At risk of a totally boring post there's not much new to report. My
life here is pretty simple compared to home. My main excitement this week was that yesterday I got my cell phone (yay!). The number is 260955084560 if for some reason you have lots of money to blow calling africa or need to reach me. The locals have all been making fun of me for having no way to communicate when they invite me to do things. As many of you have
inferred from my pictures- my main social life has been hanging out with
kids who speak 10 words of English. (but they are REALLY cute and
photogenic!). Maybe the cell phone will help me make some friends over age 12.

It's actually been nice because a couple of girls in
their 20s from Lusaka and an American guy my age were staying at the
same guest house for a couple weeks while they are working on other
health related projects. We've all started eating dinner together so
it's not just me watching Al Jazeera, which happens to be great news
coverage, by myself. Dr Johnson is also good company which is
fortunate because we spend about 12 hours together each day. He is
very knowledgeable about life in Zambia and other world issues and has
lots of good stories. I've also made friends with a girl in my neighborhood who is a teacher and just moved to choma and one of the guys who works in the operating theatre.

Work continues to be interesting and I'm getting more into my routine. This week hasn't been as busy as the last. Lots of TB and Malaria which I don't see much at home- yesterday I put a chest tube into a woman with a huge TB effusion. A couple of kids died last week so that was sad. One quite
expectedly given how ill he was to start with but the other was a bit
more unexpected. Somehow we've turned from an orthopedics service
last week to a urology service this week.

I guess that's it for now.. more interesting next week I promise!