Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Regular readers of this blog will know that Mrs Rainy Day is currently in Africa; in Tanzania, to be exact, where she's volunteering two weeks of her open-heart surgery skills to help train the staff of the Tanzania Heart Institute. The frequent, detailed updates we had hoped for have been sidelined by more pressing matters — crisis management, life-and-death decisions and all the other facts of life in the developing world. However, a text message arrives daily. Typical one: "Gr8 day! Important patient and gr8 result. Tricky conditions but wonderful team!" And now, we have our first email from Dar es Salam:

"We look neither East nor West
We look forward
There is no place like Africa!"

I read that on a poster on the dusty way to the internet cafe. We are a week here now and so much has happened... We have had successful operations but in very difficult circumstances where the electricity blacked out and the steriliser and ventilator broke down. We ended up improvising power for the ventilator, and it worked! Phew! Our own hearts stopped many times along with those of the patients, but luckily we have all survived. The most rewarding part is to see our patients sitting up in bed with big smiles on their faces, they are all so grateful. Naturally our results are so good because we have a brilliant team who are excellent, experienced and very flexible.

We were overpowered by the local press at the airport when we arrived and Dar es Salaam TV came to the OR one day to film us in action. Our team leader, Dr Gregory Eising, is filming us constantly with his cool camcorder and hopes to make a documentary when he gets home. As I have been so busy co-ordinating everything, especially with the things that have broke down, I am not in many of the scenes. It ain't easy. Sometimes when I say I need something repaired the usual answer is "Does it need to be done today?" My answer is "It needs to be done this second otherwise the patient may die!"

Otherwise hot, hot, hot, dusty, mosquitoes, but super friendly, and adventurous!

Have to go...

Thank you, Mrs Rainy Day. The daily headlines, with their focus on the terrible, fill us with cynicism about humanity but we shouldn't give up. There are good people out there doing marvellous things.