And it begins

The past three months have been a whirlwind, but fortunately after studying for boards, moving out of my apartment, 2 weeks of training in DC, 1 week of orientation in Providence, saying difficult goodbyes to family and friends, and packing my life into bags, I am finally en route to Eldoret, Kenya! I discovered wifi at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris during my 9 hour layover so I thought that this would be a great time to get the blog started.

The purpose of this blog will be to keep you updated on my life in Africa without bombarding you with frequent emails. I must admit that I'm not great at long, detailed blog posts so my plan is to post weekly pictures, short project updates, and of course interesting experiences throughout the year.

Let's start with the basics...
Where is Eldoret?



What exactly will I be doing and why did I choose to take a year off?
I will be working on several different research projects throughout the year. I have always had a feeling in med school that being strictly a clinician in the future would not be the life for me. The one thing that I am certain of is that I want to work in global health. My goal for this year is to learn as much as possible about working and conducting research in the developing world, and hopefully the experience will guide me in figuring out how to fuse clinical work, research, and global health into one career! I was very fortunate to be paired with a wonderful mentor who has done exactly this. She is extremely passionate about her clinical and research work in tuberculosis, and I think that I am going to learn a ton from her this year.
The main project that I will be working on is implementing tuberculosis screening in PMTCT (preventing mother to child transmission) clinics. Untreated tuberculosis infection in HIV + pregnant women can be a death sentence so not screening is a huge problem. I am hoping that we will be able to implement an effective system to make sure this vulnerable population is screened! I will write about the other research once it is finalized.

Ok that's all for now! I will be in Nairobi until Thursday so hopefully I will be able to post pictures this week.

My life packed up and ready to go!