regularly. That's part of it but mostly I just always find other stuff to do...but, for those of you who have been wondering (I'm sure very few!!). Here's a summary of the last few months:

March : Work, interspersed with a fun cruise with Mom, Dad and Alita. Embarassingly enough, I hardly took any pictures. Dad always takes so many that I didn't feel the need. Please see their blog if you really want to see the pictures. (I personally didn't feel the need to add any more pixels involving me in a bathing suit to cyberspace)

April: More work, interspersed with packing up my house, getting rid of the vast majority of my furniture and stuff and moving the rest to Mom and Dad's house (My net-worth now consists of 12 boxes of books, 4 boxes of kitchen stuff, 8 boxes of other assorted stuff and 4 suitcases of clothes + 13.5 years of post-secondary education)

May: Living in Toronto, Ontario for a month doing a rotation at the Tropical Medicine Clinic. (Very fun (although my definition of that word might vary from other peoples') - all kinds of weird infectious rashes, malaria and LOTS of people complaining of diarrhea) I got to do a bunch of fun things - ran into and got to play with a bunch of old friends. It was great!!

Here's a picture of the Toronto Skyline from Leslie Spit (the name of the little peninsula we'd ridden bikes to)

And, here's a picture from the CN Tower looking out over towards Leslie Spit

This is me rappelling down the CN Tower....just kidding, of course this is the classic glass floor picture

AND, this is why you shouldn't agree to let strangers take pictures of you at tourist venues

June: Final month of work as a resident - HURRAY!!! Amazing! (I can't believe I'm actually done!!!!) Fun too because I got to live in Paul and Heather's basement. A photo of the kidlets and me playing with the "Photo-booth" feature on my beloved Macbook:

July: For the middle two weeks of July I actually worked as a staff physician at the hospital I trained at (ironically I have NO pictures of the University of Alberta Hospital despite spending at least 65% of the last 7 years there - no joke, at least 65% - there might be some deeper meaning in that) I think I worked WAY harder than I ever did as a resident, averaging about 12 hours a day for 14 days in a row - you can ask Heather and Paul and the kids - they were hardly aware I was living there. Ah well, it's now going to finance the next 6 months of my life so all is well.

Prior to that I did get to the Lund Family Reunion. Tons of fun, and enough of a "baked beans, KFC and jell-o salad" fix to last me until the next one 2 years from now. (Aside: One of the recurring questions of my life: Why is is called jell-o SALAD??? There's absolutely no vegetables involved....) You can only see 2 containers of KFC in this photo - I promise, there was 10 on the table, I opened them myself.

Some cute pictures of various festivities that weekend (note how I get around the "not having cute kids or pets of my own" barrier - yep, that's right, BORROWING them)

Later in July I got to take a quick trip down to Seattle, Washington to attend my cousin Kjarsta's wedding reception. I hadn't seen my so-called Seattle cousins in way too long a time so it was such fun to see them and catch up. They looked stunning!! (And Grandpa and Grandma Salmon look pretty cute too!!)

August: (Whew, this is getting pretty long!!) Spent trying to get everything ready for the big move to the great US of A. Dad and Mom and Alita and I took a fun road trip to Chicago, stopping at such highlights as:

Custer National Battlefield Park (or whatever it's called)

Mount Rushmore

Needles Highway

We stopped at Winter Quarter's and then got to Nauvoo, where we dropped Alita off for EFY and went to see Scott, Sue Ann, David and Lydia in Chicago. What fun!! We went back to Nauvoo and toured around there for a couple of days. I then said farewell to the folks and went back to Chicago so that I could take a flight to BOSTON, my new home. (Disclaimer: my camera battery has malfunctioned so there are really no more pictures after South Dakota but I promise to try and get it working so that my family can see where I live in Boston). YAY.

5 signs that I'm working too much

1. If I happen to remember my my dreams, they all seem to be about desperately trying to treat someone with an infectious disease.

2. No matter where I'm going, if I don't pay attention, I start automatically driving to the hospital.

3. When I call someone from home I introduce myself as:  "Hi, Dr. Salmon from Infectious Diseases, I was page....oh, ooops sorry."

4.  Somehow, all my conversations end up as discussions about scintillating topics such as tungiasis and loa loa.

5. I haven't blogged in 8 months.

More soon!

Running in the rain

Whee ooo.  I've nearly caught up with everything that I'd put off while studying and it's a good feeling.  I've had time to do a couple of fun things:

Celebrating my roommate Dana's birthday (homemade ice cream cake - a new favourite!)


Bekki Wallace, my really good friend (since Grade 2!) got married and I got to go to her wedding reception - it was a western theme and a good time was had by all. Jeffrey and Alita came with me.


