Today I met an American doctor!

It was awesome.  I went into the refectory to greet the visitors that I heard chatting with the Sisters.  I greeted them in French as I normally do.  There were 2 African guys and one white woman who I assumed was European.  Later that night, Sr. Gisele knocks on my door and says "Jacqui, please could you go invite the American girl to have dinner?  We are still finishing our meeting so it will be just you two."  I said "What?!  What American girl?"  She explained that the woman who was here earlier is staying the night with us, and she is a volunteer from America!  I had no idea.  

So I knocked on her door and, in plain colloquial English, asked her if she wanted to come eat something.  We had a great dinner, let me tell you.  (Except that my good old friend, the bat, decided to dine with us again.  Ugh…he eventually flew outside and we shut the door.)  She is a DO (doctor of osteopathic medicine) from Ohio, and she is pioneering a new organization called Project Congo.  She told me her whole story of how she came to be involved in medical missions, something she never thought she'd do in her life.  

Basically she became very good friends with an American originally from Burundi who lived in her neighborhood back home.  He connected her with the Salesian priests who have a mission in Goma, where she is trying to firmly plant Project Congo.  The Salesians have a clinic for the children who live on-site with them, as well as the surrounding community.  But, they have little to no supplies.  So her goal is to bring medical supplies to this mission.  She brought out her laptop and showed me pictures of Goma – she called Rwanda "Africa Lite" because everything here is in pretty good shape compared to Goma.  I had no idea that Rwanda is one of the "less poor" African countries.  But from her pictures, its clear that she's right.  And she showed me lots of before and after-treatment pictures from the clinic – kids with cerebral malaria, different types of tuberculosis, and general malnutrition.  Some of them were incredible!  These kids must not have weighed 40 lbs, they were just skin and bones.  And after treatment they were healthily chubby.  But some of the pictures were not so inspiring because the lack of supplies made adequate treatment impossible, and the kids didn't make it. 

She told me a really great story about the hassles of shipping something to Goma.  She purchased an x-ray machine for the Salesians, and traveled to Goma herself to oversee its arrival.  This was the purpose for her current visit of 3 weeks.  (she's made three other brief trips in the past few years).  Well, the border crossings that are necessary are of course met with difficulties, often ones whose solutions are to pay the guards more money.  So apparently they were trying to charge her some ridiculous, unnecessary fees to get this x-ray machine into Congo.  They had to unload it out of the car so the guards could inspect it.  What they ended up doing was bribing a girl who worked at the border station to distract the guard.  Then the Salesians put it back in the car and drove off!  So thanks to the rule-bending of these priests, they now have an x-ray machine.  Good work. 

She wished me well in my future med school plans, and said that she hopes that I get in!  We talked a bit about DO schools, and I realized that I really wish I would have known more about them before I applied.  I did a tiny bit of research, but it seemed that a DO is pretty much the same as an MD but uses a whole different application system.  She told me that they do a lot more practical work caring for the whole person.  Example: acknowledging the differences between putting an IV into an adult vs. a child – not anatomical differences but emotional/social.  She said that in general, the MD's better step aside when it comes time to put an IV into a little kid because the DO's are just better trained at that kind of care.  If I don't get in to med school this time around I think I'll definitely pursue DO school.  She said that I'd almost certainly get into one of those because they really look at your well-roundedness, and an Africa experience would be very highly favored.  She said that if I ever needed a letter of recommendation from her, she'd be more than happy to write one.  

How cool!