Adventures in Zithulele

Goodbye Team Zithulele

2010-01-13T07:59:00.000-08:00

Me and some of the nurses and Dr Karl Le Roux in Out Patients saying farewell.

I'll definitely miss them all - but not the 3am phone calls "Dr, I have this patient...."

Kim x

New Year - Long Exposure

2010-01-13T07:52:00.000-08:00

Kimmy here: this was my New Years creation. I bought a load of sparklers and dished them out before midnight to everybody I could see. At midnight we set the camera on 15sec long exposure and everyone waved them about like mad. Here is the result. Arty no? If you look carefully you can see the awesome moonlit beach in the background-cosmic

the children continued

2010-01-13T07:41:00.000-08:00

if you do not think that this is the cutest child in the world then you are entitled to that opinion. unfortunately you are also entitled to my fist punching you in your face. so think about it.

frypan sticks arse in air at high speed

2010-01-13T07:32:00.000-08:00

these are roger and karen on the day that we left. thanks to roger for the cable ties etc. when you go above 100km/hr, frypan sticks his bottom in the air and keeps it there. what unbridled joy.

the view from bettina

2010-01-13T07:09:00.000-08:00

Gunshot and Frypan

2010-01-13T07:04:00.000-08:00

these are my names for the gifts that the pre-school mothers gave me and kim. it is not that i am not grateful. i am touched by the thought and gesture.

me romancing kim on hogmanay

2010-01-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

Kimmy's Comments - Kimmy end blog

2010-01-12T05:26:00.000-08:00

We’re on a road trip now and i’m no longer at the hospital which feels hectic. After having such a purpose and belonging for so long I feel a bit out on a limb now. I know they’re struggling at the hospital too with many drs off sick and it makes me want to go running back to help and makes me feel guilty for being on holiday. Such a strange experience having a year like this. I feel like a different doctor, i think i am still the same person, just a bit more hardened to the harshness of the world. I found leaving SO emotional, saying goodbye to these amazing friends was heartbreaking. Especially Liz and Mo who were my girlies. Hopefully we’ll see them at the wedding. Felt I got a good time to say bye to Karen and Roger as they kindly hosted us for our last few days. They rock.

My last three months were on female ward which was much harder going that Paeds. Basically the Paeds nurses are great and my new ward was somewhat apathetic. It was like trying to squeeze blood from a stone getting any banter or enthusiasm from some of them. I even resorted to complimenting one nurse on her shiny white teeth one morning in the hope it would cheer her into a good ward round. I immediately felt dirty and arse kissing, and it didn’t help the ward round flow anyway. I did manage to chirp them up with some home made buns (they call them cookies here in SA, so wrong). The ward was hard going, the theme being HIV +ve with gastro, in denial of status and not yet on ARV medication followed by grim death. Or the other theme was ‘sick person who i’d like to do further investigations on but we have a shitty referral hospital so can;t get them so they die’. A bit bleak.

Also had some great moments though, a few Paeds kiddies who I’d looked after on Paeds I saw in out patients and they looked great and my heart filled to bursting. That was brilliant.

Towards the end of December the oncalls were harsh and miserable. Had one horrible evening where I was up ALL night and had to deal with an awful case where a whole family’s rondavel was struck by lightnening (common). Most of them were fine but the 7 yr old girl must have been hit the worst because she was dead on arrival. It was awful having to announce this to the family. It was 2 days before Christmas.

My body has sort of physically collapsed after the mentalness of the year. Both me and pete are in bed with our final gift from the hospital...one last does of diarrhoea and vomiting. Misery. We were meant to climb a big hill today, that had to be cancelled (there is always a silver lining to every distater since i am not a mad hiker!). Maybe I’ll shed a few pre wedding pounds too?

I’m pretty excited about getting home, wedding to organise, people to see, family to hug. Also looking forward to meeting Al and Toris new edition Fred Grant. Well done Tori for what sounds like a long labourious labour...i gues that is why they call it labour, hmmm, never thought of that before.

Baboon in the bathroom

2010-01-12T05:20:00.000-08:00

We had been chilling out for a little while when Kim said, “Baboon!”. There really is no way to dress the story up. The baboon left the bathroom by the very small window that it had entered through. Having said that, it was surprisingly large and it left big, dirty paw prints on the toilet seat and kitchen floor. I don’t think that he got anything.

I think Kwa-Zulu Natal is a bit more like the Africa that we had expected. Goats are nice, but nothing beats a cheeky monkey. And that there is a threat of snake bites also seems more appropriate. That is not to do the Eastern Cape down, but the wildlife there is not that wild. We are no on our guard and windows will be left closed most of the time.

It is very odd not to be in Zithulele. I am feeling a bit purposeless now. I get the odd Jabulani call on my mobile, which is cool because that is what I know. The new team have grabbed it by the scruff and I am confident that they will do well. They already have 19 pre-school kids on the register. Letting go is proving to be tricky.

The hospital has had an outbreak of measles which pretty much did for Sally le Roux who was in a right state when we left. Jo, the new doctor also fell ill, the combination of which really hit a new team. Kim is feeling for the few who are holding the fort, but it sounds like they are on the mend now and things can get back on track.

Our mates Gareth, Ros and Paul meet us on Saturday and we will head to Hluhluwe National Park and then north to Kosi Bay, Swaziland and Mozambique. Good old road trips.

On Religion

2010-01-12T05:13:00.000-08:00

When Kim and I decided to come to Zithulele and realized that there was a strong Christian element there, some friends from the UK suggested that we might be coming home with tambourines. We laughed. We have left now and do not have any comedy musical instruments, but we do have a new bible and a different perspective.

I suppose to sum it up I would say that this year has challenged my pre(mis)-conceptions about devout Christians. The UK is so secular now and it is by far the norm to be scornful and/or suspicious of organised religion. South Africa is more old fashioned and has more pockets of strong faith and, beyond that, a wider reach of more liberal Christianity. Zithulele itself started as a mission clinic of the Dutch Reform Church back in the 1950s and was taken over by government in the 70s.

The two couples who really took the hospital by the reins a few years ago did so out of a sense of ‘calling’. That is, they felt they were carrying out God’s work by coming to Zithulele and making the hospital better. They also started the Jabulani Foundation which I have been working for for the last year-odd.

I don’t dig Christianity on a personal level. I am agnostic until I see enough evidence that He, She or It exists.

I felt that I had to know the nature of religion’s place in the Foundation to put my mind at rest, but I was a bit nervous to broach the subject, so I did it subtly by asking “What is religion’s place in the Foundation?”. I felt awkward but I needed to hear the answer because I didn’t want to, and still would not want to, work for an organization that exists to spread a certain religious doctrine. Ben (Director of the Foundation) answered me, explaining that the founders were driven by a strong Christian belief, but that the Foundation was not there to be a church spreading the word. No probs there then, so I stayed.

I haven’t really been friends with strongly religious people, of any faith, before, so it was new territory for me. From what I have seen here, Christianity really brings people together and makes them put time aside to appreciate things like family and friends and good stuff, as well as thinking about sad things. Good, I think, to have something formal to help you to give some reflection to life. The nicest thing was that no-one tried to force it on me or pushed it in my face. We had some deep conversations with Roger and Karen from time to time, but there was never that awful urging or patronizing pitying that can so often be the case, or the fear at least.

And now it is nearly a year later and I am impressed with them (the long termers at Zithulele) and their unwavering motivation to do very good things. It is extremely hard to do what they are doing. I have touched on it for less than a year and I found it hard and often dispiriting. To do so for the long term takes another kind of motivation and the Christianity thing works for these guys.

Don’t get me wrong, I have seen others here doing similar great things driven by other things. I think it is just good to have some reason, Christianity or no. I did a quick tally of people at the hospital and rated them for awesomeness (Kim included). The robust finding was that religion was not a factor. There are also people there working their arses off with different beliefs.

The bible came from two very close friends and because it did, I appreciate the gesture. We have joked all year about them trying to convert us, largely when we are weak and hungover. I don’t think that is how it works though. I just think that they reckon it is a good read and they wanted to share it. I gave Roger ‘Nudge’, for the same reason (although I never thought that would bring them over to the dark side either).

So I am going to try to be a bit less knee-jerky when it comes to Christians. And for my part, I recommend ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins (he rings my scientific bell, despite being just a touch inflammatory).

The Children!

2010-01-12T04:56:00.000-08:00

It is all about them.

Now we are on the road. We have left Zithulele and are on the road trip of destiny. I didn’t write anything for a few weeks because I was super busy but lots of cool things have happened so I am gonna try to catch up.

The Pre-school graduation was in the middle of December. Carlos (the cameraman who is shooting promo films for Jabulani and the hospital) had to leave it at lunch time, but he got a good lot of footage before that. The kids were really cute in their smart clothes and with new hairdos. The parents had organised the whole thing and financed it (Jabulani, ie me, is not in the business of spending donations on parties) to the tune of R125 each. I had to bite my tongue a bit over the fact that they had reserved so much energy and money for this event, compared to the everyday stuff like nutrition and so on. Parties and events are big here. On the other hand, I think it is awesome to mark transitions and we do not do it well enough in Scotland (Donald Ewing was right).

Carlos caught some lovely singing and parading and cuteness. Sod’s Law did come into effect though, with a series of very cool things happening in the hours after his departure. Thandeka was up front at one end of the line of cute children and she was about to start a skit that they had practiced. “My name is Teacher, my name is Teacher, my name is teacher, what is your name?”, she began. But before the first kid could pick up, a teenage boy burst out of nowhere with a mixture of school uniform and traditional dress. He got right into Thandeka’s face and started to shout at her with a sharpened paint brush pointing in her face. I got my hackles right up and started to get ready to get up and hit him in his face. My mind was racing with imaginings of the dodgey Lima guy Jackie having been slighted into not speaking at our ceremony having instigated a tribal curse thing against Jabulani and the pre-school. The crowd were silent and Thandeka’s face was ashen.

My gut was churning as it went on and I felt vulnerable and foreign. But I could see her face changing and I started to perceive a change in the audience too. Woopin and a hollerin, probably describes it best. They were enjoying the young lad and Thandeka’s eyes welled up with tears. It went on for a bit longer and then he stoated out. It was only after the ceremony when I was able to ask for an explanation. He was a poet, brought in to honour Thandeka and to praise her efforts teaching the pre-school children and the community in general.

Poet or no, pointy stick or without, I reckon I could have had him. And that will go on record.

Following that Dr Taryn Gaunt (Jabulani person) spoke and she was fantastic. She started by asking the kids what they wanted to do when they grew up. Then she went on to give a long spiel about how if they try to do that, people will probably say they can’t. She went so far down this line that I was starting to feel disheartened, but at the last minute she pulled it back and explained that you have to follow your dreams and ignore discouragement to make them happen. Inspiring stuff, in that setting, and the crowd went wild too.

I got some lovely thankyous and two of the most horrific cuddley toys that you will ever see. They will feature more as we go on.

Bad things and Good things

2010-01-12T04:55:00.000-08:00

Today (December the somethingth, really) I cried for the first time since I was 9. Karen (our next door neighbour)’s sister in law died in a car crash and her husband and little girl were in the car with her unable to help. This is the latest in a very long list of awful things that have happened to people that Kim and I care about and it is doing my head in. No need to go into details but good people seem to be having a very difficult time of it this year, while we are in South Africa, and I feel powerless and removed. It made me want to be at home with friends and family who I am missing a lot. It made me think a lot about what I am doing here and the future and all sorts. I thought and thought all around in a circle and then it was still shit so I gave up. It just seems to be nice people who suffer the most. I don’t know any arseholes with cancer.

I have to say that good things have also continued to happen in a cheerful, relentless way. I am engaged to marry Kim (well done me). My brother and his wife are about to bash out a child (and now have, well done Tori and Fred) as have some very close friends. Engagements have come thick and fast before mine and I am having a good old time with my health and everything.

Pete’s abdo workout

2010-01-12T04:49:00.000-08:00

First you must go to Lesotho and sign up for a horse trek. You must be out of practice with horses but game to try it and it is essential that you are given a horse called Bettina. Riding Bettina you will be moved around subtly (and not so subtly at times) and have to use your core muscles to stay upright. Your horse, Bettina, should have an unhealthy scorn for your weakness and should add to the workout by trotting now and then. She should give you a good wobbling around whilst farting. The farting provokes an involuntary stomach tightening.

When you arrive at the village after 5 hours of horse, you must get off and go for a lie-down. This is to prepare for the next phase. Vomitting and diarrhea give an excellent comprehensive workout of the core muscles and help you to lose that unnecessary dinner that you just ate. Be sure and make as much noise as possible, not unlike the kiai is to karate.

Weak lemon drink is optional and only about two of you will get that joke.

When you are at your lowest ebb, you should lie down and experience massive stomach cramps owing to loss of fluids and salts. Feel the burn.

After a night of comprehensive discomfort, you must get back onto Bettina. Begging Bettina to be gentle is optional and entirely unhelpful. You should ride for 5 hours, gradually losing what little grip you had on equestrian discipline. This will maximize your abdo-jiggling and your core will be tested to the fullest.

When you get back to the ranch, get off Bettina and have a coke. Stretch. Your journey to that six pack has begun and you feel like shite.

Community meetings

2010-01-12T04:44:00.000-08:00

I’ve been going to some community meetings recently (this is an old post from Nov or Dec). It’s cool that Jabulani has been invited as it gives us a way in to the local politics (a myriad of relationships and history which buckles the mind) and an idea of what people’s needs and wants are. If one cannot succeed in development without community engagement and buy-in (and I suspect that you can’t), then they are really important.

The last three I have gone to have been held with the main purpose of electing committees to have other meetings. The issues at hand are: no hospital ambulance, hospital hired a cleaner from Mthatha when the locals feel that one of them could have done it, the placement of the clinic.

These meetings are going to provide us with a way in: somewhere to introduce ideas for developing the area and for locals to bring ideas to us too. So far, thankfully, I have not been targeted and asked for all the answers. I thought, arrogantly, that I would be, but they are happy to let me sit and listen to my translator, Vusi, rattle off what is said.

There is always prayer and some very formal language thanking people for coming and setting out the agenda. There is no paper involved, which makes the annunciating of the agenda more important.

Having attended a good handful of community meetings now, I can see that there is another side. These meetings are long. Long and tiring. To turn up without water and muesli bars is utterly foolish. I feel strongly that attending them is the right thing, but that does not automatically mean that they are a good laugh.

Kimmy's Comments - The engagement

2009-12-07T07:52:00.000-08:00

Okay, so Mr Romantic AKA Peter Grant asked me to marry him this weekend. Evryone has been so sweet and excited which is lovely, but also they're asking for 'the details'.

We were at Bulungula, I wasn't suspecting a thing. Pete came up to our Safari tent which we were staying in for the weekend, one of those big permanent tents with a view of the beach and waves only 20m away. Heavenly place, and our total favourite place in SA.

He arrived (I was reading a book in the tent in the afternoon sun) with 2 cups of tea in tin mugs and a chocolate bar (he had me at the chocolate bar!)...he also produced a bag of scrabble tiles and we started playing speed scrabble (an abbreviation of the full on scrabble game, ask me, i'll show you some time). After i beat him for the third time I was like "okay, this is getting boring" but he insisted on one more game. Half way through that game he exclaimed 'finished' and I frowned and looked over and he'd written MARRY ME with the scrabble tiles. (see attached photo). I was speechless and sure he was taking the piss, so needed several confirmations before I believed him, Then I rummaged around in the scrabble tile bag and pulled out some tiles and wrote YES PLEASE. And that was it. We are engaged.

He initally gave me a plastic ring which is the 'dessert ring' you get at the evening meal at Bulungula if you want a dessert - a quirky pete-ism of originatilty. Later I got the real ring. yippee.

My ring is beautiful as is life. After 6 years together it feels 100% right to spend my life with Pete and I am feeling very lucky and delighted. So There.

See yall at the wedding in spring/summer 2010.

Home stretch

2009-11-23T11:52:00.001-08:00

Sorry it has been so long since I last wrote. Things have changed so much in the last weeks and we are now already in the home stretch. It is hectic and I love it. Kim and I only have a month and a bit left in Zithulele and there is a lot to be done at the Foundation.

Much of my time is taken up with a renovation project. Accommodation is scarce here and we needed to find space for health professionals and volunteers. We decided on renovating the old clinic building – a 50 year old structure that is in amazing shape. See www.igiveada.mn (do you see what he did there?) to read more about Andy Duncan and his team that are coming out to work on it in December. Before they get here we are doing a lot of prep work on the site and building and trying to ensure that all materials are going to be there on time. It’s exciting and just the kind of work that I like: pressure, clear goal, short timescale.

At the same time I am trying to get things into shape here for the new team of volunteers. I am not sure that I have made it clear to you all that the Jabulani Foundation is amazing. There is such a mint group of folk here with great skills and vision and energy and it has been a privilege to be part of it. IT has also been bastardly hard going on the emotions and everything else. But we have achieved a lot and there is scope for so much more with a bigger team. What I could do if I had the luxury of delegation. Mmm. Oh poo, I need to write the November newsletter. See?

We have got some tree guys here cutting down big blue gums that overhang our volunteer accommodation (never fear, prospective volunteers, they are gonna be gone soon). It is utterly cool watching them work as they tie off a huge limb to another tree and chainsaw it off to be lowered to the ground by a team on ropes. They are nice too – cut us some 4 inch cross sections to make into road signs and table tops. When I say ‘us, I mean someone who is better at making stuff out of trees.

We had a guy called Carlos here today. Trying to get him to shoot and edit a film for us to promote the Foundation and hospital. He is a good chap and has made some cool films (http://www.ahbfilms.blogspot.com). He is currently making a film about how bees are very endangered in South Africa. The blue gum trees that we are cutting down are havens for bees apparently, so he had an issue with that. They are non indigenous trees (Australian, I think) and there is a big drive to kill off such species and replace with indigenous species, but he says people don’t consider the spin offs that could occur. Really interesting chat. It’s never as simple as it seems. We are cutting them down so they don’t drop branches and kill our volunteers so my conscious is clear. Anyway, we have a tree hugger called Roger who is gonna plant a million indigenous trees. In fact, if you want to sponsor the planting of one, give me a shout. R250 and it is done, fenced and fertilized to get a good start.

