Research

Man, I love research. Not the kind in a lab (that stuff I can't stand actually), but the anthropology/sociology kind. For our final in our IHM (International Health and Medicine) class we're having to put together a group presentation about one of the many topics that we've covered in the past 4 months. My group is doing Poverty, Equity and Human Rights and how that relates to health. Broad topic and somewhat intuitive, but even with that, I'm absolutely loving doing the research for it. The really frustrating thing is that we had less than a week to throw all of it together, which is why I've been up all night doing my part of it. I'm on literature review, which really is my cup of tea. The thing is, I spent a whole semester last year doing literature reviews for my own research about medical treatment seeking behavior in sub-Saharan Africa, and now it's so hard for me to cut it down to less than a week's worth of work. After all, as a group we only have 10 minutes to present, so that's just a little over 2 minutes a person, and with no paper required, it's something that could be done in just a couple of days with no problem. But it's so hard to limit myself to so little.

We're looking at the Kibera slums in Nairobi, Kenya and the Jamii Bora project there that provides micro-loans to many of the impoverished people there. There's a little bit of literature out there about Jamii Bora, but the issue of micro-loans as a whole in relation to health, and particularly HIV/AIDS in Kenya has been covered quite a bit. It's like this huge internal battle to make myself stop looking for and reading new articles and sit down and just write out what I've found so far. Looking for articles is like a huge treasure hunt for me. Remind me again why I'm going into medicine where I have to study biochemistry and cell biology and all of that, which I have a hard time enjoying. Ugh, I keep having to tell myself that this will all pay off someday. At least I get my research fix every now and then :)