Petes birthday













playing with torches













Rhodes, me and pete be a jumping

Kimmy's Comments - Transkei Makeovers

Our friends Neen and Kev arrived all the way from the UK at the weekend and are the first friend to make it to our hospital door. We salute you. Was great for them to see where we’ve been living for the last 6 months. They dropped off their swanky BMW hire care by our accommodation and we headed for Bulungula in our big 4x4. It’s our favourite place to relax, and a real slice of Transkei beauty. We all recharged our batteries and the weather was heavenly making the scenery all the more breathtaking.

Neen and I spent Saturday afternoon painting our nails. I went for fluorescent pink polish and she had bright blue. Shortly afterwards two young local girls who were hanging about came to admire our toenails. We offered to paint their nails with much gesticulating and saying English words hopefully in an African accent , as if that helps them to understand. There is no language no barrier when it comes to girls and makeup! They quickly jumped up to fetch a pen knife to cut their nails in a roundish fashion, then we set to work painting their finger and toe nails. Seemed a bit weird with their feet bare and all dusty from scampering around the hills-but apparently it is a sturdy nail polish, doesn’t chip easily.

Unbelievably the girl whose nails I was painting was actually a very demanding ‘customer’ making sure I applied several layers and didn’t miss a spot. We then ran off to grab our full on makeup bags and gave them both shimmering eye shadows and Juicy Fruits pink lip gloss. Annoyingly the makeup looked so much better on their lovely full lips...so we decided to give them both a little makeup kit of our stuff to keep. They were so happy and ran around posing with their new looks. Their names were Atini and Andisiwe, great girls. We finished off the makeover by all dancing around together flicking our newly painted hands back to the rhythm of a drum in a new-age dance move. I guess you had to be there for that one.

It was great fun though to just have a cool interaction with some locals that wasn’t health related. When you see all the poverty you find yourself wanting to give people things, but when kids shout for sweets as your car drives past you know that is a result of hand outs from foreigners, and it isn’t the answer. But, I am starting to find subtle ways of helping, by hopefully changing locals perceptions of foreigners like me. I help mums on paeds with money for transport which is a little gesture too. But, I think a cool interaction where the foreigner gets down and paint a little local girls pinkies is totally all good. Break the mould and the divide a bit. You never quite feel like it is enough though.

Kobb Inn

The best breakfast in the Transkei is there, we learned today. They did this thing with baked beans, onion and slivers of beef that I can’t believe I didn’t think of before. And they didn’t stop there. Egg, bacon, really nice brown bread and a wee sausage. It was marvellous.

So we left there satisfied after that breakfast and a weekend of relaxing hard.

On the way home we passed a good few people with their hands out for lifts. Hitch-hiking is a huge part of life out here and I often wonder how people ever get to where they are going with the trickle of traffic that often prevails. Now, before you get too excited, we are not idiots. In fact we are, as I have stated before, extremely risk-averse in our approach to South Africa. So when I say that we picked up some hitch-hikers, you can be confident that they were old ladies or old men. We are not in the market for the mid-twenty year old male, even if he looks really nice. In fact these guys must have a nightmare getting lifts from anyone white. But that is how we roll.

Today we gave a lift to a big fat dude who was all smiles. Shortly after that we passed a pastor (if you will) and let him in. Later we passed a very, very large woman indeed who also held a hand out. I could see some nervousness in the faces of the two men, but I knew we could do it. All of a sudden, no one in the back was very comfortable anymore, but they were absolutely gutting themselves laughing, so we set off. Fortunately, Reverend Greenbag got out 5 minutes later, leaving ample space for the other two to continue roaring with laughter at Kim and my attempts to converse.

When we were down to the one lady, dressed in her Sunday best, we were driving along nicely when she offered my two rand. “No, thanks”, I said, in isi-Xhosa and kept on, smiling. It was Kim who quickly pointed out that that had been her way of indicating that we were at her stop. Woops. We declined the money and let her out a hundred meters further than she had hoped. Pretty cool that she offered to pay, if you ask me.

Water is still off. Electric went off for a bit and then back on. Now on, so fingers crossed. Water is rumoured to be getting fixed tomorrow. People here are starting to smell pretty bad. Kobb Inn had good showers.

Kimmy’s Comments – the story of no water and the hot water burns.

Haven’t written for ages. Sorry, lots been happening. I have just got back from snowboarding as pete said and unfortunately the water is off again. At lunchtime today the electricity went off too and I thought I might die, but the electricity is back at least. I stink. Havent showered in a few days and am desperate to be washing the horrid powdered glove smell off my hands from todays work. Apparently the water should be fixed in a few days...we only have one sterile pack left in theatre for a caesarean so we’re keeping it for a super emergency. All other c/s will go to Mthatha.

I was frustrated today. I have a 6 y o boy who got a severe hot water burn to his left leg about 6 weeks ago. The burn was quite big (from tip of toe to bottom of ankle) and quite deep (involved tendons and outer ankle bone). He needed a skin graft. We sent him to Mthatha hospital and they kept him on the ward a few days then sent him back to us due to bed shortages and asked us to get the wound clean then they’d admit him again for a graft when wound was nice and clean and ready for surgery. So, I took him back, swabbed his manky foot, gave him appropriate iv antibiotics and 3 weeks later his wound looked beautiful and clean and pink, ready for graft. Then, I sent him back to mthatha in the ambulance. That was 2 weeks ago. I heard nothing more and assumed all was well. That was until today when the childs uncle who works at a nearby clinic brought a note from the childs mother saying that he went to mthatha hosp that day and they said because he arrived at noon it was too late to see a doctor so he should come back next Friday. So, they went home, slightly disgruntled at mthatha hosps care(quite right).