So basically it is all go and the crapola slump that I was in (working alone, going mental) for a good few weeks has passed, thank goodness. Thanks to those who listened to me moaning.

Kim carries on chopping women’s tummies open and pulling babies out (that is where she is now) and that is good.

Clint’s birthday party was amazing. Someone told me to write that. It was mint to see Mike and Adri again and eat more of Mike’s legendary chicken with his new hot sauce (check out supermarket shelves).

Mthatha admin

2009-10-22T08:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to Mthatha to get the new (and first) Jabulani Foundation vehicle registered in our company name. I took the book ‘Bravo Two Zero’, by Andy McNab with me in case there was any waiting involved. I knew that it was going to be a long day, but as it was a good while since my last admin trip to Mthatha, I was confident of success.

The first thing to do was to collect the mail for three people at Mqanduli Post Office. This was carried out with no problems and I sped onwards. Prior to departure I had already read a good chunk of B20 and I learnt that preparation was everything for a mission to be successful. I had a list and I had checked and re-checked the documents that I needed.

I like the VW Citigolf. It is basically a VW Golf (for the UK folk) with no trims. 1.4l, no power steering, aircon or other dangerous electronic stuff to go wrong. Andy McNab would approve, but he would also probably call me a ‘big bag of bollocks’ as the SAS is prone to involve a lot of abuse of one’s peers. Anyway, it corners better than the big car and it feels like you are going fast all the time.

The next thing was to get the car checked for the insurance company so they knew it existed. I was nothing but charm. Make the personal link as quickly as you can so that they don’t torture you to death (or decide to be unhelpful, in my case). Job done, had a brew (well, a drink of juice).

Next to the Traffic Office for registration. My navigation intelligence had been from Shannon, one of the occupational therapists. She had done a good map and I was in there fast. The queue was pretty long. I spent the time talking to some dudes with great English. They were really helpful to me, so I didn’t shoot them.

When I got to the desk it all went a bit wrong. Two large ladies were firing info at me. I had to register to get a number as an SA driver first. I also needed an affidavit from the lady who sold us the car. The intelligence had been wrong. My mission was foiled. I decided to go and get the car’s ‘roadworthy certificate’ (one requirement that I knew about) so that all would not be lost. The last thing I did was to get a phone number for the office so I could double check details for next time. As I departed, I rang it. It rang out, as had all 3 of the other numbers I have for the office. They were clearly masters of obfuscation. Or some other big word.

I came to a vast, shiny warehouse with a sign on it saying “KSD Vehicle Testing Centre”. The process was to drive to the end of a queue and wait. There were 5 vehicles in front of me. I left enough room in front to maneuver out, as any member of B20 would have. The fat man with pretty good English told me that I was likely to have to wait an hour and a half. Not bad. I settled into the book.

Time passed. 2 hours passed. I realized that, like Andy McNab, there was no point in getting stressed out. I needed to bang some food and water in me, because I did not know when I would be able to do so again. Over 3 hours later I looked the wee man in the face. He was like a Scottish footballer in that he had only 2 teeth and was not very good.

I asked him how much longer it would take. He told me that I would need to come back tomorrow to collect the certificate. I asked why and pleaded with him that he try to do it ASAP. His response was to say that he did not want to commit to anything as he was the only man there working (there were two others). This was when I started to think about what Andy M had said about how to kill a man making minimum noise, but I wasn’t prepared to saw my Leatherman backwards and forwards across his windpipe just yet. I went outside to see fatman as he seemed to be in charge (ie doing nothing). He said that the guy inside was the only man working and that is was not possible. I said that I lived very far away and this meant me losing a whole day. I said the word “hospital”. I said “please, please, please”. He wandered off.

When he walked back past I gave him an eyebrows raised look that asked whether it was going to happen. He gave a small thumbs up. I walked round to see Toothless MacGinty. Toothless was clearly losing his mind. He stuck his tongue out and jerked his head forward as if he was walking like an Egyptian. I said “thank you so much for helping me today”. He stuck his tongue out. He then pissed about printing the form slowly.

The important thing was that I hadn’t shown him how I was really feeling. I was physically tired, but they had not broken me mentally. Andy McNab would appreciate that. When he was getting tortured by Iraqis he went through something similar. We both came through. As I started the engine, Toothless was at the window with his tongue out like a mentalist again. I did the international sign language for YOU ARE MENTAL. He nodded. Back again next week then.

Kimmy's comments-they pull you down then they pick you up

2009-10-20T04:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a funny day what with the DG stuff and a ward full of sick people. I had a 14 year old girl who suddnely looked terirble with breathing troubles yesterday. I put her on oxygen and strong antibiotics through the vein, but after lunch I took a look at her and she looked worse despite my attempts. me and some seniors spent an hour or so trying to get her breathing better with various potions, but she didn't improve. At 5pm I decided we should refer her to Mthatha Hospital , after all she wasnt my usual patient - she was HIV -ve, previously well, and only 14 years old. Unfortunately it was too late to get the helicopter to come as apparently it doesn't fly at night, so i had to settle for the Metro Ambulance along the bumpy wet dirt road to Zithulele (at least an hour away). Unfortunately before the ambulance arrived she stopped breathing and her heart stopped beating. We tried to rescuscitate her for about 45 minutes with adrenaline, atropine, the lot - tried everything we could think of but unfortunately had to give up eventually as she wasn't coming back to us. She died. I think it was a super nasty pneumonia. It was bleak. Only 14. So today at work bumbling around my busy ward and I was feeling pretty broken and sad about it all. Things just carry on you know and sometimes that's hard.

Just as I was feeling utterly bummed I got a call from Liz one of the other doctors and my good friend. "guess who's back" she said excitedly "who?" I asked.....it turns out that my favourite Paeds baby a 2 1/2 year old girl called Aphiwe who I'd sent very sick to a great hospital 3 hours away in East London had survived and was back with us! There was a lovely letter to me from the consultant saying 'thankyou for your excellent referral' and that our diagnosis of TB everywhere (chest, abdomen, liver...)was correct. She was changed to pills instead of antibiotics through the vein, which means she can go home soon!

I ran down to Paeds ward to catch a glimpse of her and she looked wonderful - fat faced and much healthier (she was wee scrap with a buddah belly before, adorable). She was wearing this cute flowery dress. This girl was the one that captured my heart for some reason on Paeds, I think I wrote about her granny being awesome a while back when I said she might be on the ward for 6 months. I am delighted she is better. Sometimes there are happy endings too!

Also yesterday Taryn one of the other doctors called me to see her kiddy for a peek, and it was a boy who'd burnt his leg a few months back and had been on my ward getting his burn cleaned up for a few weeks and then was sent to Mthatha Hospital for skin graft (no, not the one I wrote about a while back, he has disappeared, but another one). His leg looked great, graft had taken well, a wonderful result and another happy story.

So, it is funny that things pull you down but then something else lifts you back up. I think some people think these kind of things are the work of god or something. I'm in the 'of something' category, I'm just happy they happen when you most need your faith in yourself and what you are doing restoring.

Kimmy's comments - The ugly side of poverty

2009-10-19T04:52:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I realise I always write sad things on the blog, I’d like to say that it is awesome out here too, and I;m happy, but I don’t want to make you all jealous by writing happy stuff all the time, plus the most interesting things are usually grim. But that is life...if you want cheering up then don’t read on.

Only a few months to go until we go back to The UK and it is strange looking back on my year here. I had a great three months on Paeds ward and now have moved on to female ward. Each ward change brings new challenges and it is a thought provoking time.

I have 25 beds on my ward, most people are pretty sick. One room is full of TB and there is a good scattering of HIV +ve women too. 25 year olds with brain damage from fitting for a day (a reflection of poor transport links here and inability to reach medical care.

To start a HIV+ve person on Anti retroviral Therapy (ARVs) they need counselling and also a treatment partner, someone who also understands that the pills are everyday for the rest of your life, and that they MUST be taken at the same time twice a day. Having a treatment partner means that if you are too sick to remember your ARVS they can give you them...pretty essential to the whole theory of ARVS needing to be EVERY DAY not to miss ANY as it risks the HIV will become resistant to the pills. And don’t forget these pills are horrid...nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, numb feet to list but a few side effects. But they’re a life saver too....so you bear the side effects.

Anyway, one poor lady on my ward has a very suppressed immune system from HIV and needs ARVS but they say she has no treatment partner. So today on the ward round she sits in bed looking gaunt and thin and ill. Her lips are purple from the gentian violet liquid we put on her blistered mouth. She looks so sad and weak. I ask her (via the nurse) if she can think of ANYONE to be her treatment partner, and she says no. Her father and mother I ask?...dead. Her sisters and brothers.....dead, her husband...died 2004. No friends. The only person she has is her 14 year old child. I discuss it with a colleague, we have no choice, we’ll have to try and get the 14 year old to be her treatment partner or she’ll surely die in the next year or so and then that child will be entirely alone. It seems the best option, the only option really. Shame to put such a big thing on a 14 year old but I guess already there life is a struggle finding money and shelter etc. As they say in SA...’Hectic’.

The other thing I’ve noticed today is “the ugly side of poverty”. Just to give a background, unemployment is massive...it’s rare to find anyone with a job here. There simply aren’t any jobs round here, just rolling hills with rondavel huts on them but not much economy or work. The govenrm,ent gives grants for children, old age (>60 years) and disability. We have to fill out forms for them to be assessed, and they collect the grant monthly from a local shop or something. It isn’t much but large family networks of 8-9 people or more end up relying on a few family members grants from the government to get them through each month. Even more so with the HIv deaths in 30 something year olds leaving orphaned children being looked after by their gogos (grannies). They’re surviving on £30 for all of them or something like that. The problem comes when the gogos die and they wont be replaced with new gogos because lots of them are not living long enough. A flaw in the plan of life round these parts.

Disability Grants (DGs)are a nightmare for us, everyone wants them but the government lays down strict criteria. Unfortunately you don’t qualify for one just because there is no work, it’s more about whether you’re fit for work. And, no job centres out this way, oh no no no. But, in times not so long ago people could ‘buy’ grant, so there is still a lot of unrest because people who may be used to have a grant are now ineligible. And the families are so desperate that they waste time and money and effort on trying to get a grant, when these efforts would be better spent on finding work or working the land and planting food instead. Apparently in other parts of the country there is a black market on TB sputum. You get a temporary grant for having TB treatment (6 months usually) and some clever souls have cottoned on to this, that because TB is often diagnosed by culturing a sputum, they can sell their dirty Tb sputum to health people who hand it in as theirs then get put on TB meds (which are potent and have SE but they don’t care) and then get a DG.

Anyway, back to the ugly side of poverty. So today is grant collection day, or ‘epaye’ as they say. So all these young relatives of the old ladies on my ward with TB and strokes etc who are over 60 come crawling out of the woodwork to drag their old gogos to the shop to collect their pay. It just made me feel furious seeing these poor old ladies being wheeled out in wheelbarrows and all sorts to go sign for their pay (they have to go in person.). I am asked for permission to let them take the old ladies, what can I say....from a drs point of view NO, I want them on the ward being treated, but from a broader perspective you can see how this grant is essential for the families survival on a day to day basis. It is just that fair enough, if the family had been around before hand caring for their relative and then took them for grant that would be more palatable than them just turning up randomly on grant day.

So, I say yes, they can go, but I think the relatives sense my anger. Sometimes I long for the UK and its functioning welfare system. People just don’t know how lucky they are back home. I am going to be SO ANNOYING when i get back referencing my time here, I just know it! Sorry in advance, but poverty is ugly.

Romance, gluttony and elbow shaped punishment for the previous two

2009-10-11T10:45:00.001-07:00

Kim and I just got back from a romantic weekend at Mngazi River Lodge. It is posh and nicely done up and feeds you til you rupture something. When it is only for a weekend, you can really go for it and eat everything to destruction. Seafood platter, cooked breakfast, soup and a roast... We met a couple at the end of their week. When asked if they were hungry they answered that they did not know anymore and that all they knew was that they had to keep eating. They were broken and they still joined us in having seconds of pavlova as well as trying the fudge cream cake.

We got a couples massage. Me and Kim, not the other two. Needless to say, Kim was responsible for booking this frivolous package and I was all to prepared for another crap, soft, Swedish massage with too much oil and not enough pressing. I asked for a “hard massage, please”. Let me explain, I have had several excellent thai massages in my time. I used to have one every week when I was in Thailand and they were hard and they were great. So when I said to Loreen that I wanted a hard massage and that, yes, I had had massages before, she could see that I meant it.

She kicked the shit out of me. She went straight in with the elbow and relentlessly continued as I silently screamed through my face-hole at the bowl of pebbles and twigs that ornately faced me. Kim, it seems, was going through similar turmoil next to me, equally afraid to protest. Seems I am not the man I was in Thailand and I have simultaneously gained tension and lost hardiness in my back. After the beating, we retired to a spa bath thing with some pink champagne, which helped.

Things that I saw this weekend that you probably didn’t

2009-10-11T10:40:00.000-07:00

I was driving along the pothole road. I’ve got pretty good at dodging them by now. But there is a new scam. The kids have got spades and piles of dirt and act like they are filling the holes when you get close. They stop immediately after you pass. I encouraged the work by smiling and putting (both of) my thumbs up to them. I suppose they felt much improved after the exchange.

On Friday I attended and spoke at a ceremony to mark the official opening of Ngcwanguba clinic’s new (ish) prefab unit. You can try to pronounce the name of the clinic now and I will wait for you. Finished? That was pathetic. But at least you tried. A Joburg firm called Fabricated Steel Manufacturers donated the building, which now houses consulting rooms from which the ARV programme is run. There is also space for the HIV support group to meet – an improvement on a bit of grass in the rain.

FSM is run by a bloke called Felix Clemens. Felix attended and was accompanied by a classy pair in Hans and Elody, Chairman and shareholder, respectively and not a couple. They were delightful and pleased to come and see where we are and what we are about.

The ceremony was ace. Lots of ceremonial dancing and ululating (you can say that and all) went on, with local school kids performing traditional dancey stuff, as well as a short skit where a girl tried to persuade her boyfriend to test for HIV. He was not convinced at first but ended up getting into it and getting some counselling. The ARV support group gave a rowdy performance with drums and awesome singing. Doctor Iber whispered that he was pleased to see one woman who had once been at deaths door gyrating like a goodun. Good old ARVs; they keep you alive and enable you to live a full life. Some anyway. Best bit for me was when 4 teenage guys came in traditional garb, topless with beads on and sticks in hand. They did some facing off and a mad vibrating of the chest and shoulder area that I would struggle to imitate. The culmination was two facing off, nearly touching and giving it a good old vibrate. It was intense.

The event started bang on time at 9am. Except for the fact that it didn’t start until nearly 11am. I am getting used to it by now, and thus may well struggle when I get back to working in the UK. Hans gave a lovely speech, emphasising that FSM was a 3 generation family business and one which looks after its workers. It went down well with the crowd. I simply had to say thanks and give a quick bit on what the Jabulani Foundation is. It was a pleasure.

Near the end of the event, when we were all losing the will to live after too many speeches, the ANC bloke got up. He started by admitting that he hadn’t been to school, before proving it by stating that HIV is caused by poor nutrition (wrongly interpreting a previous speech from a nutrition manager) and going on to say that the government was doing A LOT to improve things. The irony of him saying this at an event devoted to the private and NGO sector delivering what the public should was lost. He said that he was pleased to see this Foundation, “I forgot the name...”. I was delighted to hear the front couple of rows shout “JABULANI!”. So they know our name, which is good. I realised the importance of getting out and doing formal things to spread the name and what we are doing. My speech included a last minute spiel on the waiting mothers’ accommodation, which we need to advertise so that pregnant women know they can come and be near the hospital at the end of their term.

Today, at the Superspar in Mthatha, we were loading up with groceries and looking for the shortest queue. I could see that one had 4 guys at it, but they were huddled real close and looked to be together, and with no trolly. I pounced. And verily took the space behind them. They were, it seems, pissed. And they were also buying only one item – again, well done me for choosing that queue. The item was a pack of sanitary pads. What would 4 pissed Xhosa guys be doing buying a pack of Lillets? We will never know. They did not buy them. I can only assume that they didn’t have enough money.

Cow in mud

2009-09-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to SeaView Senior High School to check that they are ready for a dude called Craig Paxton to do his Maths camp next week. They are ready. But on the way I just had to pause and check out a bunch of wee boys pulling a cow out of a swamp.

The rains have just come and the poor cows are obviously not used to it. This skinny half-calf was sitting in the middle of the mud going nowhere until a team of, I dunno, 7 year olds came to pull it by the horns and tail.

They were making progress with it, slowly. It didn’t seem that keen; its only contribution was to lighten the load by pooing on one boys feet as he yanked its tail up.

I went off to the school to have my meeting. It was a short one and I returned via the same route with interest, to see where they had got to. Progress again and he was nearly at the dry bit. I went to help them, like America at the end of the second world war (although my hands did get a bit muddy). Felt like we were going to rip the poor things head off and it definitely wasn’t helping us one bit. They knew it was right to get the cow out though. A bit more heaving and it gunned its skinny legs into action like Bambi and wobbled to a stand. Job well done, I nodded to the leader (you can tell which one, I think. Furthest right except for mickey mouse kid). Cow walked off. Boys walked off.

Halfway through one boy had tried to steal my rucsac but the leader told him off.
Cows are worth a lot of money. I hope the boys each got a decent dinner that night or at least a thank you.

Otter shots

2009-09-04T12:11:00.001-07:00

Here we go. Some obligatory jumping shots and the pick of the scenery. A special 'E' spelled out in the sea for my sister Bettina.

The Otter Trail

2009-09-04T12:09:00.001-07:00

I am back in the village. I was away doing an awesome thing. The thing was the Otter Trail. I know. It sounds pretty weak. To add insult to injury, the otters in question are Cape Clawless Otters. So any danger that you may have been able to conjure from the idea of otter scratch-attacks disappears into comedy. If these otters are to attack, one can only assume that they bring it on with a slapping maneuver. I felt little threat but, as always, was on my guard just in case.

