When I was around 8 years old, I read Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain. The novel was about a 12 year old boy named Sam, who decided to run away from his parents' apartment in New York to live on his grandfather's abandoned farm in the Catskills. I was always a voracious reader, so while at the time I didn't realize it, looking back, this book was one of the first I read about children traveling and making it on their own. As I grew up, I continued to love traveling and learning about new cultures, languages, and people. However it wasn't until I got to college that I realized that my love of travel could fit very well with my aptitude for science and my newly found passion for the health fields.
My freshman year of college, I read a book that would connect all of these hobbies and areas that I had come to love, helping me to discover the field of public health. This book was Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. It follows the life and work of Dr. Paul Farmer, Professer at Harvard Medical School and School of Public Health and founder of Partners in Health, an organization that helps treat multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and many other diseases in developing countries. This book introduced me to a side of medicine—and a side of the globe—I had never seen. This book truly was a turning point for me. It helped me discover the field of public health, leading me to redefine how I saw the world and my place in it.
This brings me to the present. Over the past several months I have searched for and found a program with which to further explore opportunities in public health, to help further define what direction I would like to take with my studies and my career, and to learn about health systems abroad. This summer, through Child Family Health International (CFHI), I will be spending a month in Uganda (see Uganda tab).
I have spent the past several weeks preparing for my summer adventures in East Africa, and now its finally happening. One week from today (!!), I am leaving the U.S. to spend a month in Kabale, Uganda working with the Kigezi Healthcare Organization (see the KIHEFO tab). I will be working at KIHEFO's general clinic, HIV/AIDS clinic, and Nutrition and Rehabilitation clinic as well as completing rural outreach trips to surrounding villages. I won't know what I'll actually be doing every day until I get there, so I'll be finding out as I go along.
For now I've been treating all of my clothing with super strong insecticide, picking up all the medications I will have to carry with me, and packing. My emotions have been running all over the place, but for the most part, I am excited and can't wait to see what this month holds in store. But when I do get those waves of self-doubt, like when I think about flying halfway across the world by myself, I remember one of my many favorite quotes:
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. - Seneca
So I will dare, and take the challenges (and there will be challenges) as they come.