Edmonton has been super rainy - my garden is growing well but we're having  difficulty keeping up with the running.  We got caught out in a thunder storm and got DRENCHED - but had a good time.  At least you don't get sweaty when running in a downpour.

All in all, things are good.  I'm chief resident for the ID program this next year so I'm trying to do a lot of stuff for that as well.  What fun....ha ha.  Looking forward to spending a week home at the end of the month.

Finally!!!

Hmm, after feeling guilty for 6 months, I've finally decided to do a whirlwind review.

December - a very cold month in Edmonton (aka "the Frozen North", "Outer Darkness", "why do I live here") and a very cold month to move but Dana, my new roommate, and I managed it and are now established in our new house. It's lots of fun and old and drafty but there are little apples on the wallpaper in the kitchen - cool. AND it has a washer and dryer and a dishwasher HURRAY - I'm moving up in the world.

I also got to take a weekend trip to Montreal for a vaccine course. I had only about 3 hours off the whole time I was there and walked around for a little while - unfortunately it was -20 degrees celsius (-4 degree farenheit for you American luddites) and so I had to curtail my adventures somewhat and go back to study more about vaccines.


A cold view of Montreal


Yep, didn't see much of Montreal this trip - this summer I'm going back


Holiday party for work - these are the other Infectious Diseases Residents I work with

I had arranged to work over Christmas as I wanted to be home over New Year's for the big Salmon She-bang so didn't really do much for Christmas (aside from see patients in the ICU - actually it wasn't that bad). I did spend Christmas Eve with one friend and then had Christmas Dinner with some other friends the next day.

Most exciting was when I got to go home to Calgary to see everyone. I was the last of my siblings to arrive home for my 5 days of mandatory leave and I was super excited to see them and all their kids. It was great to be with all of them and the amounts of gifts exchanged were ludicrous really. So many birthdays and Christmas made for a gift marathon.


All the gift openings etc. gave great photo ops to the paparazzi


A bunch of my absolute favorite people

New Year's Eve wasn't my favorite holiday ever this year, I won't elaborate but let's just say that my theory of obsessive compulsive handwashing being adequate infection control around numerous barfy toddlers was shot to bits. I recovered in perfect time to go back to work. (Fortunately I only had to work 2 days because then I got to go on vacation HURRAY!!)

January: My friend Nancy and I went on a Florida vacation - it's kind of non-original but hey, it was warm and we had a good time!! The first week was actually spent on a cruise and then the second week on a road trip - down to the Florida Keys and then up to the Fort Lauderdale area. Some highlights:

"kissing" the Rays in Grand Caymen (apparently it's good luck!?!)



Ahh, the cruise lifestyle - Joanne style



Honduras - (I fell in love with this monkey, despite knowing how many weird viruses I could catch from it)



Nancy's new Honduran friend


Mayan ruins of Tulum in the Yucatan



The real reason the Mayans built in the Yucatan Peninsula

Waiting for the bus in Belize

Part of the old road through the Florida Keys - has anyone seen that rather terrible Schwartzenegger movie "True Lies"? - filmed close to here (keep in mind though, that the new road, from which this picture is taken, doesn't have large gaps in it)





YAY, back in Madagascar for a moment - ringtailed lemurs at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida

Whew, what a trip!!

February:

The beginning of the studying.  I did get to go to Vancouver for the annual Canadian Infectious Diseases Conference.  It was lovely to get away from the cold for a little while and I presented a short paper on an odd parasite infection I'd seen in clinic.   (Mansonella ozzardi for anyone interested)

Here's a picture of Alanoud and me going for a walk in Stanley Park (Alanoud is the other Infectious Diseases fellow in my year - her native language is Arabic and she's currently trying to teach me...it's not really going that well to be honest).  Alanoud is quite petite and I am very tall so we sort of look a bit like a circus act unfortunately.

March:  

Studying (written portion of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Exam)

April:  

Studying (oral portion of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Exam)

I am not joking, that's quite honestly all I did, except for when I was working.

May:

I took a little trip to Ottawa to take the oral portion of my exam on May 9th.  When I came out of it I was almost positive that I'd failed it - I felt like I completely bailed on one of the stations but I think in the end I did OK (despite saying HYPERreflexic when I meant HYPOreflexic and forgetting the name of the drug treatment of SIADH and a million other little things).  In any case, they passed me so I'm now, after 9 years, finally able to practice medicine in Canada without supervision.  I'm going to take the U.S. Board exam in August as well so we'll see how that goes.


Flowers to celebrate passing the exam - from the people in my division of ID - at least someone buys me flowers!!

Since then I've been trying to catch up with everything I've let slide (eg this blog) and connecting with a few friends.  I planted the garden this weekend for my funny little house and I'll probably update on the blog.  I have no cute children or pets to post pictures of on my blog so it'll have to be my tomato plants I guess.