That we had read the visitors book at the beginning and saw that someone spotted a 4 meter zambese shark in the Bloukrans River, was a more immediate concern. I remembered that the smart money on the ‘how will Pete meet his maker in South Africa’ sweepstake was on shark attack. Work colleagues had even bought me a book on shark species. I shuddered.

The otter trail is a 5 day, 4 night hike in Tsitsikamma national park, along the coast at the bottom end of South Africa. It is right at the edge of the Eastern Cape and pretty damn far away from Zithulele. 12 people get to go at a time as there are two huts at each stop with 6 beds in each. The huts are great, simple things: pretty new and very clean. There are cold showers and toilets as well as water. Luxury, really.

So we set off on Friday lunchtime with very heavy bags, even more weighted down with the guilt of packing so much. The group consisted of me and 11 others. I was a complete stranger to all, having taken our friend Liz’s place as she had to work. The otter trail books up one year in advance so she and they did me an amazing favour in letting me go. I was really lucky.

The group was an assortment from 22 to about 60 years old. All were Christian white South Africans apart from me. This made me feel a little bit of an outsider, but I had confidence in my inimitable charm and wit. I am not sure whether anyone suspected that I was a heathen as we did not discuss religion openly. I am fairly sure that my irreverent style and swearing (though toned down considerably) gave the game away. I also omitted to say amen at the group prayer sessions. Who am I kidding, they knew. And they found out that I am living in sin too. I have to admit to harbouring a level of discomfort at various times when people are opining about ‘lord God’ – something which has been a feature of our stay in South Africa. The culture of Christianity here is just much more prevalent than in the UK and it pervades more of other aspects of life (health, government, education), where it is kept conspicuously segregated back home. Still, it is interesting chatting with folk who come from a very different perspective and it makes you challenge your own beliefs and lifestyle.

The otter trail consists of short days of only about 8k. They are hilly but easily manageable in much less than a day. The exception is the fourth day, which is 14k and also involves the hardest river crossing, after 10 of those 14k. It is important to get there at low tide for the crossing so we checked the tide tables eagerly at base camp. 8am. That meant a wake-up of 2am to ensure that we could night-hike there in good time to cross. Exciting. And it really brought the group together with folk bonding and helping eachother out.

As I swam across the Bloukrans, I shuddered again. It was morning, an estuary, the water was cloudy and sharks were known to swim there before (all of these things are to be avoided as they increase the risks of shark attack). Fortunately a woman called Ailsa took the bull by the horns. We were all faffing about on the shore thinking about how to get out of it when someone asked where she was. She was only halfway across the river! Good leadership. Gave us all confidence to follow.

Wait. Liz just came in (real time) and told us (among other things) that they once had a patient here who cut off his own testicles with a pair of scissors. “He was a psych patient”. “No shit”.

After the swim and a little secret sip of whisky for me, we faced a horrible rocky section. The map said ‘not advised’, but we were not keen to go for alternative route bouldering around the edge of the cliff above the water. The cliff was pretty darn steep and ropes were attached for most of the way. No one fell to their death, and that was a real bonus – icing on the cake stuff. We all looked back with an odd tired confusion at how we had managed to do it all.

And we had a beautiful sunny day coming on fast and a feeling of achievement. The views got better and better and the tiredness just made it all the more wonderful.

We saw otters, too, by the way. But when they saw me they bottled it and shot off into the bush. Maybe if they had had claws they would have tried it on, but I gave them that martial arts stare and they knew I had won before the battle had begun.

2009-08-25T12:15:00.000-07:00

Petes birthday

playing with torches

Rhodes, me and pete be a jumping

Kimmy's Comments - Transkei Makeovers

2009-08-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-16T10:51:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-08-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-09T07:37:00.000-07:00

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.

It does exactly what it says on the tin

2009-07-26T13:01:00.002-07:00

I went for a wee run this morning to shake off the pork belly and wine. Off I went along the coast. There are little goat trails contouring along the hills, skirting cliffs above a raging sea. They do not call it the Wild Coast for nothing. It is wild. And it is a coast. In that respect it is a lot like Ronseal Quick Drying Wood Stain.

And goats there were along my run. They scampered in fear as they saw my impressive form wheezing towards them. I have to admit that I didn’t get the best of the spectacular scenery as I was concentrating on 3 foot space in front of me to avoid coming a cropper like Billy, who had gone into rigourmortis on the rocks below a 50 foot cliff. My mind turned to the braai we are having this afternoon, but I think he might be a bit ripe for that and I wasn’t exactly sure how to get to him anyway.

I didn’t go too far, but you reach isolation very quickly. The only bodies out are the odd fisherman. I am sure I could make a joke about that. I reached a nice wee sticky-out cliff and had a good sit down and a swatch at the sea. This is something that I could do for a very long time but breakfast called.

I have just been asked to take control of the egg phase of breakfast. Kim may be a very good doctor and a creative maker of shell and driftwood mobiles, but she is pish at frying eggs and she knows it. Muffin, bacon, eggs, black pepper. Kim likes to sully hers with tomato ketchup. And that is her right, of course.

Today’s braai is to consist of a grill balanced on rocks from the beach. Simple is, of course, besto. We have a chicken and we will verily flatten the bugger and get him well cooked.

Last night we watched ‘Dan in Real Life’. Dan in Real Life is not the worst chick-flick that I have ever watched. And that is about all that we say about that.

Kimmy’s comments : Things are looking up

2009-07-26T01:51:00.000-07:00

What a lovely weekend I’m having. We have come to ‘Hole in the Wall’ which is about 20min drive from the hospital and sits in a pretty bay with the big ‘hole’ in the wall being the featured attraction. I was never a huge fan of hole in the wall, it has a tatty hotel and oozes the remains of colonialism. The beach has lots of local kids begging for money from the spattering of tourists who stay at the hotel. The geographical feature that is the hole in the wall is quite nice, but one visit is enough.

However, we’ve struck gold by finding this little gem of a holiday home owned by some South Africans who rent it out when they’re not staying there. Normally SA holiday homes are a bit kitschy and tasteless with florals and doilies everywhere and old veneer furniture. However, this place is LOVELY. Firstly the location –tucked away just about 100m from the lapping waves on a beautiful quiet beach just round the corner from the more populated ‘hole in the wall’ beach which has a hotel etc. The place is made from a rondavel (roundhouse) with a square bit on the side making more space. All the sea facing walls are covered with big windows, letting lots of light in and the views are spectacular. You can sit with a cup of tea just watching the waves roll. Not a soul in sight. The whole interior is whites and pale blues, shells, marine themes. This owner must be an interior decorator me thinks. Lots of candles and lovely touches, a nice kitchen with everything you could need. It has such a positive vibe and is a great place to recuperate after a weeks work.

We arrived Friday night and were just about to settle down and watch a DVD (our favourite escapism pastime -thanks Al+Tori for the new material). Anyhow, just as we pressed play the electricity cut out (it’s been doing this a lot lately). This ruins all plans of DVDs and cups of tea and dinner as we hadn’t brought our camping stove and the oven works on electric.....bugger. Then Pete had the genius idea of driving over the green hills about another 20minutes to coffee bay, the home of Papazellas pizza place. So we called the owner to check they were running, he cooks on gas so all stations GO. We drove over and ordered our favourites...Papazella for Pete (mince meat, peppers, onions) and Mammazella for me (chicken, garlic, peppers). Funny how we like those named ones best...pappa and mammazellas. These pizzas are DIVINE, even by UK Italian restaurant ratings. Thin bases, nice toppings, mozzarella and even homemade chilli sauce if you can take the heat! It was delicious (are you hungry reading this?). We sat right by the big brick oven that was cooking them to keep warm.

We drove back to our haven at Hole in The Wall and the lights were back on (yippee) so settled down for a DVD- The Last Samuri, which of course I fell asleep watching and missed the end...think he gets the girl which is all I’m bothered about. Pete sold it to me saying there was a love interest in the film, he failed to remind me that that was in between extreme violence fight scenes! It was fun though.

Yesterday(Saturday) we fashioned a game of boule from some sort of round small boulders on the beach. It was fun until I lost miserably, despite my training sessions in the UK during Als wedding week I got my butt kicked twice by pete, who was sure to gloat a ridiculous amount. I blame it on the bloulders not actually being round.

We had a brunch of fried eggs and bacon on a savoury muffin with a cuppa. Brilliant.
Watched The Springboks beat The All Blacks at rugby up at a local restaurant called Whiteclay (the one with the calamari). Then had a pork belly for dinner washed down with divine oaked chardonnay (costing only £3 a bottle). Great stuff.

Today is Sunday. Some friends are coming over to us and we’re having a braai. Winter is here, and it is chilly by South African standards, but by uk standards it is definitely warm enough for a braai. Happy days.

Although being half way through our time here has given us a lull in enthusiasm, this weekend has brought a nice feeling of being settled and knowing our area. Awesome weekend, not much achieved on the surface, but actually underneath that lots done on a mental level. The cost to stay in this paradise for the weekend you ask? £7 per person per night including someone doing the dishes for us. And you know how we Brits love a bargain!

A whiff of sustainability

2009-07-25T04:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to the first Zithulele Pre-school parents’ meeting. It was awesome.

Now, I have been banging on for a good while about how we need a committee to run the school and a parents’ committee to talk to it, sending one representative to our meetings. A pre-school committee we have. Not a big one, but it is there. I never really thought the parents end would happen without me forcing it (pessimistic swine), but on Thursday, Thandeka said to me that there was to be a meeting at 1pm on Friday. I was like, “can I come”, she was like “yes, please come”. So I went. You cannot imagine the happiness that I experience when something like this surprises me out of the blue. Good old Thandeka and good old parents too.

The woman who led the 11 women in the meeting did so with crossed arms, an incredibly Sunday-best smart outfit and the look of a teacher near retirement in the prime of her authority. She speaks good English. I met her when we enrolled the kids and she introduced herself as having worked in the hospital (in the kitchen I think) since the 70s. “Seen a lot of change?”. “Yes”.

The meeting started the way meetings here generally do, in prayer. One person is asked by the chair to pray and they make it up on the spot. Quite organic and specific to the meeting. Not that I understood a word because it was in isiXhosa, as was the meeting. Thandeka did a good job of translating the bulk so I could understand and be understood.

The agenda was laid out in 5 points. They wanted to know: who I was, how the school was being run, what we were feeding the kids, if parents were paying the fees on time and how long the school would run for.

It was well chaired and allowed me to make the point that the school will run as long as we have money; everything costs money so we are trying to do things cheaply to help it last. This was me laying down a precursor for us discussing whether to give the kids lunch or not. That is a discussion for another day.

We started blithely providing lunch, but it is one of the big running costs and we are not sure that it can sustain. Is it our responsibility to provide lunch? There is a chance that we will cut the lunches at the end of this year and start next year by asking parents to send kids to school with a packed lunch. There are pros and cons to this. I like the idea of asking the parents to commit to provide lunch as a condition (this is what Mdumbi’s lot do). Ideally, though, I would like to keep the lunches and use them as a way to teach healthy eating. We hope to have a little veggie garden as well to teach kids and parents from the school and bolster the meals with greenery. There may be a middle way. All of this boils down to money and whether this can sustain after I/we leave.

Abenathi's mum got a roasting from Thandeka because her big kid had not been coming to pick up little Abenathi on time for a week. Mum said sorry and committed to doing it herself at 1pm. Bingo.

Near the end of the meeting I was asked if we would open a grade R class next year. Their kids will all be eligible for grade R next year and that means going to a local school to join a poorly stocked, over-populated class of differently aged children. I had to tell them that we couldn’t do it. Apart from the money and admin, we don’t have a volunteer to run the early childhood development project yet. Added to this, if you get into grade R you are competing with the other schools and that opens up several cans of political worms.

The parents were happy with the school and my answers and nominated a representative to come to our committee meetings. She is a very smiley woman, the mother of the equally cheerful Sibongakonke – surely the longest named child in all the Transkei.

At the end I was told that they suspected that I was touched by God. Far be it from me to argue with those who know more about these things than I do.

Kimmy's Comments - my fading tan

2009-07-23T11:29:00.000-07:00

It’s winter in South Africa now and my tan had faded along with my enthusiasm. I feel like I am in the middle section of the trip now. Right in the thick of the experience, and I’m tired. Pete too I think. We are lucky that our great friends Alexis, PJ, Douglas and Crawford all came to see us last week from Scotland and we did a swanky game drive with plush settings and luxurious accommodation, at a luxurious price too might I add! Think Pete’l tell you more about that.

Now it’s quite clearly post-holiday-blues time and I feel I just need to get my head down bit and let time fly past as fast as possible. Is that bad that I feel I want the time to whizz by? A big part of me can’t wait to be in the ease of home. Of knowing how things work and where to get what I need and that friends and family are nearby. I’m sure I’ll miss South Africa when I’m gone, but it gets tiring being the odd one out all the time, you know, not in the same culture, white skin, different hospital experience here, TB HIV all things I never learnt about at med school, can’t speak the language. I always feel at work I’m accommodating their inability to do stuff proper. You know, how can it be right to have NO hospital transport to get patients to a specialist clinic 1 ½ hrs away? I juts fund it myself these days and give them 50rand towards a taxi ride.How is it ok for authorities to not pay you correctly. How can we run out of basic things. The latest ‘run out of’ is none sterile disposable gloves. The depot where we get them has run out so we’re waiting on them to get more so we can have some. We only have the expensive sterile gloves left...which cost lots more. Poor Monique our pharmacist is going nuts (she is in charge of such stock). She found the cleaning ladies with a big box of these expensive gloves (the gloves meant to be worn only for sewing up stuff or intimate examinations). They were literally changing one set of bed sheets in a pair of gloves, whipping them off, tossing them in the bin then getting another pair for the next bed. I hear screaming in my head at the wastefulness when Monique tells me this. Monique had words with them and has just decided to try to find her own solution by buying 40 pairs of rubber cleaning gloves so each cleaner has one. But she shouldn’t have to do stuff like that, that’s the point I’m making, or the point that is bugging me right now. Government should make these public hospitals run better. I’m on a political rant now so I’ll change subject I think.

Did I tell you about Taxi Queens? The taxis here are like white mini vans with lots of seats and everyone crams on like sardines. Everyone that is except The Taxi Queens...I’ve been told that the pretty girls who the driver takes a liking to can ride up front with him and get free transport...this then entitles him to a bit of loving with the lady. Sounds like a rubbish deal to me, I’d rather walk personally, but I guess if you have no money these sorts of things happen when you’re desperate.

I’m trying to have some hobbies again. I keep meaning to plant veg in the little garden plot out back – mum you would be very disappointed at my lack of green fingers. However, in my lunch break today I made a hanging mobile from shells and driftwood. Hung it in the bedroom tonight... I hope pete doesn’t think it too voodoo! He helped me for ages combing the beach for shells with natural holes in them to my specific liking. Oh the wild life we lead!

Trapped

2009-07-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

I am trapped again. I am sitting on my swivel chair in my office and I cannot go anywhere. Thandeka 2 has mopped the floor around me. This is deeply oppressive. Trapped in my own home. I just wheeled myself over to the window to open it in an attempt to let some air in to dry the floor more quickly. I can see it drying now. In patches. I might be able to step through it carefully. Hopefully the font room is not a minefield as well or I could be trapped here for some time. I am hungry and thirsty.

Restless Natives

2009-07-15T01:24:00.000-07:00

I am about to watch the movie Restless Natives. It is a quintessential Scottish movie. It is charming and funny and harmless. I think. I last watched it when I was very young so I am not sure. I hope it is not crapola.

DVDs are a big part of life out here. Sad really, but escapism really works and there is nothing quite like locking yourself away and watching an old movie that you once loved. That Kim has baked buns is the icing on the cake, if you will. I am full of lasagne, but I can manage a cake or two. Indeed, I may have several. For it is Sunday evening and hang the expense!

On Friday, Roger is coming with a team of missionaries to pick up litter in Zithulele. I am excited about that and sad to miss it. Only risk is that it is all white Americans doing the up-picking. I hope he gets the community involved and am sure he will. Saturday is Nelson Mandela Day (his 91^st birthday) and people are encouraged to do something good for their community, so it seems an excellent opportunity to get folk mobilised.

Roger has managed to convince the hospital management to allow two big bins outside their gate. They will dispose of the rubbish that gathers too, which is awesome. The place is a complete kip, so we hope that this little measure improves things a bit. You can’t really blame people for tossing their rubbish on the ground when there is no refuse service in the village. Still gets on my nerves though. Having said all of that, I have seen friends of mine throw rubbish on the street in Glasgow when a bin was nearby. You know who you are and you are a tit.

Time for Restless Natives and a cake.

Restless Natives was very good. A sweet movie that shamelessly pushes Scotland as a tourist destination. Tonight (for it is days later now) must watch Kim’s choice of film. That means, to my utter resignation, The Accidental Bride. I am not even sure if that is the title but it is something like that and it already smells fairly bad. Yes, we are 20 minutes in and I am considering punching myself in the face so hard that I go to sleep.

Seeing some old friends on Sunday when we go to a swanky game reserve. It is not called safari. If you call it safari, South Africans take the piss. It is a game lodge. And it sounds real nice. A top place to see friends that we haven’t in ages and we are delighted that they are coming pretty close to us. Delighted that they made it onto the plane really, as two amongst them have a reputation for missing flights abroad. PJ and Douglas went to T in the Park and still managed to get on the plane the next day. Incredible. Crawford apparently will not know that he is going to South Africa until he is there and Alexis is the brains behind the operation.

The Accidental Bride was bad. Love Pete.

Another lost blog

2009-07-12T10:10:00.000-07:00

Bollocks. I just lost anther blog. I highlighted it and dragged it here from a word document and the bastard thing disappeared. I had not saved it. So now I have to rewrite it in its entirety, trying to catch the same mood and candor. Ahem:

This weekend we went to the Kraal backpackers. It was pretty cool, but we didn't sleep that well because the bed was too wee. Travellers talk shite. Great food though.

