Come volunteer with me in Tanzania

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I'm going to be in Tanzania for the month of May. I previously lived there for over a year and have connections. If you want an opporunity to get some fantanstic first-hand medical experience, PM me. You'll have to pay your own way, but Tanzania is dirt cheap. I'll be laying some groundwork for future research and visiting friends, but I'd love to have someone to travel with and share my love of Tanzania with. You'd be working in a hospital with doctors I know well, volunteering at an orphanage, or both (it's totally up to you).

In the hospital, you'd be assisting in surgeries or doing them (depending on your experience level), helping deliver babies, etc. The hospital is very understaffed and your help would be much appreciated. You'd get to do waaaaaay more than you could ever do in the US or if you were traveling with a medical mission group.

Just my $0.02.....

As a pre-med I went to a country in Africa very similar in SE status to Tanzania through a company promising me a world of opportunity over there. They told me I would be able to do over there anything I was certified for in the U.S. Being a certified EMT-B and phlebotomist I thought I would be running the show. Turns out they stuck me in a lab with people who really indifferent about me being there. Got to watch 1 C-section over 2 months. Didn't really feel like I accomplished anything or really had an impact on anybody. According to the program, they didn't want the volunteers to do too much because then the people might get dependent on us.

Don't get me wrong...it looks great on paper and your family and friends will oooooo and woww you until you ears fall off and tell all their friends about how it really takes a great person to travel around the world to volunteer. I'm just saying at the end of the day there are a lot better (and cheaper) ways to feel a sense of accomplishment.

I would advise anyone traveling abroad to volunteer to actually have SPECIFIC projects that you will be working on written on paper before you go. For instance...Remodeling a section of the hospital, actually building a hospital, etc. There are plenty of orphanages in the US that need volunteers also.

Sorry to the OP, don't mean to come across too bitter

Who the hell are you? Pre-Med? Med? Resident? Attending/Physician?

Originally Posted by Go Ducks

I'm going to be in Tanzania for the month of May. I previously lived there for over a year and have connections. If you want an opporunity to get some fantanstic first-hand medical experience, PM me. You'll have to pay your own way, but Tanzania is dirt cheap. I'll be laying some groundwork for future research and visiting friends, but I'd love to have someone to travel with and share my love of Tanzania with. You'd be working in a hospital with doctors I know well, volunteering at an orphanage, or both (it's totally up to you).

In the hospital, you'd be assisting in surgeries or doing them (depending on your experience level), helping deliver babies, etc. The hospital is very understaffed and your help would be much appreciated. You'd get to do waaaaaay more than you could ever do in the US or if you were traveling with a medical mission group.

I'm a pre-med (M0). In Tanzania they trained me to be a surgical assistant because there are so few health professionals over there. I was in one of the poorest areas of the country; very few volunteers come there. LongIsl is right--it's often best to go to other countries if you have a skill set, but I don't recommend being a phlebotomist in Africa! My skill set was knowing Swahili. I came over having studied the basics for a year, but within a few months, I was pretty fluent. I then helped organize trips for trained doctors to come and help at the hospitals, as well as translated for them.

However the biggest impact I made was simply being another set of hands at the hospital. I did everything from assist in surgeries (including dozens of c-sections) to develop x-rays to preparing plaster for casts, etc. I also spent a lot of time at an orphanage, which needed more help than any modern US "orphanage" does (the babies spent 20+ hours a day laying in cribs. You don't need training to hold and interact with a baby). I created projects to work on as I saw need for them.

I definitely want to make a long-term commitment to Tanzania, so having the opportunity to make contacts over there, learn more Swahili, and see what was really needed most will put me in a better position to make the biggest impact possible later on. I'm going back in part to maintain those connections, in part to gather information for a research project I'd like to do next summer, and in part to look into what I'd need in order to build a clinic in a nearby village (that's a much longer-term goal). Plus, I can already feel myself starting to forget Swahili--I need some practice, fast.

please send me an email on how to go about it i am a 4th year nigerian medical student, i dont speak any swahili but i am interested in the programme. how and where can i source for more information e mail add is whisper2peezle@yahoo.com