Southern Africa, Country 1: South Africa

As short as I can put it: I went to South Africa to gather data on HIV diagnostics and monitoring devices. The data was meant for Northwestern engineers who would re-engineer the devices to be cheaper and move them from central labs that require a lot of skill to run to simple devices that could be used in rural clinics. But, we had to know what to now (there are many different proteins and molecules in the blood that need to be measured by different machines), how quick they needed to work, if there was power, refrigeration etc. So we went to a different hospital or 2 every day and tried to get a good idea of the situation in 5 African countries. Another team did another 4 countries. This was our first.

We started our trip out in Johannesburg, South Africa. We had some time so we took a tour to Soweto, one of the most famous townships in South Africa. The anti-apartheid movement was centered here. These are pictures of a typical neighborhood of the urban slums.

This was a kindergarten.

Many people speak English and we were able to ask about random things about daily life and culture. The kids are especially talkative.
This shows typical homes.
You can see the laundry hanging. Most of the laundry hangs from barbed-wire fences.
Many kids are trained to ask for money when they see tourists in exchange for...
Posing (they do it well huh :) )
This is possible the neighborhood with the worst crime statistics in the world. We had a brief glimpse on our tour.This is what I did most of the time I was there. My group had a survey that we took to a different hospital every day. We met with the doctors and hospital administrators and would have them go through exercises to see if price or quality was more important.
There I am in the back: one of my jobs was to write down everything that people said.
One of the cities we went to was Durban, a beautiful beach town on the Indian Ocean.
Meeting with Dr.'s in Durban.

4/6 of my group in Durban.
Our first safari. It was only $2 and they didn't have much besides this zebra. At least nothing we were able to find.
So we were satisfied looking at bugs and getting a chance to hike around.

We visited a Hari Krishna temple, the biggest in South Africa or Africa or Southern Hemisphere or something.


But this was only the beginning.