The end. Buggeration.

Kimmy's Comments - and then there were two

2009-07-12T08:21:00.000-07:00

Firstly thank you for all your lovely thoughtful words. I found it really helpful posting my last blog and really appreciated all the comments. Last week was a thoughtful week, I had my 6 month assessment with my UK GP trainer over the phone and we talked about my experiences and how I can relate them back to GP life in the UK. I’d thought that this yr wouldn’t really translate back to home, but after my assessment on thursday I realised that I’ve learnt so much and grown so much as a doctor. I felt really proud showing him my online portfolio of experiences. I think the assessment validated all my recent thoughts about my time here. It was great. I feel much more competent now, I’ve settled in to the work more.

More tails from work.....So, oncall on Thursday evening there was an emergency caesarean section to do. Karl pulled the baby from the womb and passed it to the midwife “dombi” they said–a girl. Then he said “I’ll just check there aren’t twins” and then pulled out another baby, bigger than the first and the nurses shouted “inkwenkwe” A BOY! They were all dancing around and gleeful about this surprise, it was infectious. Noone had the slightest idea there were twins, it is just routine to say ‘better check for a second one’ but you never actually find one.

The first baby who was much smaller and the midwife said she was worried about her so I descrubbed to resuscitate her. Her we go again I was thinking, a rerun of the horrible resusc at the weekend with the baby who died. But, I felt calmer after my previous experience and bagged the baby and after 10minutes she started breathing for herself. It was quite comical because we only had one incubator bed thingy so the big fat brother was squashed on the right side and the little scrap of a sister I was helping breathe was ‘topping and tailing’ (it is better to resusc head downwards). At one point the brother was trying to suckle the big toe of his older sister. It was funny (well, funny once the sister was breathing herself).

So, that was great, a feeling of competence and joy that the twin was okay. Not sure how this first time mum feels about 2 kids, but we were all delighted! Hope she has enough food for them both.

I’ve now moved from maternity to paediatrics ward. I feel sad to leave maternity because I knew the sisters well and felt comfortable there, but this profession is about constantly testing and challenging yourself. You’re never left on any ward long enough to get bored!
Paeds is different in many ways. When the kids are getting better it is lovely, they run around the ward and as they get more confident they interact with you too. Some get quite cheeky, they’re not so hung up on skin colour and what’s proper. If you pull a silly face at them they tend to smile. This is obviously an odd balance though, as they also know sometimes you might have to take a blood test ie needle ie pain and misery, so some of them don’t like me or cry if I appear in the room. I’m used to that now though.

We have a little burns unit on the ward....5 kids with horrid burns. It happens a lot, burns from stoves usually, and they throw all sorts on it...Dettol is a favourite ‘to stop infection’...and to burn the skin and add chemical burns to their list of problems. Brilliant! We have to give the kiddies ketamine before we change their dressings because the burns are so sore. Poor little things. I had an amusing interlude on my wards round last week when Shannon the occupational therapist was in the burns room with a sweet 4 yr old girl who has badly burnt her right hand. All the skin is blistered and peeling off. Shannon wants to keep the fingers and wrist mobile so that as the skin heals it doesn’t tighten up reducing movement. However, kids are so up for it if you just bark orders like ‘clench your fist and open it’ so instead, Shannon was found by me singing twinkle twinkle little star whilst twinkling her fingers (opening and closing them) with this sweeeet little girl singing along and moving her fingers. It was a great moment, seeing how such a simple clever thing will affect the function of this girls dominant hand in the future. Happy stories in kimmy’s comments today.

I even had one 1 yr old who managed to giggle and laugh all through me sticking needles in his arms trying to get a precious blood sample. Who knows why, I just kept grinning at him and he seemed not to feel the pain. He was cute. I’ve noticed my ‘favourite child of the week’ is always the one that smiles at me. Does that make me a bad person? I was on fired on Friday though, had 1 drip (iv line) to put in and two blood samples to take and got them all pretty quickly. I was delighted. I high fived the nurses. They probably think I'm nuts, but hopefully in an infectious way. I think I’ll like get to like paeds, at least I hope so.

Kimmys comments – “Life and Death in The Village”

2009-07-05T13:49:00.000-07:00

It’s strange being back in Zithulele Village where there is not very much. A stark contrast to my last two weeks in The UK where takeaways are on tap, corner shops sell valuable supplies and clean water and working electricity are a given.
Life is different here, polar opposite. After the trip home this seems more obvious to me than ever. And yet we try to surround ourselves with the comforts of home, as if to cope better. Watch a DVD on the laptop and escape into a story line. Tucked away in the hospital accommodation complex whilst the rain beats down on our nice sealed roof. All the while knowing that a big storm 2 weeks back blew the thatched roofs off a few rondavel houses in the area. I’m sure they’re not so comfortable or dry.
And so life is different here compared to home...as is death. I’ve been thinking a lot about it over the weekend. On Saturday night oncall I resuscitated a 1200g baby born prematurely. The baby was delivered by emergency caesarean section (cut out) at midnight(these things always happen at the most inconvenient times!). After 35minutes of adrenaline, breathing for the baby with a bag and tube and pumping it’s heart with compressions we had to stop and let it fend for itself (we don’t have any intensive care facilities and can’t ventilate (breath for) a baby for ever) so have to let it try for itself after a time). The Drs in Mthatha Hospital (referral hosp) are also on strike. In a nut shell this was survival of the fittest. The baby never breathed for itself, and I watched the heart slow and stop. It was a boy. He didn’t survive. It was tough.
This mum has had 13 pregnancies and only two live children. It must be like a recurring nightmare for her. Eleven premature labours all ending badly. I imagine how a UK woman might react to such a thing (from my UK hospital experiences) compared with this Xhosa lady. I just imagine lots of noise and tears and sadness. But women here are so tough, I don’t know, they just seem to get on with it. She said a brief goodbye to the pale fetus wrapped in its blanket and then took a deep breath and coped. Is this just a cultural thing? It is not the first time I’ve witnessed tragic death here believe me, and the reaction is often similar. Outwardly women are expected to wear black mourning clothes for a period of time, inwardly I am not sure what goes on. I wonder if they grieve properly? They don’t break down and cry, sometimes I see them smiling and laughing within days. Which reaction to death is right? Is there a ‘better’ way to react? Don’t they care? That is unfair, I am sure they do. Certainly we don’t comfortably talk about death back home, though it one of those certainties in life. Maybe death is just more exposed here, more expected, more witnessed by communities? All just thoughts running through my mind. No right or wrong answers of course. I think it is good to be challenged by these things and to think about patients’ health beliefs etc.
In the UK we love the whole ‘debriefing’ thing at work. Children rarely die, so if they do everybody has a moment to catch their breath and discuss things if they feel like it. Not quite the same here. I remember being called to a ‘gasping’ baby on my first evening oncall only to arrive to a blue breathless lifeless baby. I think I was more visibly upset by this than the mother whom I broke the news to. I was offering my emotional support to the nurses saying they did all they could....In retrospect 4 months down the line I think they probably thought me barking mad and overreacting for being so affected. It is just the way things go out here. Kids die. Anyway, this blog is sort of a debrief for me. My skin has certainly thickened in the last 4 months, and so I could carry on to the next sick patient this weekend after the awful resuscitation of that newborn baby. I can step back and objectively say that the baby didn’t stand much chance given the medical history of the mum, but still it feels like a failure on your part as a doctor when a fresh new life never really started.
My oncall has been rubbish this weekend. Lots of sleepless nights up on the wards. I am still oncall as I type. It’s Sunday night and I finish tomorrow at 8, well, not really finish because I then start the fresh working day of Monday. The break will come next weekend. My superstitious-ness comes out when I am oncall. I think if I look at my phone it will ring. Even as I type this blog I think my phone will go because I am thinking about it. If I put my socks on it’ll ring. Or if I leave the room. I go quietly insane having this hate-hate relationship with my ringtone. I realise I sound completely mad....if you’re a medic you might get it??? I thought I could set up the phone with a special ring for the hospital so that I wouldn’t jump if pete or a friend called. My phone is too basic for that. Damn. It hasn’t rung yet so I’m going to post the blog and not look at that bloody phone!

PS sorry this post is so dark.

Stormy weather

2009-07-04T01:18:00.000-07:00

It has been an interesting half week back with lots happening and not happening.

Our newly recruited and fantastic ARV counsellor did not turn up for work on day one and gave Sal a weak excuse when called. So she can beat it and I am trying to contact the number 3 choice to give her a go. I had the best gut feel about number 3, despite her having slightly weaker English, so let's see if I was right. Only problem is that I am not getting through on her phone.

School is out so that is one less thing to think about for now. Thandeka, the teacher, has had her roof pretty much blow off in some horrendous winds. She called me to see if the Foundation can help. I am going to speak to her today, but I think this could be a mine field. My instant reaction is to help fix it with funding, but I have a nagging feeling that that is not the answer. I have thought about an advance on her pay, but that could lead to a lot of requests for advances on pay from all our employees. What I can do is give budgeting advice to try to get her managing her finances better. We shall see.

I am learning constantly about the dynamics of charity and development work. I suspect I will write more about that later. At the moment I am quietly content that this job is so difficult and that I think I can get it right with time and help from others. It is all about relationships.

Kim had an awful night on call last night, only returning for about 2 and a half hours of the night between doing a caesarian and stitching up some dudes hand and other things. Today is is second on call so hopefully will be free and then tomorrow she is back first on call. She is sleeping next door with a face that has slept so deeply on the pillow that it has nearly folded itself in half. I watched In The Thick Of It whilst she healed the sick and laughed my ass off (big thank you to Tom and Sara for that pressie). I had watched the movie In The Loop on the plane and the series is as good if not better. Lots of excellently creative swearing which always pleases me. And the Scots run the show, just like real UK government.

So it is Saturday and I am not sure what we'll do today. It pissed it down all last night, which must have been very helpful for Thandeka and her bust roof. And today is grey and threatening. The Sprinboks get the chance to put the nail in the coffin of the Lions this afternoon. The series is over and we lost, but I suspect it will be a hard contested game anyway. That is if we have any uninjured players left.

Back in the village

2009-07-04T01:16:00.000-07:00

Back again. That flew by quickly. Al and Tori are now successfully married. To eachother. And that is super. Tori is also with child so it is very much all go in the family progress department. The only sad thing is that we are based out here and can’t spend time with the happy couple over the next few months to the birth and beyond. We should return to a wee baby in early 2010.

My body is ruined after a week of food abuse and heavy drinking. It was an ace time in lovely surroundings. My best man’s speech went well and I kept the swearing to a minimum to parents’ delight. Saw lots of family which was brilliant. We were in a slightly bizarre culture shock mode but hopefully it didn’t show too much. My niece Isla is so different now and so lovely. Liz, Ian and her arrived after a long car journey and I stuck my big beardy face real close to say “hi”. Needless to say it scared the crap out of her and she screamed. Nice.

Got a lovely welcome back here in Zithulele as pretty much everyone came round to say hi. Monique who has been borrowing our house had cooked our dinner and cleaned the place so that was lovely.

It is odd to be back. Great to be in our home and not hoboing around at other peoples houses or hotels (though those were are mint). We will be slobbing hard this week. Kim is on call this weekend which is crap in one way but quite good to get it out of the way.

We flew from Joburg to Mthatha over the Drachensburg mountains, which are more than likely spelt differently than that. They are beautiful though. I am keen to go and walk about in them. Kim would rather eat broken glass smothered in dung than do so, so I need to work the persuasive angle there.

The long flight from London was eased by another awesome upgrade courtesy of Al’s e-mailing the flight crew. Had a good sleep and watched good movies and the food was, well, good. Economy class really is not good enough anymore. I wonder if I could ever afford to travel club everywhere I went?

In other annoyances, I realized that all of the e-mails that I sent the DfT did not get there because of DISCRIMINATION against yahoo. The DfT is an e-mailist Department and must be stopped. I will try to resend the e-mails from another address and apologise to people who think that I am rude, rather than simply incompetent.

Decided to try to keep up the blog a bit more so we will see how that goes.

Coming home

2009-06-16T02:25:00.000-07:00

Hello again! We are now getting very excited because we get to come home for a week for Al (my brother) and Tori’s wedding, which will be mint. Dreamt about it last night. I have a speech to prepare. I will be starting with a slide show and appeal for the Jabulani Foundation, before moving on to the regular best man’s speech. Hopefully everyone will be drunk and feeling generous.

Coming home will also be an ace opportunity to reflect on what we have done in 3 months and think about the next 6.

We are now at ‘small community saturation’ some days and the fact that everyone lives, works and socialises together gets a bit old. Who’da thunkit. Great people, but one needs one’s space and one has to work harder and be more organised here to get it. Cliques form unintentionally and people (particularly the girls) get offended left, right and centre for seemingly no reason. I am out of a lot of it because i don’t work at the hospital.

Why is no-one writing comments on the blog anymore? Hmm?

Meanwhile in random discoveries news, i went on facebook just now and came across www.ed-athlete.com. Some of the guys who i used to humiliate daily with unstoppable, aggressive blows to the body and head, have clearly got over the beatings and put together what will be a very good product. The website is ace and i am well excited for them. Seems that when i went to London to get all soft, they kept training and fighting and got good. Don’t get me wrong, i could still paste them, but it would be closer now. And that was a lie. Well done chaps.

Tinternet

2009-06-07T12:27:00.001-07:00

I wrote this a week ago. Well the internet is no more. Or rather, limitless internet is no more. The Foundation was on a contract where you get pretty much limitless internet for a set amount each month. This meant that I could surf with gay abandon for work and also have a clear conscience going online for play, uploading photos etc.

But now that is all over and we are back to pay-as-you-go. Should be much better for the Foundation in terms of cost, but it will mean that I need to get frugal again with internet. Hence, this is being drafted in Word. And there will be fewer photos uploaded in future.

My body started to disintegrate after the last blog entry. Yes, the Comrades seems not to have let me away with it and I came down with a rotten cold with pulsating head and massive white-heads on nose. Sometimes I think your body gives up in general after a big event like that. It may also have been a mistake to play frisbee on Wednesday, in retrospect. Now I am coming out of it and I have read an awesome book and watched 3 movies. The book was part two in a trilogy, written by a Swedish fella called Stieg Larsson. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was good, but the Girl who Played with Fire was better and now I must get hold of the third or I will go mental. Not sure if it has been translated from the Swedish yet. They are all really exciting books with lots of sex and violence and whatnot.

I think it is a braai day. Kim is off to the hospital and will probably be there until lunchtime. Which gives me plenty of time to make the fire and prepare food.

We now have a volleyball court set up behind our house on the grass. Volleyball is tremendous. I intend a hostile take-over of the Frisbee monopoly. I do enjoy Frisbee but it really isn’t a sport when you think hard about it. Like cricket.

Organised, pro-active go-getter, never had sex before

2009-06-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, Sally and I will interview for two new ARV counselors. The role is extremely important in keeping HIV positive people alive by teaching and supporting the drug taking regime. We do not pay them a great deal, because we cannot afford it. R1000/mth is all. We are trying to find funding for more. The current situation means that counselors can be promoted to become hospital cleaners. Not cool. I hope to get back to you on that one.

But in the meantime, we recruit, and we got 35 application forms last week. It was very interesting reading them and deciding how to sift. First time my DfT experience has come directly to bear as I did a bit of recruitment before leaving London, but the process has to be different here. Most people are long term unemployed and badly educated. Memories of competency based interviews fade into the distance. The hardest thing to test for is initiative. We want someone with good English, who is organised, can learn processes and can take the initiative.

The form was fairly simple and largely tested written English skills, with some questions to tease out knowledge of the role and motivation for going for the job. Many attached CVs, education records and training course certificates. Sal made it clear that attendance at these courses counts for pretty much nothing, so we ignored them for the most part.

I suggested that we use a test of some sort to help our chances of finding someone fit for the job. On Tuesday night I will know if it was a silly idea. We are going to get one of the existing counselors to teach them how to do a simple diary task, before asking them to replicate it in the interview. It basically consists of them making a mock follow-up appointment with a pretend patient and ensuring that it is recorded and the patient understands. I am pretty excited to see how it goes. If we get some good potential people we are going to earmark them for future jobs. If we find a few with good English, we can use them as interpreters.

Another part of the sift is about asking them to turn up on time. We have said that if anyone is late we are not going to interview them. This is the right theory but in practice we may have to be more flexible. The whole Africa time thing means we are unlikely to get everyone there on time.

Ideally we want someone who is HIV positive, admits it freely and believes in the programme, has been through it and knows how important it is to take your drugs on time every day for the rest of your life. Not ruling out anyone else, but it would be a bonus.

One dude stood out from his application form. He attached certificates. I do not know how to set this one up for you, so I am just going to say it. The guy has successfully completed a virginity test. Twice. And he has the paperwork to prove it. (Doctor) Sal does not know how one would test for a man’s virginity. How we laughed. I am not in Kansas anymore.

The Van Rensburgs

2009-05-26T03:11:00.000-07:00

After: we all sat down to a fantastic breakfast at a cafe in Howick on Monday. From the left: Kimmy, Monique, me, Corinne and Stephen. Note Kim's awesome new haircut. Everyone had a good weekend.

Before: Stephen managed to be chipper even after a 40th birthday party the night before. It wasn't his! I told him that I usually breakfast in similar surroundings, and the red wine complimented the porridge nicely.

2009-05-26T01:14:00.000-07:00

Kim managed to snap me just before the finish line. And then after it, when I was buckled.

The Comrades Marathon

2009-05-26T00:21:00.000-07:00

That was the Comrades Marathon then. I finished in 6,050th place out of something over 12,000, so I am pretty happy, yet amazed that so many bloody people managed to run it so fast. These South Africans don't bugger about. In Britain, the London Marathon is the biggy, really and folk will do it once or twice. Here they double and a bit the length and folk do it 4, 5, double figures of times. First time runners are in the minority.

