A Trip to Gumare

A few weeks ago Thom had the opportunity to visit hospitals outside Gaborone in the North-Western part of Botswana. The purpose of the visit was to assess IT infrastructure and lab processes to determine readiness to install Lab Information systems at the hospitals. Anyhow, the journey was a lot more exciting than the work.

The trip started at the Gaborone "International" airport. At about 7:30 the pilot found us and escorted us outside to the plane. He had already loaded most of the medical supplies but we helped him carry out a few more things. The interior of the plane was not quite as "posh" as Thom expected. There is a bench on the left hand side that has seat belts for 4. The rest of the seats are put in where ever they fit.
We flew for about an hour and a half and landed at Ghantzi (pronounced 'hanzi') dropped of a passenger and then were off again about 10 minuites later. 45 minutes later we were landing at Gumare. The fact that there was animal dung all over the runway was a little diconcerting. The plane landed on the very small runway and taxied over to the "terminal" pictured below.
Because the hospital had only sent a pickup truck to meet the airplane, the entire lab assessment team could not ride together at the same time to the hospital. So Thom and one other team member stayed at the airport and waited for the second truck to arrive. During that time Thom watched the departure of the plane as it took off for it's next stop in Maun.
Once all the staff made it to the hospital the team met with the hospital Matron and then toured the labs. Sadly, Thom screwed up the coolest picture of the day. In one of the labs a large "Coke" cooler is used to store laboratory stock and samples. The really amazing thing is that the log of tempartures showed it was the most consistent of all the refrigeration equipment at the hospital.

Thom made up for screwing up the shot of the cooler by catching this shot of a chicken walking through the hospital. After the hospital visit we had some time to kill until the plane returned to pick us up. So we walked to the nearest "restaurant". The restaurant menu was goat with papa, goat with sorghum, or goat with rice because only the goat was ready when we got there (usually they have a 2nd meat choice as well). The team tried all three selections. It was pretty good and at a price of $1.50 you aren't going to hear to many people complaining. Below is Thom's lunch....
Once we finished lunch we had tea with the Matron and then headed back to the airport. Below are some random shots as we drove through Gumare on the way back to the airport.