Today is our last day in Windhoek. On Monday, we had an excellent dinner with Claire, a friend of a Kellogg friend who works at the Center for Disease Control. It was fun to get her take on the country, the progress it has made and how she likes living here. Plus, it was great to have another girl in the group! 
On Tuesday, Jordan and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary (a day early) by going out to a nice dinner at Nice restaurant, the local culinary restaurant. It was delicious – and likely the best restaurant we’ve been to for about 25% of what you would pay in the States! Travis and Peter had a “Guys Night In” with pizza delivery. I made it clear that there can be no “Guys Nights In” with all 3 of them, as that would essentially be “Let’s not hang out with Erin night”… unless, of course, I happened to get sick. Our stomachs are all holding up well; the food is a ton better than we expected!
We had a number of follow-up meetings this week, with the Ministry of Health, National Institute of Pathology (does the testing) and some other organizations. All in all, I think we are pleased with the number of organizations we’ve been able to meet with, though we realize that our research is limited because we at most traveled 2-3 hours outside of Windhoek. Over 60% of the 2.1M Namibians live in the north, so we suspect that healthcare delivery up there has a lot of different needs. (Did you know that Namibia is 3x the size of California?) Also, we weren’t able to find out the component costs of the infant diagnostic device, so we hope we’ll find out more in Botswana. We’re looking forward to meetings with the hospital, lab and clinic in Gobabis, a town 2 hours east of Windhoek, tomorrow. Then, we’re staying the night in Ghanzi, Botswana.
So, we just found out this week that Botswana has a 4-day weekend this weekend, so our first two “work days” in Botswana are actually holidays. We’re super bummed, as that cuts into a couple days of interviews, but will try to make up for it. The saying is TIA – “This is Africa”. We’ve luckily experienced a lot less of this than we thought… our meetings always start relatively on time, and at least one person shows up to them. Getting around town is pretty easy too.
As I mentioned in the last posting, I’m not sure when the next time we will make a posting. We’ll be driving for a couple days, and then I’m not sure if the Internet shops will be open on the weekend and over the holiday. Thanks to everyone that is reading the blog and making comments. We really enjoy hearing from you!! – Erin
Love you, Aunt Ann