And it is really, really hard. Each year the direction changes from uphill (durban to pietermaritzburg) to downhill. This year was a down run. I had spoken to people who had done it before. EVERYONE said that down is harder. Yet I still managed to find some male arrogance to think that it can't be that bad and my knees are nails-hard. Running down hill takes less energy and pain is all in the mind.

Well, it just bashes you guts about like billy-o. Pain is not in your mind, it is in your knees and ankles and shoulders and stomach and back and toes and chafing... Every drop of liquid that has gone in gets sloshed about, as your internal organs splat around against the more solid bits of anatomy. Ankles that were previously reliable start to feel a bit edgey and knees lose their bounce.

Fields Hill was the real bugger. After about 40 and a bit miles, you start pouring down this long, sustained motorway hill, with an absolute bastard of a camber. My brain was already wrecked because I thought that I had already done Fields Hill (maybe I was aslo wrong to go in blind to the route!). Nope, that was another long sustained downhill. Little things like that really depress one when one is tired.

Kilometer markers lose their charm in the second half and your brain feels tired of figuring out how far and how long and how fast. Done 45k, only a marathon to go. Done 59, only 30 to go. Only 10 to go now but I am very tired and I am slowing down. The worst moment for me was when I was nearing a marker and I thought it was going to say "2k to go". It actually said "Screw you Pete, you have 3k to go. You are an idiot. Why did you not pay more attention? Why are you running so slowly? Why don't you just give up you worthless piece of...". Impressive that they could write all of that on one small sign. It was an upsetting time for me as I watched 10 and a half hours slip away from me.

Visualisation is very important. I started with visions of me tearing across the finish line with Kim there waiting for me for a big hug and a kiss. That was a good one and lasted me through halfway. Spurred me on big time. As time went on though, it disolved into daydreams of me just having a nice lie-down at the finish, which is dangerously close to "ooh, I could have a nice lie-down now". Put some music on and keep going.

The start had been ace. Everyone in paper t-shirts (to cast off) huddled together and listened to a blaring 'Chariots of Fire'. It was 05:30 and just to be hanging around a South African city in the dark felt like an achievement. My dreams came true when some zulu women did that awesome "Li-li-li-li-li-li-li" thing. I felt a bit like I was on the tube when some oak (guy) asked "can you please move down that way a bit so we can all get in?". And we sang Shosholoza, which is a stirring workmans song about moving forward (down the mines). The excitement was palpable. No nerves, just a good buzz and a setting of the mind to do your own thing. Then they go off and you go too fast anyway because doing your own thing is boring.

The first half of the race is undulating but hovers about 600-700 meters. When I went down Polly Shortts (the first of the big five hills), I thought that the up run would be absolute murder because you would meet Polly after 80k. After halfway you start to wend your way downhill towards 0, running into the heat, towards the big city.

The support is tremendous, with people offering all sorts of random fuel as well as big tubs of vaseline (thanks) and salt for the cramps. There are braais everywhere. Actually the most amazing support was near the start. The people of Pietermaritzburg got up early to cheer us on and it meant a lot.

Hydration is tricky to say the least. There is water, coke and Powerade at each station and they come every 2k. I took to mixing coke with water and chopping and changing that with Powerade. Sometimes I had to neck some straight water. Over the course of the race I ate about 2 to 2 and a half bananas, 2 baby potatoes with salt, 8 jelly babies, a (very) mini Bar One (Marsbar), a quarter orange. It was not enough and I had to batter in the Powerade to get calories in. Back to sloshing and the onset of nausea.

Stephen, thanks for the porridge for brekkie. I would not have made it without that. More about the Van Rensburgs to follow...

At 12:00:00 the gun was fired and the race was over. I clung to the fence and Kim and watched as the last guy (who happened to have overcome an 11 year heroin addiction - well done) crossed the line. The guy behind him collapsed as though he had been shot. I cannot imagine running for 12 hours and missing it by seconds. I nearly cried. Luckily I am not soft, so I held it together. We stayed to applaud the next few who looked devastated. It is a heartbreaking thing to see and they had it much harder than me because they were on their feet for longer.

Yes I would like to do the up run. But not for a while. And I will train much harder next time. I am delighted with my time and how the race went. The weather could not have been more forgiving. Also, I am very thankful for all the great messages of support people sent me. They mean so much.

After vomitting and feeling awful for an hour, I realised that the only liquid that I could feasably ingest (water does nothing, no salts; anything sweet was impossible) was beer. Yes, beer. Beer made me feel better. Beer for ultramarathon recovery. Beer is the ultimate sports drink. Beer? Yes. Beer.

Pretend I posted this last week.

2009-05-26T00:18:00.000-07:00

One week to go now until Comrades and I am really excited. It is a huge event and all South African’s seem to know about it. 12,000 odd runners and lots of history. I feel pretty fit now and don’t (touch wood) have any injuries, so I think I can manage it. The weather will be the biggest factor and if I don’t finish it, I think it will be humidity that does for me. If, by some miracle, it is cool I am going to bash it out good and proper.

It is going to be nice to be in a city again too. Last night we were gutting ourselves laughing as we sat round the fire pit as another chicken cock-crowed at the wrong time and then a bunch of goats went off too. The dogs followed suit and completed this Transkei symphony. Yes, it is mental here.

As we sat there digesting the fillet, we put the world to rights. The fillet was good with the George’s Marvelous Medicine marinade. No complaints, anyway. And we have leftovers today.

Talk turned to race and incentives for societal improvements. We often go back over the turf of the hand-out culture, the education (and other infrastructure) deficit in the black community, and the fact that SA is very young indeed. Liz was saying that the first Apartheid laws came in back in 1920-ish. So if it took that long to set it up, it will take a bloody long time to reverse.

I am getting a little obsessed with how that impacts on my work. And how can we make helpful projects that are what the community wants and needs and that can last and thrive when we bugger off. There just isn’t a supply of IT literate workers here, who could run projects. Fortunately, Kate the therapist just did a thesis on community engagement in Zithulele, so I am off to have a read of it (exec summary at least!).

My gut feeling is that the solution is to plan for a stream of external expertise to come in for the short and medium term and build projects, in full consultation with the community, at all times involving community people and looking to education to support. We also could use a needs assessment done of Zithulele and a continuation of the community engagement strategy that my predecessor started.

It is hard to ask people what they think they need for their community without prejudicing the discussion with possible solutions. “What would you like for the community, a library?”, “Yes please, I would like a library.”

There is a cross-over here with my old job at the Department for Transport. We were at pains to try to identify what the transport problems of the main UK corridors (ports to cities, between cities and so on) are, without messing it up with thinking of existing motorways and projects that already exist in the planning stage. There are tonnes of existing proposals for motorway improvement out there and it is hard to take a blank sheet look at congestion, for example, when there is already expectation there.

Interesting. Or not. For ‘not’ read previous entry on poo.

If at any point you get bored with this chat, please feel free to send me some abuse, via the comments section.

photo explanation

2009-05-19T03:46:00.000-07:00

Those last two pictures didn't get an explanation. The one is of us playing a game of 'ultimate'. Some people call it Ultimate Frizbee, but they are WRONG. The real name is ultimate, according to our awesome amaerican dvd on the matter. and the game is really good fun. Man, I never did this sort of thing at home. having said that, i rode a bike with a basket on the front in japan. nice how the rules of what is cool/acceptable change when you are far away. we play every monday night, but this one was at hole in the wall at the weekend. beach is besto!

The second picture is how i am going to win the world photo championships. as you will see, i have taken a photo of a white person's hand and a black person's hand. the ink on each is to show they have voted in the south african general election. the way i have brought to mind that race is a key issue, but that everyone is in it together and all votes count, is probably what will give me the edge. well done, me. sometimes i am so deep i can hardly even hear me, i just get a wierd echo.

2009-05-17T04:36:00.000-07:00

The beautiful Transkei

2009-05-17T02:56:00.000-07:00

Here we have two shots from the journey to Bulungula. The one from a drive inlandyways and the other fromt the coastal walk. Pretty good both ways really.

Beach Times

2009-05-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

Spuit-poep

2009-05-15T10:11:00.000-07:00

Yes. Pronounced “shpate-poop”, it means ‘squirt-fart’ in Afrikaans and I have got it. Or rather, I had it. It is all in the preparation for a big race. It means that you didn’t train enough until the last minute so your body hates you and resorts to diahorreah (which I can never spell).
One week to go and there is nothing more I can do to get fitter now. I just have to trust that I can crawl the 55 miles from Pietermaritzburg to Durban in under 12 hours.

Actually, I just read about an HIV positive dude who is doing it to show that you can do so, despite being on anti-retroviral medicine. He is more hardcore than me, but I am not telling you who he is, so you will just have to sponsor me instead. Ha!

If you want to sponsor me, please look at http://www.jabulanifoundation.org/help.html to find out how to make a bank payment.

So off to Pietermaritzburg next weekend to stay with more of Gareth’s friends (who all seem to be utterly awesome). Kim is excited about shopping in a big city and I am not. The run is on Sunday and I will try to write something on Monday or Tuesday to let you know exactly which hospital I got sent to after collapsing after how many kilometres.

Folk have been really generous in sponsoring me, even Chris Horne who protested that I only write when I am asking for money. Sorry Chris, I love you really. Chris and I used to smash eachother in the face (thai boxing) for a hobby. Well, I smashed his face, he couldn’t really reach mine. Now we are both unable to muster more than about 4 press-ups and 2 squats – the mighty are fallen. I do miss the old boxing a great deal, but running is fun too and (hopefully) no-one hits you when you are running.

Braai time this weekend! And it shall be in the fire pit of destiny. We are taking it back to the old school with wood and paper to start, rather than lighters.

I have just made a marinade which will be applied to a massive-o fillet for 24 hours. The marinade is as follows, red wine (bottle of), Old Brown Sherry, onion, garlic, course grain mustard, Worcester sauce, chillis, sunflower oil, bay leaf, salt, pepper. If it tastes awful I have wasted a heck of a lump o meat. So fingers crossed please. I told myself yesterday that I would stay off the booze until after the race. Now I want a beer more than I want to see my niece. That is a bit unfair, but she is not here in my fridge, taunting me. I would rather see Isla than have a beer. Maybe I could look at Facebook and then have a beer. NO!

I thought about work (DfT) the past few days. Decided to write an e-mail to some folks there. Then realised that I should asked for sponsorship whilst at it. Then felt bad because I only write when I am asking for money. It is hard being me, with my brain talking shit to me, sometimes. I wrote anyway.

I read a book called the three letter plague recently. It is really good, if you like reading about HIV. I usually give up on books that are good for me, but this one was really engaging and easy going. Sad stuff in there, but very human and interesting. It is all about ARV programmes in rural SA, so very relevant. I sat in with Doctor Liz and one of the ARV counsellors this week as I am going to recruit a new counsellor soon, so I wanted to see what they do. She was a great translator. The most interesting bit was when a guy came in with his wife. He was just going onto ARVs and she was already on them. Liz quizzed him through the counsellor about “how long do you have to take ARVs?” (the rest of your life) and “what do the ARVs do?” (they boost your bodies soldiers and suppress the disease). She then spilled a box of assorted pills onto the table and asked him to put aside which ones he would take in the morning and name them. He got it all right so high hopes. It is important to have someone to help you with this stuff so it is cool that he has his wife going through the same thing. By the same token though, saw another woman who was happy to find out that her baby was negative.

So me and Sally have made an application form and we shall see how many applicants we get. Interviewing is not going to be like DfT. Competency based interviews are a thing of the past to me and I think it is back to the old gut feeling and asking hypothetical questions. When someone is long term unemployed, you can’t ask them if they have had relevant experience. We just need someone with good English (purely to translate for the doctors) who is organised and has initiative. Sounds simple enough.

Kim is back from the hospital from where she got called this evening. She is on call all weekend so we are here. It is nice in a way to hang around Zithulele and potter. Poor Kim has the Spuit-poep now, but I don’t think there is anyone to take her place. Grim.

Losing a blog

2009-05-06T22:59:00.000-07:00

Losing a blog you’ve typed is miserable, it never seems genuine when you retype it. So I’m going to instead write a new version of the old one I just tried to post and lost...

Firstly, I’d like to inform you all that I have been paid. Yup. Awesome.

Secondly, I have had a good week so far, mainly cos I’m not oncall this week at all which is great. Did have a baby die this morning, but they were very sick form birth. Also one of the pregnant mums dies over the w/e, which sucks, but also expected. She was HIV+ve and had defaulted (stopped herself) taking her ARV meds (antiretroviral meds for HIV). She came in in end stage AIDs with no immune response to speak of. We put her on TB treatment but she died shortly after a premature labour delivering her dead baby. Sad. And apparently we now have a problem with the ARVs supplies from the drugs people and only have enough for 1 week unless they send more. This is a disaster since when taking ARVs it is vital not to forget any tabs or have any break since the HIV virus mutates v quickly and if given half a chance will become resistant to the ARVS, then you are screwed.

ON to cheerier thing, I am on a new fitness regime. I promised myself I’d return from SA a tanned svelte goddess, and so far that hasn’t been realised (mostly due to stress induced chocolate/crisp gobbling). Kim = tan – svelte goddess currently. So, I am now a founding member of ‘The Fit Four’ which consists of me, Monique and Liz (both work at hosp) and our new personal trainer Peter Grant. He is delighted because he gets to boss us around a lot. We are pleased because someone tells us what to do. Win win. He is running a secret circuits class from our living room twice a week. It is secret and we don’t want to spread the word because a) not enough room in our living room for loads of sweaty people b) don’t want other annoying super fit girls to turn up and put me to shame (I’m horrid aren’t I?) and c) because the name
‘The Fit Four’ reminds me of Famous Five and they always had a secret or two.

Anyway, Pete’s been really resourceful eg using the step outside for step up exercises, using 5L water bottles for weights, incorporating thai boxing stuff too. The down side is we have to listen to his music tastes because he’s made a playlist for ‘workout time’. He even downloaded a timer from the internet which beeps at minute intervals for the circuit changes – I think he’s found a new vocation. We are slightly scared of him in trainer mode though. He has threatened that if he sees us eating chocolate or crisps he is allowed to shout “drop and give me twenty”. Oh crap!
This w/e should be fun. Off to a place called Hole in The Wall, so named because of the cliff out to sea which has been eroded away making a hole (see picture). Eight of us are staying in this big house and we plan on plenty of Braai action, Frisbee, reading, sunbathing. Maybe go to whiteclay for calamari. Awesome.

The following w/e I’m working, then the one after is Durban time for Comrades race for Pete. I’m excited since Monique and Liz are going too and they’re from Durban and know the shops and sights well. Oh yes, clothes shopping here I come, I have been starved of civilisation for months now, and SA has rubbish clothes shops. However, they’ve promised me that Durban is awesome for shopping. Pete is ok with all this as long as I’m at the finish line on the Sunday. Fortunately for me it isn’t like WHW race, and no support group is allowed. Shucks, gutted!! No ambrosia cream rice/flapjack rocky bucket mess. So, I’ll just have to spend the time wisely, by shopping.

So, the Fit Four tour to Durban soon, though only Peter will be exercising that w/e – unless you count carrying clothes to the changing rooms to try on as a kind of exercise? I’ll let you know how it goes.

Hole in the Wall

2009-05-06T11:50:00.000-07:00

Can't really see the hole, but the wall is the rock out there far right.

get it off my chest...(kimmy's comments)

2009-04-30T08:34:00.000-07:00

I never realised coming here that I'd end up doing neonatology as well as everything else. I am currently posted to maternity ward on a day to day basis. It is weird being the only doctor on the ward (in the Uk there would be a whole flock of you). I can call a senior for advice if they're around but much of it can end up being over the phone advice. So the ward is busy busy right now. Lots of pregnant women who tend to have complications. The biggest one being checking their HIV status and syphilis status, two common infections which affect the babies outcome. Frequently they're HIV +ve but not on any medication to try to reduce transmission to the baby. It's heart breaking really as it is the worst start to life you can give your baby giving them HIV.

The maternity ward also doubles as a neonatal ward, so for example I have a 3 day old baby with hypoxic ichaemic brain injury (not enough oxygen at birth) who is well, basically, pretty gubbed really, and has only me to look after him. So I now do neonatal resusc, put drips in tiny babies heads and take bloods, insert tiny tiny nasogastric tubes to feed them. So I put all this effort in, and then they inevitably die, so I do wonder what's the point sometimes doing all these things.

Today consisted of a busy ward rounds of about 25-30 patients, then trying to get blood off tiny babies and putting drips in them, then I put the anaesthetic in a womans back (spinal) in theatre and assisted one of the seniors in a tubal ligation(TL). TL is basically having your tubes cut, and is female sterilisation. About time for this lady since she had just popped out her TENTH baby at 42...she must be very fertile. Seems mad to have so many kids when you probably don;t have money to feed them all. ON the plus side she wasnt HIV +ve which was a refreshing change! Anyway, so we try to do these elective operations for TLs whenever we can since they are a good thing if your family is finished.

I'm oncall overnight tonight so prob will be a sleepless one, though sometimes you can be lucky. there always seems to be someones head to stitch up or someone or other dying. At least I know the maternity ward well because it my turf, it helps for the night shifts and things usually kick off there.

On a more positive note, it is another long weekend tomorrow and we are goign to explore Mdumbi which is another hippy backpackers place. I can't wait. after the mega hike of last weekend I need some chilled out book reading time.

I do wonder how I will react to the UK patients when I get back. It will be nice to be able to speak to them first hand rather than depending on a translator, and I think I'll appreciate the organised-ness of the UK health system a lot.

Oh yeah, I didnt get paid today either, which sucks, and I only got paid half last month. Apparently loads of drs in the other capes are striking, like properly NOT working at all and so tonnes of people have died as a consequence. Seems rather unethical to me, as emergency providers we can't really strick. it isnt on, but as doctors you do need a way to protest if things aint right....someone here suggested refusing to write death certificates, and interesting idea because it would fill up the mortuaries and so the authorities woudl maybe listen, but it wouldnt risk lives (since they'd already died). An interesting idea.

