Adeus USA, off to another adventure!

Nancy Kasvosve

Hello WDI Blog readers. Welcome to the chronicles of my summer in Brazil!

Julio (enroute to Rwanda) and me (enroute to Brazil) at the airport

It is almost surreal that this is my last summer in school, probably forever.  After this I have to become a real adult and get a real job and stop galavanting the world with little to no money! In the meantime I have one more chance to do what I do best, be a "professional foreign person" in yet another part of the world, this time in Latin America.

Let  me introduce myself a little bit. My name is Nancy Kasvosve and I am a dual MBA/MPH student at Michigan.  20 something years ago( not to reveal my age or anything), in a harsh July winter (in recent years I  found out it was not that bad, #thanksChicago), Warren Park Polyclinic in Harare, Zimbabwe delivered a future nobel prize winner into the world.This being her 5th gig of the whole baby thing, three days later early afternoon, my mum walked out of the clinic carrying me, to find  a chaotic house in which my older sisters had not done any chores because they expected her in the evening, when my dad was supposed to pick her up after work.They proceeded to receive the first scolding that they ever blamed on this new baby. My sister who comes before me, has never quite gotten over my dethroning her from being the youngest and family favorite with all of my adorableness and obvious closet geniusness, see what I did there, I just made up that word, thats how clever I am  : ).

Of course I am in the one in the coolest purple glasses of all time!

What am I known for to my family and friends, I am a big challenger of the status quo. My family labeled me the stubborn one and my grandma swore that when I get married my husband’s family will send me back for disobedience. It is apparently a thing in my culture, marriage is a  transaction in which I am a commodity and can be sent back if I am defective.Oh grandma, rest her soul! In any case I have always been a fighter, a believer in that your circumstances do not have to define you or your destiny. I came of age in a harsh time in my country. Once the bread basket of Africa, Zimbabwe withered away in political and economic demise and we were probably the hungriest trillionaires in the world at one point. If you have not heard of us, we are the country that had the highest inflation ever, a few million percent, so much that when we finally gave up on our beloved Zimbabwean dollar in 2008, 1 USD was some 3 billion Zimbabwean dollars,and you needed a wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread.

Just casually going to buy a loaf of bread

As if that was not enough, the country was also in public health crisis. The biggest scourge was HIV/AIDS  for which we declared a national emergency in 2002 when the prevalence for our small population of 12 million, was at about 30%. In my high school age group, 1 in every 3 of us was HIV positive.  I have three childhood friends who perished in our teens, and that is where my passion for all things medicine was born. I  was fortunate to "escape" this reality, when I got on a plane and became an undergraduate at the University of Chicago on a full scholarship. I was a hardcore premed and once in love with cancer; like no seriously, I have a favorite tumor. It is called pheochromocytoma, a tumor of the adrenal glands, that causes over- production of adrenaline and aggressive behavior and has been used to justify the actions of hardcore criminals (thanks Dr. House). I was going to be an oncology surgeon until I changed it all around.

I will not bore you with the rest of my resume, but long story short, I am now super into travelling around the world, eating new food (doro wot), hiking up mountains( oh hey table mountain),  taking pictures of art( seriously I will never afford some of this stuff), drinking local cocktails (caipirinhas all day), learning local dances (I am not that great at eskista though) and most of all learning about why everybody, everywhere in the world does not have adequate healthcare and how can we  made this all better! That's right, I am a dreamer, who wants to use modern tools to fix the world, in my case business strategy.  My most recent conquest and  current obsession; eating all of the fruits under the face of the earth in Brazil, drinking caipirinhas as soon as the sun goes down, and having elementary Portuguese conversation with my cab driver and the  kitchen staff at my hotel.

my breakfast for the past week, 4 types of fruit!

My latest healthcare topic is renal disease in Brazil. I am working with an exciting team called Business Model Innovation for the pharmaceutical company Baxter Healthcare. We are building business models to expand Baxter’s footprint in the renal therapy business in Brazil.  I got thrown into the deep end in my first week,complete with 12 hour days in the field talking to various stakeholders  to learn the renal ecosystem.  Even though almost all the conversations around me were in Portuguese, I got a fair understanding of the situation. Being a former clinical medicine enthusiast, my favorite stakeholder is the patient.  Patients with chronic diseases are amazing in so many ways. I got to work with cancer patients previously, and I learnt that when you come to terms with an illness that alters your life in such immense ways, you have to buckle up and live through it. I think humans have more capacity than they imagine they do, especially when faced with hard circumstances in which they virtually have no choice . I know,because I am one of those people that people like to call "amazing" or "strong" when they hear my story. I did not make a conscious choice to be out here fighting for an education and to not see my family for 5 years, circumstances put me here. My plight is nowhere near to what cancer and renal patients have to go through, but I think in life, you get what you get, you are dealt a deck of cards and you cannot fold, you have to play! People who meet me think I am the most positive person ever, that it because I choose to wake up every morning and live through my circumstances and in spite of them.  Most of all, as I have always believed, your circumstances do not define you, it is what you make of them that makes all the difference.

But on a more serious note, what is up with all the amazing graffiti all over Sao Paulo?  I cannot wait to find out!

Perfect graffiti shot with this guy walking by in a Brasilia jersey!