Student Spotlight: Yosi Bouslog
Yosi Bouslog hiking in Tanzania, June 2021
Yosi Bouslog, a rising senior biology major and Centenary Ladies soccer player from Friendswood, Texas, spent three weeks in June 2021, in Arusha, Tanzania as an emergency and trauma medical intern through the Medi Trip volunteer program. After finding the Medi Trip program through volunteerworld.com, a website designed to connect volunteers with unique opportunities abroad, Bouslog immediately knew that the program fit her passions and future goals.
“I have always loved the idea of becoming a traveling surgeon or emergency medicine doctor,” said Bouslog. “My goal is to join the military and attend medical school to become either a trauma surgeon or emergency doctor in the Air Force.”
Bouslog reflected on her time in Tanzania for Centenary Magazine as she looks forward to her senior year, Centenary graduation, and beyond!
A typical Tanzania hospital day
I lived in a hostel with the rest of the volunteers in my program in Arusha, Tanzania. A typical day looked like waking up around 7:00 a.m, eating breakfast made by a woman who worked at the hostel, and then leaving around 8:00 a.m. in order to get to the hospital at around 9:00 a.m. It took about an hour to get to the hospital because we would have to walk around two miles to get to the dala dala stop (dala dalas are vans used as transportation, similar to buses). We would then take two different dala dalas to the hospital and stay there until around 3:00 in the afternoon. Our shifts were usually 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., but sometimes we would stay later depending on whether the hospital was especially busy or not. In the hospital I mainly served in radiology right next to the emergency room. I became the X-ray technician and took all of the X-rays for the doctor I was shadowing. We had the freedom to go shadow anyone in the hospital and help out wherever needed. We also got to watch surgeries, and the higher-level medical students got to scrub in sometimes on simple surgeries.
Exploring and learning
After our shift, the other interns and I would eat at a local restaurant across the street from the hospital - so delicious and cheap. After eating, we would often go for a hike. There was a mountain close to the hospital, and we made a habit of hiking to the top and visiting a family who lived there, bringing sugar for an older woman’s tea and goodies for the kids. Our time off was usually spent relaxing at the hostel, visiting the markets downtown, or visiting other interesting spots in the town. This volunteer experience was not without its challenges. Tanzania is a very patriarchal country and women do not have many rights. This reality made working with some men in the hospital very difficult, they at times they would not listen to women – in their eyes, we were inferior to them.
Making a lasting difference
The hospital I worked at in Arusha, Meru District Hospital, was very poor and lacked many basic supplies that a hospital should have. I worked with some of the other volunteers on a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to buy supplies, and I am really proud of what we were able to accomplish. We raised over $6,000 dollars and were able to purchase stretchers and hospital beds, gloves, boots, sutures, gauze, medicine, stethoscopes, and many other basic necessities.