Sorry for this misery pants morbid whinging post, but I feel better for typing it! Kim

See Spot Get Dragged and Beaten

2009-04-30T08:21:00.000-07:00

I have just witnessed something truly Transkein (purely of the Transkei region and generally not to be seen elsewhere in South Africa, or the UK) on its nature. I cannot decide whether it was awful, hilarious, symptomatic of something significant, or just one of those things. I have decided that getting that gate put on the pre-school is a priority so this doesn’t happen on my turf. There are too many animals milling about outside the front door as it is.

Tom was sitting down painting the pre-school in his wee pad. He said “there’s a dead dog over there”. He was right. Rigamortis had set in and Tom confirmed that, after poking, it was not moving, despite having open eyes.

So here we have a wee dead pooch outside the rondavel (round house) next to the pre-school rondavel. I wondered what dead dog policy was in Zithulele. My gut instinct was that there was not a rigorous procedure for disposal. I asked a local granny, seemingly the owner of the rondavel outside which the corpse was lying, “Is it dead?”. “I think so, yes. Oy”. Then she said something about children (I heard the isiXhosa – “abantwana”). Evidently it was “hey kids, come and look at the dead dog!”, because they came in droves. Thereafter she set about managing her new team. “You, get the leftover IEC (Independent Electoral Commission) tape from the gate/fence”. Tie it around his dead legs. Yes, both of his rear, dead legs. Now, pull him away somewhere. My thoughts about dead dogs needing to be kept away from little children, clearly had not come over in my facial expression.

Following that, I witnessed - and just failed to get a good photo of - a dead dog being pulled at pace by a big group of 6 year olds, some of whom were hitting it with sticks. As they disappeared down a dirt road, I had to wonder where they would end up and what state doggy would be in after it’s drawing.

In a place where no-one has thought to pull down the IEC tape over a week after the election, with random litter scattered around the ground, it is no wonder that dispatching off a dog corpse does not involve a burial ceremony and reassuring the little ones that he is in doggy heaven. They know he is not in doggy heaven, because Derek, Steve and Betty have got him by the hind legs and are running about town with him.

RIP, Spot. You were a mangey dog. You never bit me when I was running, but you wanted to. Now you are dead from having dirty dog disease. I hope you get buried before you go off.

Zithulele shack

2009-04-30T00:26:00.001-07:00

This is one of the many shacks around Zithulele. This is one of the nicest and biggest. It where Tarzan lives. Tarzan is called Tarzan because he wears a leopard print top over several other layers all the time. He usually sleeps in the mid day sun outside the shack under a sleeping bag. Word is, he is mental. His resistance to heat is incredible, though.

Hospital (paeds ward) is in the background and far away is the sea.

Mangey dogs abound.

The photo was taken from our residence entrance road.

Election Day

2009-04-29T23:03:00.000-07:00

Church and state not massively removed from eachother as voting took place in a church, but there you go.

B to the unlungula

2009-04-29T22:55:00.000-07:00

On the way back from Bulungula. Tired, but not a bad view really.

Bulungula 2

2009-04-29T22:50:00.000-07:00

It is really most pleasing when you get a group of people who are comfortable with the same level of chat. I have always been most happy when talking absolute crap, at times utilising sarcasm. There have been instances when i have enjoyed an irreverent moment or a joke about bums and wee. These times are so precious when shared with others. Yes i am 30, but that does not seem to matter.

Tom, Monique, Kim-Kimeny and I walked to Bulungula on Friday after work. And we verily walked home today (Monday). At 5 and a half hours each way, it was a bit of a mission, but well worth it and better than driving. Indeed, we felt like heroes when we did the last wade through the river and walked up the short hop to a roaring fire pit. Word had spread of this merry gang of four, who were audacious enough to walk, and arrive in the dark. Head torches are very good things and we pretty much knew the way, but finishing work at 1pm did not give us much hope of getting there in the light.

The next day tom and i went on the herbal healer tour. We were very pleased to find out that it involved A LOT OF WALKING. But it was fascinating, with a good, vibrant guide and a lovely temperamented healer chap. We were shown 32 different trees or shrubs and told what they could heal. Most of it was innocuous enough, but a cold moment was experienced by all when we looked at the tree bark that treats TB. I just couldn’t believe it, I’m afraid. And Kim has told of two children who died after being treated by a traditional healer person. It is a tricky area. I asked if there was anything for HIV in the forest. The answer was not clear, but he did say that he had never had anyone come to him with HIV. We left it at that.

JZ didn’t get his two thirds, then. Which is really good for the country, mostly in a symbolic way, as I am sure that they can buy off opponents to get things through parliament.

Bulungula is a really cool place. Kim may have mentioned it before as we drove there last time. It is very hippytastic with a well thought out vibe. I am constantly impressed by the people who run these backpacker places. They manage to run a business, whilst giving an air of chilled-outness. Poor Dave, the boss, was on the phone to yet another cancellation. Laid back kicks you in the ass when you have turned away several people, only to have your concrete booking not turn up. I sometimes feel like i am not cool enough to hang out at places like that, but Bulungula has got it right and we played Scrabble in the midst of it all, feeling smug because we are nearly local.

Bulungula also has a community project organisation called the Bulungula Incubator. They are similar to us (Jabulani), but a bit more mature and with a different market. We have a hospital, they have tourism. We also have a larger catchment area than their solo small village. Still, there are things to share and I hope to learn from them and give them some of our good ideas too.

One month until the Comrades Marathon and Monique tells me that the old school version had an 11 hour time limit, not 12 as it is now. Cheers, Monique. So now I have a new bar. And if you don’t finish within 12 hours the clock stops and everyone goes home. You don’t get a t-shirt. And i need a new t-shirt.

Kim's Saturday night

2009-04-19T00:09:00.000-07:00

It’s been another tough night for Kim. She was first on call for Saturday (24 hours to 8am this morning) and got called over to the hospital a lot. Lots of tiny (1kg) babies and very sick people. A lot of death, which must be hard to take, even though she is desensitised to an extent. The final chapter is playing out now as the hospital called the guy who should now be first on call but he didn’t answer. So Kim is now back there when she shouldn’t be. I went round to his house to wake him up, but she was already on her way. He went behind her wheel-spinning and honking at the guard to open the gate. Not, I think, from a desire to heal the sick quicker, but to avoid getting his balls booted for being unreachable. The problem is that there is little ball booting around here and no chance of getting him sacked.

It is heart-breaking for me to watch and there is nothing that I can do to help, really. I feel guilty laying in bed and I wish they would stop calling her so I could get a better sleep too. Now I am tired and pissed off, so how Kim feels must be an order of magnitude more crap.

Today we are going to Hole in the Wall to have a braai and muck about. As second on call, Kim can be 30 mins away from the hospital. If something major comes up, like a caesarean section, she will need to be driven back immediately. So fingers crossed for a quiet Sunday. I am running to HITW with Tom and the reliable Riana will do the short drive over with her.

It would be really hard to be a doctor here for lots of reasons that are obvious and lots that are not so obvious.

Pottering

2009-04-19T00:07:00.000-07:00

It is Saturday and I am sitting in bed. Kim has gone off to do a ward round with Tom, the medical student. She is on call this weekend. So I get a bit of time to bugger about and it is nice. As much as escape is important and exploring is fun, it is nice to spend a weekend pottering here. No driving, for a start, and time to write this and read the BBC website.

I need to do a big run today, really. Maybe tomorrow. Dunno. Yesterday Tom and I ran left. It was a quite an eye opener to see what is to the left, having previously lived my life solely on the right. Zithulele is pretty scabby really. Little shacks around the hospital and extremely mangey dogs. But a kilometre to the left you get to lovely rolling hillocks with tiny farms on them and smiley people. The scenery was breathtaking as the sun went down. It was like fell-running in mini size. We got to the sea. Not a beach as such, but the shore. It is only 4k away. I definitely need to do more exploring down there.

We will be having several braais this weekend and Riana, the pharmacist, will cook tonight. She is an amazing cook and all round good egg. She is my fixer, really. Gets me what I need and tells me where the best shops are for whatever I need. She knows where the nearest cash, diesel, beer and other important things are. And all of this whilst casting aside her natural Afrikaans hard-wiring to kill me for being British.

Now it is past 10 so I think I better have some brekkie.

Oh, no. JZ is going to win

2009-04-19T00:06:00.000-07:00

Jacob Zuma has the most sleezy smile that I have ever seen. Every time you drive to Mthatha you see him in massive-o size on a billboard in Mqanduli. On the back side of the poster is a beer advert. He looks corrupt, but that may be me just deciding that after I know he has a bad rep for corruption. Anyway, the National Prosecution Agency just effectively cleared him of doing dodgey arms deals, so he looks to be in the clear.

He also said some nasty/stupid stuff in his rape trial (he was acquitted) and is endlessly mocked for saying that he had a shower to minimise the chance of getting HIV after sex without contraception. One cartoonist draws him with a showerhead permanently coming out of his collar over his head. I hear that someone is selling a new shower gel to take the piss, but with the warning that it doesn’t cure HIV/AIDS. Good craic. Hope they don’t get censored.

I asked someone in the village why they are going to vote for the ANC. They said that even though they don’t have a job, they get money. So that is good. That was the ANC. There seems to be a fear that anyone else would take it away, when I don’t think that would be very easy.

If the ANC get two thirds of the vote, they can do whatever they want. They can re-write the constitution. They can make the national anthem “Bring me my machine gun”, JZ’s theme song, which gives the media endless yucks. So that would be bad. But trying to describe that to folks is pretty challenging. It seems obvious to politics geeks that competition is good for parliaments, but that doesn’t get anywhere near the voters here (that I know of) and actually probably wouldn’t sink in to much of the UK electorate.

I heard that Malema (I think that’s his name. He is the vocal leader of the ANC Youth League and seems to be a wrong-un) was in Cape Town saying that all black people will get a free university degree and stuff. What about white people? This guy is a real rabble-rouser and he has a lot of power.

The trouble on election day will be in Kwa-Zulu Natal, so I am glad in a way that we didn’t end up there. I am sure it will be localised, but Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC are big enemies so fights are expected up in Zulu territory. We get the day off and I am keen to go see a voting station out of curiosity. Kim may over-rule me and make us go to the beach. Yes, it is still sunny and warm. Well done South Africa!

Anyway, back to elections. There is no way any other parties will get anywhere near the ANC but it is possible that they will reduce the majority to less than 66%, which would make for a more balanced parliament. Fingers crossed for Weds.

Biblionef

2009-04-19T00:05:00.000-07:00

I took receipt of two boxes this evening which made me very happy. One, I didn’t have to go and pick them up from Mqanduli (70k away along the pot-hole road of doom) and two, they are full of useful free stuff. A big thankyou to Brian, who also brought me beer. The circle o favours goes round and round.

Biblionef are an organisation that give you free books in the local language. Simple as that, really. So I got in touch and they sent me two boxes of books and posters for the pre-school. Bingo. They give you brand new stuff because often kids get crappy old old gear and they really deserve better. Which seems like a nice thing to me. There is also Duplo in the box, which I am taking as commission. I may also take the Miffy book. You have to skim some off the top to make volunteering worthwhile.

So well done, Biblionef (tell your friends) and happy days, because now we have lots of cool pictures to put on the walls and books for Thandeka to read to the kids.

Today we got up to 12. We started with 6, so that is progress. One of the kids is the boy of the road engineer lady. Mad props to her for being a black female in a high powered job in a male dominated industry, but her son is a bit of a brat. He cried and snotted out of his nose a lot, whilst displaying the lollies that he brought that none of the other kids could afford. In fairness, he did share, but I think that was Thandeka’s doing. I think she is going to bring him round. He played pretty much on his own today, but you could see he was eyeing up the big group of kids that Thandeka was working with and praising, etc, and feeling left out. Kids are mental.

Stole a quick chat with Ben Gaunt (One of the founder doctors and Chief Medical Officer for hospital) this evening. His time is precious and he is rarely not busy as hell, but he always listens if he can. He is extremely ambitious and looking ahead to when we have 100 pre-schools in the area, similarly run and stocked. It is good to have someone looking ahead like that because I am pretty narrowly focused at present.

Sunday

2009-04-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

Did a three hour run with an English chap called Tom yesterday. Tom is one of those guys who does 3 hour runs without any training. We call them idiots. But it was ace to have the company and we had a good stream of chat. He is a great guy. His wife, Becky, was here last year doing her elective (med student abroad thing) and he is now.

My silly baseball cap with add-on tails to protect the neck works really well and does not chafe at all. The heat was still quite full-on though as we didn’t set off until after 10am. Legs are a bit sore today but okay really. Going to go for a short run to loosen off whilst almost everyone else plays Cluedo.

I also just fixed the car. It is a simple pleasure to sort out a little thing that you knew nothing about before. Yesterday as we drove the run that we had done to find the mileage (only 24.6km, disappointingly) the indicators stopped working. The hazards were also not going on, but all else seemed okay. So today I had a ferret around in the car to find two goosed fuses and, luckily, two spares of the same ampage. I also didn’t know that the hazards fuse would do the horn too. All now works and I need to get two knew spare fuses.

Everyone else went to church this morning so Kim and I watched two episodes of 24. We had some very good craic with Karen who calls us pagan scum. She has an extremely refreshingly irreverent attitude to religion, despite clearly having her own strong Christian beliefs. I think it is a double bluff to get me to take up the bible, but I am on to her and remain a heathen. I did eat a hot cross bun though. And I loved it.

Last night we braaied. We cheated and used coals as opposed to wood, but there was still a reasonable amount of fire management. I have to say that it went well and that with a stationary grill. Without the opportunity to raise or lower the grill, fire management becomes even more important.

Thank God it is Easter

2009-04-12T08:09:00.000-07:00

Once again it has been a while. It is weird, but it is hectic here. Even though i often feel as though i am not achieving a great deal, I still find myself exhausted and with little time at the end of the day. Currently the blog and other communication is suffering, as is my education in isiXhosa, the local language. It is a shame as there is a lot to write about and it always helps me to get my head round it.

We are away now for the Easter break and both well ready for it. I am surprised at how knackered and stressed I am and almost feel worse because I see Kim facing her own serious challenges at the hospital and coping. She has had a really hard few weeks with lots of getting called out at night and the weekends, but she cracks on with it. Meanwhile I have been tetchier than ever before in my life and having real ups and downs on a daily basis. I think i took the whole culture shock thing for granted, though i have experienced it before. And working as a volunteer is a weird beast indeed. Lots of feeling that i am not doing enough or working smart enough (just like starting any job), mixed with the occasional thought that i am not getting paid, so bugger it. Resenting the fact that I have little support or guidance, whilst enjoying the freedom and challenge of that. There is also the dynamic of working with others who are being paid and are not working as hard as you. Easy to get annoyed about that. But this will all sort itself out. Easy to say now over a beer, but i have found it hard going this last week or two.

Hopefully kim will come on and speak for herself, because i couldn’t do justice to her experience. Some of it i hear about and some of it i have seen, but i don’t think i can really empathise. They are up against it in the hospital and each has to look after their self and others. Her mate Liz has been incredible and they really look after each other. Liz went off to Cape Town today looking utterly exhausted.

The Preschool is coming on. I am not going to talk too much about it because i have been obsessed with it and i need a break. We have 6 kids enrolled and a renovated building. Tuesday will be busy as it is on Wednesday that we open. We negotiated with road construction workers to get them to dig a long-drop toilet hole for the kids, which was a great success. So all is coming on, in stages. All the time I am wondering how sustainable this all is as I am not here for long and we have no-one set up to take over when I go. There is time to sort that out.

So we are here in Bushmans with Karen and Roger, who just got engaged. Roger and me are setting up a support group called ‘emasculitis united’ as we are both unpaid and entirely supported by our girlfriends. Karen is a physio at the hospital. Sometimes we go and pick up (relatively) heavy things. We dug a hole yesterday and it felt good (although I have some awful blisters on my baby soft hands). We would talk about cars if I knew anything about cars. Roger and I are content that we are are helping the poor in our own special way and making that difference. We also drink beer.

There are 5 others here. All lovely and good craic. Tom, the medical student has agreed to do a 3 hour run with me tomorrow, which is awesome. My training has been pretty crap of late. Been letting it slide big time. We played speed Scrabble tonight and had some beer. That was all after a swimming race across a river and some sprinting through knee deep water (tiring). Now looking forward to a sleep. This is feeling good and comfortable.

IsiXhosa has three clicks in it. A big mental block for a new speaker. You have to try to make a click or a tut or a tsk whilst adding on the rest of the word. To add insult to injury, the word for the language has a bloody click in it. isiXhosa is pronounced with a click sort of like the sound you make for horsey clicking at the side of your back teeth. Apparently the hardest thing to say is “I am sorry. but I only speak a little isiXhosa”. It sounds like “click-bang-whrr-boing-dingdong-shala-lala-click-smash” or similar. Ironic, no?

Kimmy Comments

I am tired. But it is Easter long w/e so I must forget work and enjoy the freedom of four days away from the hospital. It is hard to describe why it is so exhausting but I’ll try...firstly there aren’t enough doctors so we are running around like headless chickens most of the time. Also I too am trying to master Xhosa and so communication with patients is hard. Also the nurses are not exactly efficient...this is a lethal combo (literally at times). I have seen many people die, kids through to adults...it seems to be shelved in my emotion box somewhere in my brain and I just carry on. Funerals are a big thing here. They have to slaughter a cow in honour of the dead ancestor and if the cow doesn’t squeal good when it is slaughtered then they have to kill another one as the squeal is the important bit calling to the ancestors in respect. If the slaughter doesn’t go well then they get bothered by bad spirits. The flaw in this tradition is that we’re talking about big families with v little money and then when someone dies (as they inevitable do from HIV/TB) they have to slaughter a cow and they may only have one, so there it goes. And they have to share it with the entire community, even if they didn’t know the deceased. This may be an extra reason why they scream and wail beating their fists on the floor when you tell them their family member has ‘passed’. It is quite disturbing to see. Maybe they should rethink the tradition and just slaughter a mouse, or one of those pesky street dogs...there are loads of them, though i don’t think they’d taste too good.

Today we hunted Easter eggs in the garden. My ideal activity, firstly since it is a competition and everyone who knows me knows i am highly competitive, secondly because it involved chocolate sweeties, and thirdly the association with bunnies....I love bunnies!

