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Memories of Ghana |
It is always hard to put pen to paper, or finger to button, as it were, after a trip to a distant land. The obscurity of capturing living and vivid memories in succinct phrases worthy of their descriptors is, in my mind, one of most difficult tasks in writing. So continues my struggle during my recent sojourn to Ghana.
As I sit here in a Charlottesville coffee shop, furiously pecking away at my streams of consciousness, proper words to describe my experience elude me. I learned long ago that only through travel do we realize how truly provincial we all really are. The beauty of travel, particularly to a destination that challenges your own paradigm of the world, is that the memory stays with you far longer than any trinket, souvenir or written description ever will.
The trip started quietly enough. With the assistance of pharmacotherapy, my last memory was that of a bad airline movie and a stale meal. I awoke with a thump in a new continent. The first couple of days were spent getting to know my colleagues: a medicine resident from India who recently crossed the intern year finish line, a sharp-minded first-year medical student collecting data for a research project, and a seasoned and wise veteran from...well...Michigan, I suppose, though recent Locums stops include Alaska, Hawaii, and Vietnam. The four of us would be spending the next two weeks teaching local health care providers - mostly nurses - some of the basic tenets of managing chronic diseases. Main topics included hypertension, diabetes, obesity, smoking cessation, proper diet, and exercise. Each of us was to lead sessions on these specific topics, but oftentimes conversations became appropriately tangential.
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The International Cardiovascular Health Alliance (ICHA) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to promoting cardiovascular health in the developing world. ICHA works closely with local clinics and community organizations to provide knowledge and tools to prevent cardiovascular disease.
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