mambo mogorogoro

Mambo !

Why have I been strangely silent on this blog since I arrived in Tanzania.  Well, I have been busy working and adventuring with Gary and Molly.  I arrived on a Monday night, went to the office on Tuesday, drove the Mogorogoro on Wed and have been here ever since.  Mogorogoro is a city that is inland of Dar, about two hours.  It is in the mountains near both a national and regional parks.  Since I have been here, I have seen some monkeys, a baboon, a hedgehog –like animal, and Mgombe (cows!).

I am going to try to make this blog less of a resume of things that I have done, but rather I am going to pick a topic or two and write about my thoughts on that subject.  Maybe it will seem less overwhelming that way.   This blog is about what I am doing in Dar Es Salaam.

I realize that I have not told many people what I am doing in Tanzania.   I am currently working on the MUHAS-Academic Learning Project (ALP).  The ALP is a collaboration between UCSF (the University of California; San Francisco) and the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Science.  When the partnership began, MUHAS was planning on conducting a curriculum review.  The partnership lead to sharing of information and an interest by MUHAS in competency based curriculum.  The idea that each graduate must finish medical school with a certain number of precise skills- such as good communication with patients and knowledge of infectious disease rather than an input based system focuses on the input, or rather how much information they have to learn-biochemistry etc.  The partnership is unique because each institution has equal footing and will stand to benefit.

My role in the project is flexible, which I enjoy. My main project is to help to write up the Tracer Study, a study that traced recent alumni at their workplace.  There is qualitative and quantitative  data that I am combining and presenting to each school (medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, allied health sciences and environmental health).  But because my job is a bit flexible, I can also pursue other projects that I find interesting.  I would really like to encourage some student collaboration between students here at MUHAS and students at UCSF. 

When I get back to Dar and have a bit more time to write this weekend, I will tell you about the rest of my adventures in Mogorogoro.