Locals have funny names. They like to mix the traditional with the new... the old names usually start with No******* eg Nosilike or Nothambe, but the newer names are things like Noparrafin, colgate, NoOmo, cellphone, and the best one I heard.... ‘fullydilated’ (this family was obviously influenced a lot by the doctor delivering the baby! They really are moving with the times. When I was up in Zanzibar people had equally funny names like Michael Jackson, James Dean and Madonna. Crazy hey!

Last week we crossed the cultural barrier by finally plucking up the guts to give a lift to someone at the side of the road. It was a wee school boy, about 12 y o – he spoke great English. It felt good to give him a ride down the big hill. Obviously i won’t be offering lifts to blokes, but old ladies I think is okay.

We are making a firepit. There is a big grassy area by the accommodation begging for something to be put there. We managed to grab some massive logs from a giant tree that was pulled down by the people who are modifying the road from our hosp all the way to the big N2 (1 ½ hr drive). We now have 4 nice big logs which we’ve placed in a circle and we are digging a wide shallow hole in the middle. This has a drainage area at one side and we plan to line the hole with cement then it si perfect for having big fires for us to sit round. I brought a candle out the other night and we all sat round the candle on these logs getting excited about our new entertainment venue and imagining the big fire that will burn in the middle soon. Quite sad what gets you excited out here.

Although I’ve talked about the negatives of the stress at the hospital, there are many positives. We finally feel we are living in a community. Within our hosp accom there is a nice little community. Everyone invites each other to dinner most nights, we do Frisbee, Pilates, Braais, girly movies and building firepits. It’s a great thing compared to London where you hardly knew your neighbour. Also i spend more time outdoors, and weekends off are fun and active. I don’t take things for granted, and a piece of chocolate tastes so much better out here when you really need a boost. I am addicted to fizzy pop though-my teeth will suffer! we have a car which is cool, juts need to improve my driving skills now! I don’t have to sit on the London underground trying not to accidentally make eye contact with anyone for fear of offending them. I think me and Pete just laugh more out here, and I hate to admit it but Pete is Mr hilarious...his sarcasm seems to go down a treat, everyone LOVES him. He seems himself out here. I think London was wearing us both down.

I like feeling like I’m ‘surviving’ and using my initiative to solve problems or being resourceful like turning an empty plastic bottle in to our toothbrush holder, or an old box in to a magazine rack. Granted, our flat looks like a bluepeter studio with all this home made stuff, but I get a sense of achievement every time I used one of my homemade tools. Pete manages to hold his tongue and not slag off my creations too much. But I will say something like “isn’t this cutlery drainer I’ve made really useful” and he’ll quickly reply “I was just thinking that” and my heart will soar with pride “really pete” and he’ll reply “No , only kidding” – he thinks he’s SO funny that one!

Africa Time

2009-03-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

What a day. Man alive I am narked off. I went to Mthatha. And I came back. Except it took about 9 hours in total. Achievements to hours ratio was extremely low. I do have 4 new tires on my car but totally failed to get all the pre-school stuff i wanted, so... I am going back to Mthatha tomorrow.

Mthatha is a hole. Leaving anything of value in a car is asking for trouble so shopping, if you have to go to more than one shop, becomes a logistical nightmare. As it is an hour and ¾ away, you need to plan well in advance and get a lot done when you are there, or it means 3 and a half hours another day.

Today we wanted to scope out some of the building materials so me and Brian (the builder from the UK) went in. We were the best people for the job because we know nothing at all about shops in Mthatha and we don’t speak isiXhosa. I won’t go into the details but it was frustrating and the dodging of the potholes on the way home was not great craic.

Sorry it has been a while. Life here is hectic. It takes ages to get stuff done because of the slow speed my brain is working at and ‘Africa time’. The ratio of achievements to hours is extremely low and that pisses me off. (But if you want to see how Africa time effects people worse off than me, watch the movie Yesterday. It is very good and gives a good idea about the lives of some of Kim’s customers. )

Africa time is a hilarious phenomenon that means it takes a long time to get things done here. For example, the community meeting I held on Friday about the pre-school started 50 mins after it was scheduled to. I did get a chance to top up my tan though, because the meeting was in a field. The furniture was two chairs that me and Thandeka, the preschool teacher, brought. Everyone else sat on the grass/dung.

Meeting went well for the most part until some teachers from a nearby existing school came and were like “you are going to take our kids from our preschool into yours”. This seemed like a real risk to me as the parents who are switched on enough to have their kids there will also be the ones switched on enough to arrive early and register their kids with us. Not exactly what we were going for so I was like “we don’t want to do that, so we will only take kids not in a nearby preschool for this intake and the Jan 2010 intake (academic year start is different here. We are starting at the start of term 2) will be more of a free for all, depending on catchment area and who comes first. They were okay with that. It is all about consensus here, apparently so we thrashed it out at a bit of length.

The other thing was about age. We had a little bit of pressure to take kids of 3 or 4yrs of age. I was expecting that one and we did a good job of explaining that a pre-school is not a crèche and we only have 20 places and one teacher and the educational experience needs to be focused on preparing them for school. Actually part of me thinks the educational experience should be about messing about learning new words for poo, but I wasn’t gonna tell them that!

So all is ‘well’. Tomorrow I have to go back to Mthatha to smash my head against a brick wall repeatedly, before coming back home later than I want to. Then the next three days are enrolment and who knows how that will go. We have put the word out that we are going to be strict. The good thing is that if the Chief comes and says his 3 year old needs to go to pre-school, I will be like “Hey there, I am foreign and I don’t know anything and no.”. It might not happen.

Meanwhile Brian (who is the cousin of Taryn Gaunt, founder doctor, and is also working for free, thank goodness) is going to start building work. We loaded the Boesman with 45m2 of floor tiles and fixer today and crawled home with it. Then, this evening, we negotiated with the Minister about were to put the fence so the kids don’t fall into the pit of eternal poo and cuts. I will put a photo up sometime soon. Big ‘long-drop’ loo, or was one before getting disused. When I was a kid and went to a farm they were clear that we should stay away from the slurry pit. So I am pretty sure that a human slurry pit is even worse. Anyway, long story but the Minister (Mfundisi – read ‘Cry the Beloved Country’) is an awesome guy called Joseph and is well switched on and agreed to our proposal.

Now I am writing this, I feel like we achieved more than I had thought. So I shall go sleep and stop moaning to Kim.

Lovely to speak at the weekend and sorry if I seemed pre-occupied. Trying to do 100 things at once.

Boesman

2009-03-29T01:12:00.001-07:00

This is the car, named Boesman. We are renting it for the year from a nice chap called Jurie, who is now in Wales. Boesman is Arikaans for bushman.

Garages are behind.

Look at it. Take a good look at it. Is it not a thing of beauty? Getting new tires on Monday after a flat the other day. Then we be rolling again.

The house

2009-03-29T00:45:00.000-07:00

This is the house. It is not the mud hut that I was aiming for, but it is okay I suppose. It is a 2 bedroom flat with open plan kitchen / front room. Big telly but nowhere to get reception so it faces the wall.

We sleep under a mozzie net because I hate mozzies buzzing round my ears. No malaria problem here though.

On the right there is the built in braai with chimney with thing on top to stop rain getting in. That means we can braai in any weather. Not really an issue as it is sunny and hot every day but I guess it might rain at some point. Love to all in the UK!

It has taken 6 million hours for this photo to get uploaded so we are not going to be able to put a lot more up. I shall try to be selective.

Rural Hospital Life at Zithulele

2009-03-29T00:28:00.000-07:00

About time I wrote...the fact that it’s been a while is a reflection of how damn busy I’ve been with work.

The hospital has 9 drs, but 2 are part time mums and one of those is now on maternity so call it 7 ½ ! Zithulele Hospital is made up of four wards: Male ward, female ward, Paediatrics and Maternity. Then there is Out Patient Dept which serves as an OPD and A+E and a ward sometimes.

Most people have HIV +/- TB lung, all people are poor, unemployment is high, people pop babies like no bodies business...monthly income averages at 1000rand which is 70quid. A trip to the hospital for some can cost 100rand...so people sacrifice a lot to get to us. We are understaffed and facilities are limited. There is a bigger tertiary hospital in Mthata the big town (bit of a hole).

In an ideal world we have access to Xrays, running water, electricity, patient transport to big clinics for specialised stuff in Mthatha, oxygen for the patients. Unfortunately and various times in the last few weeks one or most of these things have failed. The oxygen one is hard to stomach as a child with pneumonia who needs O2 is a pretty basic thing.

I have seen all sorts so far. For the medics reading....lts of LPs, placental evac, taking blood off neonates, drips in kids, draining pleural effusions galore, crazy TB CXR signs. For the none medics, I’ve had kids kicked in the face by a horse, man crushed under a car with crumbled up spine (i managed to negotiate a helicopter transfer and am something of a celebrity dr now since they hadn’t managed to get one since 2004...the entire town came out for a peek.) I am also something of a legend on maternity as I solved the riddle of the smelly delivery room. It smelt like something gone off, but the floor was clear of grime, the midwives thought it was the mattress, til I glanced up at the aircon to see a dead mouse, tail hanging out of the aircon – mystery solved. When asked by them “how did you know to look there” I said that I’d spent time in Edinburgh and knew what a dead mouse smelt like!

Weekends (when not working) are wonderful....just to escape the hustle and bustle of the hospital. Lots of little beachy places within an hours drive on a dirt track. Pete’s trying his hand at surfing. Even a legendary place which makes pizzas in a big outdoor oven that are amazing Italian delights. The ‘Transkei’ one is particularly nice (basically like an Hawaiian Pizza)...Transkei is the old name for this neck of the woods, now renamed The Wild Coast because the waves are wild and wrecked a lot of ships.

I have learnt a couple of words...la la means lie down. Epefumela means deep breath please. Gogo is grandma, that one makes me laugh!

My emotions fluctuate from elation to deep despair on an hourly basis. Who knows which way they will go...it is exhausting. Pete is awesome though. I guess we’re really ‘living’ now not just grumbling along passing time. After all, that was the whole point of this year.

Pete took me away for a surprise birthday w/e in luxury bungalows which was beautiful. Seems a stark contrast though to the poor village we’d just left. Maybe I find this type of luxury uncomfortable now. Interesting thought.

There is a real community amongst the hospital staff....there are drs but also physios and Occupational therapists, a dentist and dietician (who is awesome)....the dietician told us the other day how he drove to mthatha to collect the weeks hospital supply of meat and was told to meet the lady for the meat at Chicken Lickin...ironic since she came empty handed as they have not been given money from depot of health the buy any meat...so getting protein is tricky for our malnourished TB patients with no muscles. When asked ‘how is the kitchen going these days’ Duncan replied ‘cloudy with a strong chance of rain’ – hilarious guy! He’s going to have some input in the preschool pete is setting up which is opening mid april all being well – though the rondavel (round hut) it’s going to be in is occupied currently so we can’t get in to check out the structure yet. Africa man, everything happens tomorrow. And we want it to have happened yesterday!

In summary...I am surviving, but work is mental and very tough and emotionally draining. I love the community feel here and you feel so alive doing exciting stuff. I am glad pete is with me on the adventure. I miss all you lovely people back home but hope you enjoy the blogging. X kim

The Greatest Feeling on Earth, or Welcome to the Jungle

2009-03-14T02:21:00.000-07:00

I know what you are thinking. However, although helping the sick and needy does rank up there, today I will tell you of something utterly spectacular. What you must do is the following. The details are specific and important and guaranteed to yield the highest positive sensation possible.

First you must undertake the 1hr 40 min drive from Zithulele to Mthatha several times in a week on a bumpy, dusty road in a wee Nissan Tiida. Next, remember to forget to buy beer every single time you go (this is easy to remember because they don’t sell beer in South African supermarkets. Sleep deprivation is important so get up at 5am as many times as you can and do not nap in the day. To do this it is often helpful to have a nice young chap to drive to Mthatha airport for an 8am flight.

The feeling is not yet very good, but you must do all of this anyway.

For the last drive of your set, you must be in a 1998 turbo diesel Toyota Land Cruiser Prado. With leather seats. This car must be extremely comfortable and awesome. It must have a good stereo, but you must not know how good the stereo is until the last minute.

You will need to have spent some time hanging around Mthatha’s shops, before buying some music on a whim. Do not leave the music shop without the album ‘Appetite for Destruction’ by Guns n Roses, or you will fail miserably after a lot of hard work.

Remember to remember to buy beer.

Buy beer. A lot of it.

Get diesel and congratulate yourself on remembering to do so.

Pull out of Mthatha towards your new home in Zithulele. The windows should be down and the sun shining.

This is where timing is important, because you need to be in the rolling hills between the N2 highway and Mqanduli (but not in Mqanduli, because there would be people everywhere and your moment would be ruined by embarrassment and sheepishness, as well as guilt).

Insert the Appetite for Destruction CD into the Prado’s stereo.

The last thing you must do is crank the volume up high.

If you have followed my instructions to the letter you will experience the most heightened sense of magnificence that a human being can.

The Jabulani Rural Health Foundation

2009-03-13T02:15:00.001-07:00

Kim is doing amazing things at the hospital after week one. She comes back for a cheese toastie at lunch and tells me about ladies with half an umbilical cord hanging out and the guy who wheeled her here in a wheelbarrow. Most people don’t know their date of birth and more than half have HIV. The doctors are really supportive and realistic about what is achievable, whilst being ambitious to make continual improvements.

But enough about Kim. Let’s talk about me. What am I doing here? Well, I am running the Jabulani Foundation (which has an awesome website: www.jabulanifoundation.org). In fact I am sitting in my new office (in your face, DfT open planners) at my new desk on my old computer, typing this. Yes, some of my time will be spent driving a desk again, but at least I have an office (the spare bedroom) and I can listen to music. Queen’s Greatest Hits, if you must know. I will also be out and about in the community trying to fill the shoes of my decidedly intimidating predecessor Becky.

The doctors here are not content with helping out 5 billion TB and HIV patients per day, so they are determined to make a difference in the wider community. Because they are fairly busy running the hospital (and I do not know one end of a stethoscope from the other end of a catheter) I am going to be running the show day to day.

Becky was an uberperson who did masses to set up the Foundation. I don’t know what I expected, but there is a clear audit trail of funding and project work as well as business cases and research projects into demographics etc. In short, a professional operation and I am going to do my best not to cock it up. The most impressive thing is the far-reaching vision and ambition that I keep seeing in the paperwork.

The first priority is to set up a pre-school to give the snot-nosed little buggers in the village something to do before they go to primary school at 5yrs. I need to get more materials, a structure for the day, a syllabus and other minor details sorted before it opens in April. Following this we are looking to set several up all over the region.

Stand by for me coming a-begging for funding and support/advice. We have £0 for this pre-school project as I type this so any donations are most welcome. The Foundation has a UK arm so you can get GiftAid.

At the very least I am going to run an ultra-marathon (the 55ish mile Comrades Marathon) for sponsorship. So I will be asking you to fork out. The cause is good (small, money goes a long way in a place where it is badly needed) and the run is hard (humidity being the worst thing) and it is nearly a year since I last came cap in hand...

Hospitality

2009-03-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

A minute to reflect on the amazing hospitality that Kim and I have been on the receiving end of, if you will.

The first person is Susan. No, the first are Tori and Al. Tori and Al took 6000 kilograms of our junk into their loft. That means that they will not be converting their loft anytime soon, unless the conversion is to a great big room full of my stuff. So thanks go to them for that and a special mention for Al for not dropping that box of books on my head. That would have been me dead and I could not have written this. Anyone want to comment on that?

Susan Lawlor. What a nice lady she is. We stayed in her lodger’s room for a week (she was away) between leaving our flat and leaving the country. And Susan didn’t mind. But don’t tell the lodger. In fact she tolerated us as we ran about stashing the last few bags in her loft space and generally being stressed out about visas, police reports and other logistical nightmares. We were not good craic, but it was lovely to stay with Susan, who is a very D L indeed.

Sarah, who is mentioned below, was so good to sort a taxi for us from Joburg Airport. And to take time out of work and then put us up. Fantastic. Then she paid for dinner on the first night out. Wouldn’t let us pay.

Alex and Electra then stepped in to make us feel really at home. Electra ferried us around from mall to car salesman and always with a smile and good chat. They gave us a time share next to Kruger National Park for Pete’s sake. So we thank them enormously.

Mike and Adriana and Errol and Janice looked after us really well in PE. They get the award for most beer donated to Kim and Pete. And they have really looked out for us, phoning for updates. You get the feeling that you have a friend at the end of the phone if you need it and that is priceless.

Thank you all so much for taking care of us. I hope you know how much we appreciate it and we would love to return the favour somewhere, sometime.

I am not going to go into all of the cool people in Zithulele just now, but needless to say it is a trend, South Africans are extremely hospitable in an effortless and selfless way.
If you come to see us in Zithulele, we offer you good HOSPITALity. I cannot stop laughing at that joke. Give me a minute. But really, this stuff is making me resolve to be a better host, so do pop round for tea or a braai. You can sleep in my new office (about which more later).

Zithulele

2009-03-08T06:31:00.000-07:00

Right then. It seems we have finished messing around travelling for now and have come to Africa at last.

We drove here from East London yesterday after stocking up with supplies (every English newspaper, 50 litres of drinking water, two attractive folding chairs, sweets for Kimmy...). We had been told that there was no electricity or running water, and had not been for a week. Christmas was also waterless for the hospital, which must have been tough.

The N2 batters on east as before, getting a little more rough around the edges, but nonetheless generally good for 120kph cruising. The Satnav (Barbara) was doing her job well and told us when to turn off, but we had details from the hospital website anyway. The sign is for Coffee Bay and Mquanduli. Tarmac again, I smiled, as we were to go 50 further ks on this. Zoom. Guh-dunk!

