A Day In the Life of a Public Health Intern


This internship has been absolutely incredible so far. I just love every minute. Not because its all glamorous but because for the most part it is so rewarding. I feel like the preparation, counseling, education, and supplies we provide is really helping these people. Here is what a typical day looks like working with African Impact.

All the volunteers with African Impact stay at this backpacking lodge/hostel. There are 15 other volunteers that are staying in the house with us. There are 4-6 per room. When they get more volunteers, they stay in the other rooms that the backpackers normally stay in. The facilities are really nice here--better than I expected. There are ladies that clean for us and cook for all our meals. The food here is pretty good, lots of salad because vegetables are plentiful but most other food is fried. SO much salt on everything.





This is our daily schedule:

6:30 wake up
6:40 breakfast with all the other volunteers. We eat mostly cereal or toast every day and then they have a hot breakfast option that changes every day.
7:10-7:40 Prep for the day, for us on the medical project that includes looking at the patient list for the village we will be going to for HBC and then making sure we have adequate supplies for the day. 
7:40-8:15 leave for the villages or clinics and meet up with caretaker (community member who can translate and knows the area very well).
After home-based-care with my favorite caretaker Francis

8:15-11:15 Home Based Care visits. These consist of taking vitals, dressing wounds, health counseling, writing clinic referrals, distributing basic meds including ibuprofen, vitamins, ORS, antidiarrheal etc. We take patient notes for each person we see and keep a record for the next groups to come do HBC there.















11:15-11:30 Get transported by the vans to the backpacking lodge
11:30 Reporting on the morning projects, filling out paper work and restocking bags with supplies.
12:00 Lunch with the volunteers
1:00 Prep for afternoon projects
1:30 Drive/walk to afternoon projects
1:45-4:30 Afternoon projects. These consist of a variety of community based projects: art club, math club, girl impact, boys club, health club, old people's home, after school club, sports, etc

After reading club at Linda Community School

Teaching about HIV for health club to 8th grade at the all boys school

4:30 come back to the backpackers, project check in and organizing of materials used throughout the day. 
4:30-6 free time for logging of the day, shopping, swimming, laundry, whatever else! Mostly for me it was the tourist market...oops! :)
6:00 Dinner served by our lovely cooks 
7:00 Sometimes there are activities for the volunteers, fundraisers such as movie night, quiz night etc. otherwise the rest of the night is ours to do whatever we like. Often this includes a gelato run for a good chunk of the volunteers :)


Typically in the evenings we will spend out time playing card games, chatting, talking with our families and friends, sometimes watching movies, or just hanging out. This is also a good time for catching up on logs or other assignments for those who are student volunteering. 

I am loving this opportunity, it is different from what I expected (mostly because I didn't know what to expect) but oh so great. I love Zambia!!



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