Day 60: The Perscription

          In Tanzania a pharmacy is called a "duku la dawa" (or "store of medicine").  There are duku la dawas everywhere along the country side, they're almost as common as hair salons and mini-marts (you can find "mini-mats" selling anything from fruit to basic necessities every thirty meters in Tanzania).  They are equally plentiful in Dar, as we found out today...
          Anandumi was supposed to leave early today for Dodoma to attend a conference.  He delayed his trip, however, to be able to spend one day taking us around Dar.  First we visited MOI, Muhuru Orthopedic Institute, the largest medical facility in Tanzania, to visit Dr. Kisali Palankyo, the dean there and an old friend of Baba.  Baba does not like the heat, and it tends to aggravate his pulmonary problems.  Furthermore, he had run out of one of his medications, Flovent, a while back.
          Dr. Kisali looked at his medications and announced that the only one that really treated his condition was the Flovent.  The others merely helped it to act more quickly and thoroughly.  Which probably went a long ways towards explaining why Baba had been getting slowly worse and worse.  Thing hadn't really gotten bad, though, until Baba left cool Arusha for hot and sweaty Dar.  Dr. Kisali wrote Baba a prescription for a generic version of Flovent that we could by at a duku la dawa.
          From there we went to the school in Dar where Baba had taught Art and Theater.  The old stage where Baba would put on his plays was still there.  More surprisingly, we ran into one of his old students who was now a teacher there and preparing for retirement.  Baba took me around and showed me all the places of interest, the classroom where his pants ripped open, the room that used to be his office, etc.
          After that we proceeded to drive all over Dar looking for a duku la dawa that sold the medication that Baba needed.  No one had the first medication, but they all had the "second" one.  Which "second" medication?  Well the prescription that Kisali wrote out had two lines.  The first was the name of the medicine.  The second one read: "Limit one only".  I tell you, the names drug companies come up with these days are just plain crazy!  Next I suppose they'll have a drug called "Five times daily", or maybe "50 Tablets"...
          We finally had to call Kisali up, and he found a generic of the generic drug, which we bought.  I tell you, if drugs get any more generic, we'll soon have cure for all ills or, more likely, a medication that works via the placebo effect.



E’ya! - Tate


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