Zero to Zimbabwe: My First Time Abroad

My entire college experience has been what most would call "untraditional" and my study abroad experience was no exception. I distinctly remember the day I opened the study abroad application for the ZimPHiA program and instantly panicked. The third question down asked me to describe my previous experience abroad... and I had nothing to write. Had I really never stepped foot outside of North America? I have probably flown more than the average student my age but no international flights. I couldn't believe I had absolutely nothing to write in this box. It was surprisingly disappointing. Would this be required for the program? Questions and self-doubt immediately took over and I had to take a few minutes to gather my thoughts.

Was I cut out for this?

I went back to my program's study abroad homepage and read over the program description again. After spending the last two years in an HIV research lab at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and using every free opportunity in my schedule to take epidemiology courses... this program felt right. I had the opportunity to take my "wet" lab perspective to a place where I could learn about real people dealing these diseases I had only seen on lecture slides. I knew no college professor could teach me the lessons I would learn out in Zimbabwe.

To be honest, I didn't know much about Zimbabwe until I stumbled upon this program. I quickly familiarized myself with their history with HIV and got to work on my application. Why hold myself back from applying for a program that felt personally designed for me because I didn't have experience? Isn't that exactly why we study abroad?

Fast forward several months.

I somehow find myself having just travelled for 28 hours straight in Zimababwe's capital, Harare. How did I get so lucky? Zimbabwe was quite far away for my first international trip! Despite being the only student to have never travelled outside the country, my eyes were wide and my body thrumming with excitement. I couldn't take in my surroundings fast enough!

We spent our first week familiarizing ourselves with Zimbabwe's culture and languages (and wow, those languages were a struggle!). We all stumbled over the new sounds our mouths weren't accustomed to making; it was a surprisingly humbling and uniting experience with the other students. We got caught up on Zimbabwe's progress on tackling HIV, malaria, and TB and reflected each night on our experiences each day. However, we all quickly became restless.

All of us students were ready to see all that Zimbabwe had to offer. And boy, did we!

The next week our group split in two while half traveled to another large city, Bulawayo, and the other half headed out to a rural mission hospital in Chidamoyo. My half of the group started our 6-hour drive to cross the country to Bulawayo.

Bulawayo or Bust!

Bulawayo taught me a lot about both the United States' and Zimbabwe's healthcare systems. I was surprised to learn just how efficient Zimbabwe's health reporting was and was disappointed to find this was a far cry from our own back home.

While disease reporting is still tracked on paper, the numbers they show are no less impressive.

#Africa #Zimbabwe #PublicHealth