President Broadhead visits Kilimanjaro

John Lucy and Harriet, MEPI Partners
Executive Director Moshi Ntebaye, Provost Kessy, Vice Provost Ahazi Kukulanga and JB

Our lives have been consumed for the past two weeks by the impending visit of our Duke President and his wife, our Chair of the Board of Trustees of Duke Hospital and Global Health and his wife, Our Global Health Institute Director and his wife and several members of the staff. The planning involved meetings with our Executive Director of KCMC College, the Provost, Vice-Provost, the Duke Student sites, the caterer for our last night dinner and many incidentals as we led up to the date.
We had the challenges that we knew we would have: There are rolling power cuts here and we knew that we would have no electricity on Friday night, the night of our own dinner party. How do you handle this? We have no generator and we have an old electric stove. Should we buy a generator? A gas stove? We went to several hardware stores with our friend Greg to look at generators and nearly purchased the most expensive one that they had, but just thinking about it even made Greg look at us and state, “for one night—and when you aren’t here year round…I don’t think you should do it”. My favorite hardware store man told us the same thing and he was SELLING GENERATORS! He even promised that we could heat the food for the party at his house if we needed to in an emergency. So, we came away without a generator. We leaned closer to the gas stove and I still feel a little sad about that decision, but at the end of the day, we decided with the help of Melinda the caterer, that our gas cook top, her sterno and lots of lanterns, candles and flashlights would make for an interesting evening.
We made last minute “clean-ups” of the house. Our house keeper and gardener cleaned, shined, weeded and turned the house and yard into s beautiful home. Even with Rose’s brother-in-law dying and her holding the wake in our back yard (talk about timing) the night before the party, she was right back on Friday to make sure that everything looked perfect for the day.
Carol, the project driver, was perhaps more excited than anyone else about the prospect of driving President Broadhead around, and I am sure that he was surprised to find that he was humble, kind and thoughtful.

Carol and Lucy

The KCMC leadership sacrificed their Wednesday evening and the following day, their holiday, “Saba Saba Day” for the visit. For those of us who were anxiously hoping that the visit would be good, we had no idea how close to perfect it was.
The plane might have been an hour late, but the lateness did not dampen the greeting with the MEPI ladies presenting beautiful bouquets to each of the women on the trip.

The "Girls/Women of MEPI" with beautiful flowers for the visiting women from Duke
John Greets Dick Broadhead at the airport

The EDR, Provost greet President Broadhead and wife Cindy


Toasts given to the arrival of the anticipated visitors

Presentations from the Duke Collaboration were brilliant.
Dr. "Annie" leads the discussion of the Duke/KCMC Research Projects
Dr. "Eliza" co-site director with Annie discusses testing and community based research
Charles "Piki Piki" talks about the AIDS Training Grant
John introduces Shanette and describes the challenges of running an NIH approved laboratory in East Africa
Charles and Shanette
President Broadhead holds his letter of support for MEPI and highlights the points that he felt made the application and MEPI important
Lucy demonstrates new technology to improve teaching in MEPI
Group shots abounded.
Team outside Medical Education Building

Team outside KCMC

Camaraderie grew as we all walked from the Child Centered Family Care Center to the Biotech laboratory, to the Medical Education Building and then to lunch. The walk cemented friendships, the sites displayed the ongoing work with Duke at KCMC.

After lunch we drove to Marangu Hospital and met with students and staff there. It was a beautiful afternoon, crisp and clean. The students and staff excited to show their work and hospital to the visitors.
Group shot outside Marangu Hospital
Duke Students with Provost Kessy and President Broadhead at Marangu Hospital

The only dampening moment came when a woman outside the hospital grounds screamed and screamed. Some staff raced to her and discovered that a motorcycle (piki piki ) accident had occurred and someone injured. The staff raced back, grabbed a stretcher, and as if in a war, raced back to load the person and the stretcher and bring him quickly back to the hospital. As one of the presentations in the morning had been about the epidemic of road traffic accidents, especially motorcycles, we watched this drama with a new understanding of the reality of that morning presentation.
From Marangu Hospital, we drove on to Mwika Uuo School and saw our two students in action with children in their class.
Neha and Katya teaching
Neha Katya Provost Kessy and President Broadhead

After class, we walked back to the dispensary, had a tour and watched as the President and his wife chatted with the students.


Mwika Uuo doctor greets Meg and Tom Gorri

There are no words to express how thrilled these students were to have the President come to see their work.
Our EDR hosted a wonderful dinner that night, and the next day the crew went to an orphanage, home visits and more presentations downtown. When they arrived at our house exhausted but filled with a full sense of what the KCMC/Duke project really is, we toured them around the house with no power, the gardens that John and Pauli built, and drew together with a remarkable sense of single purpose and joy as two cultures came together across continents to celebrate all that we have accomplished and all that we remain here to do.

For me, I think the most gratifying thing was to sing the Duke alma mater at the end of the day, and Tanzania Tanzania in Kiswahili, and to know that we all can be friends and colleagues. Now, let the work continue!