Monday 27/11/2017
It would have been a typical Monday morning for me it was 8:15 am I was on my way to work in a hospital library and I was stuck in horrendous traffic-except I’m in The Gambia. Amadou, a Cataract Surgeon from SZRECC picked us up from our hotel and we arrived at the hospital for around 8:30. SZRECC is a teaching hospital and teaching sessions are held every morning between 8:30 and 9:30.
Gwyn Williams gave an engaging lecture on diabetic retinopathy which the students very much appreciated. We then took a tour of the hospital before Gwyn and Stella went off to begin work at an incredibly busy Monday Clinic. I was taken to the library to meet Zainaba the Library Assistant here at SZRECC. Zainaba who seemed very pleased to see me, gave me a tremendously warm welcome. I spent the afternoon finding out about the library service here in SZRECC and we also submitted an application form to the WHO for institutional access to Hinari.
There were numerous power outages throughout the afternoon, which made it incredibly difficult to teach Zainab how to search for medical literature online but nevertheless she was patient and eager to learn. I had heard about power outages here but had not anticipated that Internet connectivity would be quite so poor.
Stella, Gwyn and myself went back to the hotel and had a Julbrew and reflected on what had been a busy first day.