Shyira District Hospital - Day 3


 We started off the day today with a “small hike” Well thats what the villagers told us. You see the hospital we are at is brand new, like I mentioned before and we were told at the top of the hill was the old hospital which is now a health center. It turns out that the hospital was at the top of the mountain, not the medium sized hill in front of it. The hike was pretty steep the whole way up and it took us a little over an hour to get to the top. I just can’t believe that people had to hike this path to get to the hospital when they were sick, injured or in labor!! Its so crazy! We were so confused why it made sense to build a hospital at the top of a mountain but when we got to the hospital which is now a health center we found out that it was built in the 1930’s. Apparently more people lived up there back then rather than down in the valley where we are staying. The health center was very very minimal and super dirty. They said they get about 45 patients a day. I think most people go to the hospital these days because it was obvious that there was NO funding at this health center. It was kind of scary to think that patients were receiving treatment there. The entire hike took us all morning! when we got back it was lunchtime! We were all SO exhausted. We had about an hour break and then we had our IPC presentations in front of the medical staff at the hospital. There were definitely fewer people at this presentation than at the one we gave at Biryogo. The staff was really busy this afternoon so nurses and doctors stopped in as they could. Since we had already given these presentations it went a lot quicker this time! Once we were done presenting we all decided to go play soccer at the nearby field in the village. We took a little “bike cab” to the field. it was quite an adventure! When we got to the field we were surprised… lets just say we were not expecting so many people to be there. There were so many children it was crazy! We were practically tramples by the excited kids running towards us! It was a little overwhelming I’m not going to lie. But we had so much fun! Half of the group played a soccer game with the locals and the other half of us played with the kids. We did everything from playing duck duck goose to singing songs to playing clapping games. We spend around 3 hours there! Time flew by but it started to get dark really quick and we had to get back for dinner. The cute children walked us all the way back to the hospital. It was so hard to say goodbye to them! They all gave us the biggest hugs and kept coming back for more. I think if we had stayed there they would’ve just kept cycling back through to hug us all night! Dinner was good and we played some card games afterwards. We are eating breakfast here and then heading back to Kigali after! Tomorrow we have the day to work on our final papers and presentations that are on Friday morning. Dr. Page out professor from BYU is in Kigali waiting for us so that will be exciting to see him and catch him up on what we’ve done tomorrow. He is taking us all to dinner! It has been another great day in Africa! I still love every moment I spend here!







Massive game of duck, duck, goose!



Can you spot the muzungu (white person)?





The best partner ever! Seriously have never laughed so hard. Suzanna is the funniest person I have ever met.




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