Greetings from Moshi!

Julia Mt. Kilimanjaro

A first glimpse at Mt. Kilimanjaro. Photo credit: Ben Mouser.

Published September 8, 2013, last updated on October 5, 2017 under Voices of DGHI

By Julia Beamesderfer
Doris Duke Fellow 

Greetings from Moshi, Tanzania! My name is Julia, and I am one of this year’s Doris Duke International Clinical Research Fellows at Duke University. Since this is my first blog post, I’ll start by giving you a little insight into who I am and what I’ll be doing this year.

I hail from Media, Pennsylvania (Everybody’s Hometown!), and I just finished my third year of medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. This year, I’ll be taking time off from school to conduct global health research as part of the Duke University/Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC) Collaboration in Moshi, Tanzania. KCMC is a referral hospital that serves patients from a large area of northern Tanzania, and Duke has been collaborating with KCMC staff for many years in an effort to conduct clinical research in various fields of medicine, from HIV/AIDS to injury prevention to mental health. The collaboration officially began in 1995 and currently employs 50 Duke-KCMC joint personnel, many of whom are Tanzanian and the rest of whom are faculty, fellows, residents, and students affiliated with Duke. The last few years have each seen a full time medical student working for the partnership, and this year I will be attempting to carry that torch.

While living in Moshi, I will be working on various research projects that address issues pertaining to infectious diseases in low-resource settings. The largest of these projects will examine the impact of non-malarial causes of fever in northern Tanzania, specifically those fever-causing diseases (known as "bacterial zoonoses") that are transmitted to humans by animals. More on my project to come!

A reasonable person might ask why I would choose to prolong my schooling for yet another year while my friends flourish as adults in the real world. I guess I want to take advantage of these opportunities while I can, especially if they have the potential to shape the way I approach my life and career in the future. I have always wanted to go abroad for an extended period of time—to stay in a place long enough to become part of another community rather than an outsider looking in. And while I am not sure I will ever be able to accomplish such a feat, I hope that by next May, my Swahili will be better, my understanding of global health issues will be more nuanced, and I will have left a positive footprint at KCMC (because after so many years of being in school, I am dying to contribute to something other than my own education).

I hope this blog will serve as a way for me to communicate about my experiences here in Moshi, from the everyday challenges and benefits of living in a new place to my observations about the way healthcare is provided and utilized in Tanzania and the day-to-day experiences of conducting field research. This will be my first experience with blogging, so please bear with me—and in the spirit of medical school, feedback is always appreciated.

 

Cheers,

Julia

 

 

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