January is the New July

A couple weeks ago, we got to be a part of a very special ceremony at Tenwek, namely the graduation of last year's interns. We came to Tenwek in December, and were really quite impressed at the high level of function of the interns. Graduation shortly followed and was a great time to celebrate the educational mission of this hospital. The ceremony itself was briefly interrupted by 45 seconds of chaos, as a catering fire erupted, a lady's dress caught on fire, 20 plates were immediately shattered, and a tablecloth was seized to put out the lady's dress, sending drinks across the room. But I digress.

We are emphatic fans of development and missions focusing on education, for sundry reasons, but suffice to say that it is one of the things about Tenwek that has excited us from the beginning. They have 16 interns at any given time, and residency programs (for specialty education after the one year internship) in surgery and family practice. So we get to learn to be educators, even as they teach us how to do African medicine. Here's the graduation picture of last year's class of interns, sporting their sharp new embroidered white coats.

Of course, immediately following graduation comes the matriculation of a brand new class, and thus a dramatic shift in everyday activities. Simply put, they have a year's worth of catching up to do. Naturally. This means figuring out where each new person's ability lies, not taking anything for granted, and having a lot of grace, just as we all needed at that point in our medical education.

The challenging part is that things don't run as smoothly or quickly as they did previously. The exciting part is that the onus is now on us to help them get from here to there, and that's what we're here for.