They have NO money so can’t get back to mthatha and the uncle tells me the wound is now full of pus again. So, back to square one. I put a lot of effort in to getting this child well for graft and it has all amounted to nothing. Apparently the family are now disillusioned and don’t want to go back to mthatha, and also if they turn up with a dirty wound they’ll be sent away cos to graft the wound needs to be clean. If they leave this foot it will get mankier and mankier and at best he’ll loose his right foot, at worst he’ll die from septicaemia (blood poisoning).

I despair. I asked the uncle to being the child to Zithulele so i could admit him again and start from scratch. He says he has no money to bring him and i should give him some. My gut feeling is i don’t trust him, so I didn’t give him any. I spoke to someone later who confirmed that that was a correct decision. Instead i told him to try to convince the mum to bring him to us...we have a dr who goes to Wilo clinic which is near him and he might be able to bring him back in his car next Tuesday. Watch this space. It rings true though “if you want something doing proper, do it yerself!” Unfortunately I can’t do a skin graft so will have to rely on incompentent others who have no conscience and are happy to simply send away patients who’ve travelled 1 ½ hrs, have no money and a clear need for medical attention. Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh The frustration is massive

It’s cold, it’s white and it’s bloody brilliant

Skiing in Africa? Well no. But we did snowboard. In an explosive weekend of pub story provoking activity, we have come away to Rhodes, which nestles nicely amongst huge mountains and is a 45 minute drive to Tifendell Ski Resort. It was always going to be a good idea to go there, regardless of how crap it was. As we waited to get our lift passes I drolly drew a short straight line on my hand with my pen and said, “check it out, I have drawn a piste map”. Everyone agreed that I was not funny.

But I was pleasantly surprised when we got up there. The only run that was open was short, but long enough to get up some speed. The snow was that nice soft sugary snow, before it goes too sugary and turns into waves that you can’t carve through. The tow lift was a button, but not one of those jerky ones that tears at your undercarriage. No, it was gentle. It wasn’t anywhere near as busy as it would have been in Scotland in those conditions. In fact it was nice and quiet. I only banged into one child and he was asking for it anyway. I did not draw blood and it will teach him to look around him in future.

There weren’t really any black people there. Having said that, there haven’t really been any black people when I have skied in Austria. The difference there is that most people in Austria are not black. So it was a bit of a weird bubble up there in the snow and it was extremely odd and cool to see two black men walking down the hill in massive blankets and balaclavas with walking sticks. They might have been from Lesotho. Not sure. It made us all feel a bit soft for being dragged up the hill by a tow lift.

Roger and Karen are here. They are to be married very soon. And Richard, the medical student came too. It is a good group of folk, unless Karen is given too much sugar. It is nice to fill the car when you go away and even nicer when the folk are good craic and chilled out.

We camped on the Saturday because, annoyingly, our self-catering accommodation was only available Friday and Sunday. So a bit of upheaval, but it has been fun. The camping was pretty Baltic and I am not sure my nose has thawed out yet but we had scrounged lots of cold weather gear from Karl and Sally (next door neighbours) so we were fine. Richard and I steeled ourselves for the night with several beers, a chat with a man called Grandad, a game of rugby and last, but not least, a shot of Underberg. Underberg is horrible. It comes in little bottles that fit into an ammo belt. The last time I drank anything like that was in Thailand and that was a laxative for cleansing my system. Fortunately this didn’t have that effect, but it wasn’t delicious.

Grandad and Tony, the two pissed old lads at the bar told us in a roundabout way about how the country is going to bollocks now the blacks are in charge. There were several Zimbabwean monetary notes stapled to the wall as a warning and some jokey ones with Jacob Zuma plus shower attachment and a figure of 600,000,000 rand. They were generally very anti-immigration, but we decided to go the way of talking about farts, rather than engaging in a discussion about how London relies on immigrants to be successful. “Shit, was that you?”. “Yes, sorry Grandad.”, was all I could offer. Tony thought it was only fair after the car journey that he had recently endured with Grandad and Grandad’s arse. Grandad also explained that we were in the southern Drakensberg. Many people say that Underberg (the place, not the spirit) is in the Southern Drakenberg. They are wrong people and they must be stopped. We got to the stage where we were thinking of invading.

We got mad props from the two of them for living in the Transkei. Tourists nowadays are a bunch of softies, but we seemed to be okay because our electricity goes off sometimes.

Now we are back after our awesome boarding and feeling justifiably sleepy and almost ready for a beer to round things off. I have skied in Africa and that is great. Almost better and dramatically cheaper was yesterday, when we found a patch of snow up another hill and used a big orange bivvy bag to sledge about on. Needless to say silly photos were taken and everyone got a wet bum.

This accommodation is wonderful. A big old barn of a farmhouse with lots of furniture one would see at a grandparents house. Makes me think of my Gran, whose house has just been sold as she is in a home now. It is a homely place with heavy pots and character. The maid has come in and cleaned and made the most incredible fire for us. It is made so that all you have to do is throw a match in and it goes. The level of service is pretty remarkable considering that we are paying R120 per person per night. I wonder what she gets paid.