There were big potholes on this stretch. BIG POTHOLES. All over the road on both sides. Thereafter it became me against the road and I had not a little fun trying to weave in and out of the holes, especially enjoying when I got a big one right between the wheels (which sounds dirty for some reason). Once, we passed a gang of little boys around a pile of straw and dry mud. They had their two fingers up in the traditional way so I locked the doors and windows and only slowed down as much as necessary, before speeding on, unharmed by these foul terrorists. Afterwards, Kim informed me that they were asking for 2 rand because they had filled in a pothole. Woops. Good job lads.

From the turn off we were back on more familiar, dirt-track territory and it was easy, but slow going – lots of fairly steep hillocks which would become a challenge in the rain, but the clouds held off. The wee Nissan Tiida handled it all admirably, save for the massive speed bumps, which were impossible to clear unscathed. Fingers crossed the undercarriage is unharmed. I look forward to picking up the Toyota Prado tomorrow.

They are, I am told, improving the road to tarmac standard (at a cost of 2 million rand (£140k per km) by 2010. The contractors are made to dispose of the rubble constructively, meaning that flat playing fields are created. Seems like a good arrangement as we passed a game of footy on an old pitch, which was seriously tilted to one side. Where they propose to flatten the hospital vegetable garden, they will relocate it elsewhere. It is not quite great crested newts (high five to DfT), but the same theory.

The scenery along the way was beautiful: green, rolling hills dotted with many pastel coloured buildings in groups of three or five, often rondavels (round, thatched). Lots of people were walking all over the roads and a good few gave a smile and a wave. The people around here are black, believe it or not, with very, very few exceptions. This is not the South Africa which we have been travelling in to date. Goats and cattle also meander about and move at the last moment, sluggishly. No horn is required from either party.

The hospital is a fairly good looking building in a razor-wired complex with guards. 20 metres down the road and opposite is another such complex with newer brick flats and garages. This is the hospital worker accommodation, where most of the staff live. Our building was built in June so we were pretty optimistic that it would be clean and good.

It was. Our place is fantastic. A very large two bedroom apartment with open plan kitchen living room, tonnes of light and built in storage. We filled it to the brim quickly with the two fold out chairs and it really began to feel like our very own squat. We just have to wait until the water stops looking like chocolate milk to give it a proper clean. Still some residual problems with the water, though the pump seems to work again.

Greeting us when we pulled in to the complex was a young woman with a distinctly pointy-out belly. She had a pretty little benappied girl (Em) by a hand and waved us in. Sally is one third (soon to be relegated to a quater) of the Le Rouxs and took us round to see the place and meet Karl. Riana pitched in and helped us to carry our bags and bags of stuff round, after ascertaining that we did drink alcohol. She seems nice. Liz appeared. Liz is a bit younger and a doctor at the hospital doing ‘community service’. I did not ask what she was done for, but she didn’t look like a robber at all. And all of these people were surrounded by dogs and cat. A community, and the braai went on shortly afterwards.

Everyone seems to be deceptively nice and friendly (Karl gave me beer and kebabs), but I am on my guard at all times like any good martial artist. I have asked Kim to attack me at random times, like Kato from the Pink Panther. It will keep me sharp and her combat skills are also sure to improve.

On Monday I pick up the real car and hopefully some more furniture and whatnot. Not only does Kim have to start a new and challenging job, but she will have to trust my choice of decor. I may be on the next flight home.

Kimmy’s Comments – the lion park

2009-03-03T02:47:00.001-08:00

So, Janice works sometimes at this amazing lion park near Port Elizabeth. Mike took us there over the w/e to see the lions. I’ve been reading Life of Pi which seemed very appropriate to all this(those who’ve read it will agree).

Firstly we checked out the grown up lions. We saw some magnificent white lions living in a big gated park. Just when you’re looking at a lion and your mind wonders thinking what a beautiful creature she is, she quickly reminds you who is boss with a snarl of growl. One dusty brown coloured female got very cross when we drove past her and nearly pounced on the hire car. Shudder.

Then we went up to the place where the 9 month old cubs lived. Before we had time to make excuses and decline, we were being led in to the cubs den by the very able ‘Dee’ (‘The Lion Tamer’ I think should be his real name). Now, at 9 months these things are huge. I’d describe them as being much like a big big Alsatian but in a lion costume with kick ass lion talons big enough to mall you to death comfortably if they so wished.

One seemed quite placid, lying on a raised wooden platform at eye level. Dee calmly strolled over (with me Pete and mike scuttling along behind) and started stroking the cubs back and holding his paw revealing the talons of doom and destruction. Dee’s shirt sleeves were rolled up and I noticed some nasty scratches (Dee told me later that they were courtesy of one of the cubs a few wks prior, all part of the job description).

Meanwhile the other three or maybe four lion cubs were creeping up to us from behind to check us out. To me it seemed like they were crouching down to pounce. Apparently they were just being playful, and Dee simply pushed them firmly away and threw a big log over the other way which amused them for a while. He told us that these cubs were being moved to the massive grown up enclosure/fields place in a few days as they were getting a bit raucous. Awesome...and we were in a big enclosure with them why?

After leaving that lot, the offer of holding the younger cubs seemed like a walk in the park, and quickly we found ourselves surrounded by the cutest most wonderful baby lions, like giant domestic cat sized cubs. I’ll attach a picture. Their faces are so beautiful. One was called Bob Marley, another Dutch. I held one, she was gorgeous, I was terrified, they still growl when they’re little. Not quite a roar yet mind.

They had advised we wore dull plain clothes but Pete forgot that rule when he donned his bright blue crocs on his feet. Bad move Pete. They all liked Pete’s blue crocs a lot. They chewed the ends and attempted to sink in to Peters toes. Still, it took the attention away from my feet which were protected by only my flip flops so I was kind of relieved. Thanks Pete.

My conclusion...Lions rock, but are not to be messed with. They are the king of the jungle and not to be messed with.

WWE Bottom Line

2009-03-03T02:46:00.000-08:00

We are nearing the time when we go to Zithulele (start work 9 March) and filled with some really strong feelings – lots about race, as we are clearly going from white-tastic rich places to the Eastern Cape, where all of the back people were sent during apartheid. The pump is broken so there has been no running water in Zithulele since Wednesday. It is almost difficult to remain focused on this fantastic holiday, but we soldier on. Kim and I are in Hogsback perched on a cliff with the most breathtaking view either of us has had from a bed. We are staying at ‘the Edge’, which is mentally good.

We spent the last few days in a family home, having great craic and not a few beers.

We left Franschhoek and drove towards Port Elizabeth to see my mate Gareth’s pal Mike. We went passed some cool stuff because we wanted to get there for the weekend. It is a funny thing though, going to meet a friend’s friend. It is just a fact that some of my mates’ pals are a-holes. But the contact we had had, had lead me to think that Mike would be a good guy. I just used the word ‘had’ three times in a row, which makes me some kind of wonderful.

Sean Michaels is currently fighting Mark Henry, the Strongest Man in the World. Kim, as you would guess, is utterly engrossed. And he has just kicked the strong man out of the ring and someone has just picked up a chair and OH MY GOD this is getting intense...

Anyway, we got to the Spar near Mike’s place and were met by a grinning man in shades with a crate of very large bottles of beer. I had to do a double take to make sure that he wasn’t Paul Richardson’s twin brother. And yay we went back to the ranch to open the beer. An amazing house, full of old books and photos on the wall and that nice feeling of 1970s and 80s stuff that I love. They had Reader’s Digests in the loo, where I was to spend some happy times.

Mike and Adriana, his very recent wife, couldn’t have been nicer and neither could Errol and Janice, Mike’s folks. Uncle G also made an appearance as Mike began to braai. Apparently wood is where it is at and I need to put an end to my charcoal nonsense. There initiated my education in fire management. I have, of course, studied informally under my father, but the last couple of days at Mike’s Open University has taught me of dry SA wood and the nuances of the wood lattice. Errol was supervisor in chief and was not slow to offer the youth his wisdom. His generosity is clear. And then, out of nowhere, came a whole chicken, spatchcocked and spread as flat as one can reasonably spread a chicken. This was to be cooked, and it was cooked and we did verily eat it.

After that we had some beer. And then we had another beer and then Mike (who is a bad man) brought out the tequila and literally forced it down our throats. It was a ghastly nightmare. Errol told us that he has given up drinking so it was particularly unfair for Mike to be continually re-filling his glass.

During the days I wobbled around like a zombie, waiting for the sanctity of the evening, the braai smoke and the beer. Mike ensured that we achieved stuff, from an audacious 9k walk in the bush, to a trip to a lion park, to watching a cracking game of Super 14 rugby, which the (Durban) Sharks won against New Zealand opposition. And then he supplied us with further braais and beers to prepare the next day’s hangover.

I have not experienced hospitality like it. What a lovely family. Can’t thank them enough.

Oh no, the Undertaker is on his way into the ring (at 299 pounds), and Randy Orton still looks confident but you have to wonder why because this time he really looks to have bitten off more than he can chew. My spine is chill-ed.

Actually it is not fair to say that I have not experienced hospitality like it, as so many people have been so good to us, putting us up and helping us out with things. Not fair to compare, really. We are enormously grateful to all and determined to return the favour and be outrageously hospitable to all and sundry in future.

We bade farewell to Mike and Adriana first thing this morning and left Errol on the couch watching the cricket at about 10am. Mike’s mum Janice said goodbye before heading off to yoga. It was like leaving our family, and we will be back to see the Howards this year.

Randy Orton has pulled some heinous trick, bringing two friends into the ring to tackle the Undertaker. He is not a man.

The kindness of strangers

2009-02-26T11:44:00.000-08:00

is a book by Kate Adie. She is a great lady. Kim and I have two copies of her book in hardback and have read a quarter of it between us. But the thought is there and if I read further, I think that Kate and I would find that we are in agreement.

South Africa is full of very nice people. More than twice a bloke has come up to us, when we are looking through the Lonely Planet, and said "are you planning your trip? If I can help at all then give me a shout." Don't remember that happening much in the UK. And the speed with which people have pffered us accomodation at their place is mental too.

Anyway, I'll come back to this, I think. Because it is quality and makes a big difference in a far flung place.

I surfed today. By that, I mean I fell about itnhe waves a lot trying not to get banjoed by small children who were actually surfiong. I also got sunburnt because I am not very clever. Port Elizabeth tomrrow. And we are staying with Gareth's friend Mike. I hope he is nice and not a serial killer. If he is not nice or is a murderer, Gareth's ass is grass and I am a lawnmower.

We are in Bufalo Bay - which is awesome. The backpacker's here is a great place and cheap as you like. Beautiful quiet beach. Clean room and we removed the MASSIVE rain spider from our window so hope it is now arachnid free. Spiders give me the willies and it was a big spider. They don't bite apparently, but they do scare.

Franschhoek

2009-02-24T07:49:00.000-08:00

Franschhoek, as the name suggests, has one too many hs in it. But aside for that schoolboy error, it is probably the best place in the whole world.

Kim and I have spent two nights here already and are progressing into our third. I need to try and describe it here, really. We are staying at Chamonix Cottages, which are very nice. The view is very nice and the wineries in Franschhoek are very nice indeed. Now we go east... just kidding.

Neither of us knows diddly about wine – my dad could tell you exactly how little I know about wine and how much this shames him – so I have set about ascending my learning curve with a fervour. In the UK I tend to buy the Sauvignon Blanc with what I deem to be the best looking label at slightly higher than the lowest price. Sometimes I go for Pinot Grigio. More than half of the time we end up with wine that just doesn’t really taste very nice. Maybe there is a better way to choose.

Here we have liked several Chardonnays, which I previously discarded as generally being dirt.

The setting for these tastings varies from an absolutely idyllic winery in glorious Italian/French valley scenery, to, well to another one. Large restaurants of white stone nestle into hillsides amongst the vines and tasteful fountains and whatnot are scattered between umbrella shielded tables for outdoor dining. It may be this that makes the wine taste wonderful, but if so, it doesn’t really matter.

Best of all so far has been the Grande Provence winery, which gave us the best lunch of our lives in the most sublime setting, washed down with the subtlest and most wonderful Chenin Blanc that I have had. And a nice lady let us taste 5 more wines for 15 rand each – a quid to you. Our neighbours for lunch were extremely well to do South African types with leathery skin and the right sort of attire for a hot day in a rich place. At all of these places we have served by coloured (mixed race) people. There are fewer black people here. Not sure why.

When enjoying the wine, I am thinking of people like my dad and brother Al, Gareth and his dad, and Andy Braithwaite from work. These are people who could appreciate what we are appreciating on a deeper level and who would subsequently explode with happiness in Franschhoek. Starting to understand the attraction.

Pete’s comments on Cape Town

2009-02-24T07:48:00.000-08:00

Craig was, and probably still is, an awesome sort. He used to play professional cricket. I told him that we were not going to find common ground there because I do not see cricket as a sport as such, so we moved on.

Craig was so cool that he walks up Lion’s Head Mountain every day at about 6am. Lion’s Head is like Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh only bigger. We agreed that we should go up together and the deal was set. He would even pick me up outside the hotel. I carefully set the alarm for 06:25 so that I would have time to get up and have some water before the walk. Morning came and I strolled outside at 06:45 to make sure I was ready; water in hand and feeling limber.

Then I realised exactly how stupid I was and swore loudly. Yes, I gave the street a hearty “f@?> sake!” before forming a new plan. I had set my alarm an hour late owing to a special, idiotic part of my brain which I call ‘slowtravellerpete’sbrain’.

I started running up towards Table Mountain, hoping to see Craig on the way down so I could apologise. I was fizzing with energy as I had not done much exercise in far too long. It felt great to get going and the slow uphill felt alright, surprisingly. 23 minutes later I was buggered, so I started walking, still on the street up to the hill. When I got up to the split where you can go Table Mountain or Lion’s Head, I went right, thinking “I am thirsty and I left my water at the hotel”. Well done brain. Kept on up and found a dirt track. As I went on I thought I pretty much had to go to the top. Fortunately I met a nice dad on the way up who gave my one of his bottles of water. He had two, because he was not an idiot. And the view was just fantastic.

Kim, by the way, loves WWE wrestling. I may come back to this, but it is important that you just know that.

That is pretty much it, a great view and more importantly, I got off my arse and did something physical, which means I am less likely to go mental for a few days. South Africa is too often in the car or house or mall and you have to plan outdoors stuff. That has been the city experience anyway. I think that rural places are safer.

I will talk about Franschhoek next. Hotdiggetydamn.

Cape Town

2009-02-24T07:47:00.000-08:00

So, we arrived in Cape Town (CT) and picked up a hire car. Turned on the sat nav we’d bought in joburg and life was sweet. So great just plugging in the destination and letting GPS do the work. Especially good in a new city. We’ve named the sat nav Barbie, because she is a lady, and because we like Braais (BBQ, Barbie) and because on the plane I was reading an article about 50 yrs of the Barbie Doll. Apparently in the 1970s they shifted her eyes from looking coyly to one side to the modern women who looks you straight in the eye. They also fattened her up a bit because according to the pre 70’s waist and hips measurements she would be too skinny for a period. Fact.

Anyway, we dropped stuff at the hotel (who gave us a free upgrade to a trendy studio flat) then shot up to Table Mountain (or Cable Mountain as Pete accidentally called it – and I won’t let him forget it , ha). Discovered there was a half price deal on cable car tickets that evening, our luck continues! Got to the top and enjoyed AMAZING views and sunset action with a bottle of red wine and a little cheese board. It was special, not in a retarded way, in a lovely way.

Met a nice SA couple on the journey up Cable, sorry Table Mountain. Their mum was with them, she is dating a guy called ‘Bunny’ who is originally from Huddersfield would you believe. I’ve never met anyone called Bunny in my home town Huddersfield, but perhaps Dad or Mark have? They shared some of their picnic with us including delicious chocolate cupcakes from Woolworths. Yes, Woolworths lives on in SA. It is actually confusing as it’s M&S products but called Woolworths. No pick and mix – I checked.

The couple (Lucy and Craig) gave us a lift back to our hotel, but not before a prolonged late night car tour of CT. Unfortunately it was dark so we couldn’t appreciate all the harbours they drove through, but the next day we saw how beautiful it is. CT is a wonderful city, much more chilled than Joburg and felt much safer. Less high electric fences.

Next was a morning kayaking to Boulders Bay to look at the penguin colony. That was fun. Shared a double kayak, pete calls them divorce kayaks, but we managed not to squabble despite his rubbish steering.

Cape Point followed, with stunning coastal views. Bit too many tourists milling around but.

We had a fabulous dinner in a swanky Dim Sum place that night, then headed for the Wine Region...

Kimmy's comments again...

2009-02-20T01:45:00.000-08:00

So, now I'm in Joburg airport, awaiting a flight to Capetown. I think some big rubgy team just went on some flight, I have no idea, but everyone was taking pictures of them.

We plan for a couple of days in CT, kayaking to the penguins tomorrow, Table Mountain of course, then heading to the winery. Oh yeah!

Getting in to the swing of things now. My deep seated fear that everyone is going to mug me or something is long gone. People are so friendly and helpful. It really is a happy place to be. Obviously (mum + Janet) I'm keeping my wits about me, but I think UK media have a lot to answer for because it really isnt as they describe.

I'm nervous about starting at the hospital of course, but have been doing some cheery reading (out load on car journeys for pete too) about HIV and TB and Malaria and all the other ways we could die here. Always better to be prepared!

On that cheery note, I'll sign off, Got to board now.

Big Elephant

2009-02-20T01:34:00.000-08:00

This thing walked right towards us....I was driving (kim) and wimping out wanting to get the hell outta there and drive on, but we held off a bit for this quality elephant shot before it battered the chico car to bits. He then walked on to a watering hole and we watched him splash cool mud all over himself to cool off. Awesome stuff.

impala

2009-02-20T01:30:00.001-08:00

2009-02-20T01:15:00.000-08:00

Told you. Lion in a tree.

Braai the hell not, or, hey, you get off of braai cloud, or, the braai who loved me

2009-02-18T02:35:00.000-08:00

And now I am cooking on yet another braai. A braai is like a barbeque, but better. It is better because it is in South Africa.

Sweetcorn. Kim has always been a freakish follower of sweetcorn, but I shy away from the tins and will not accept it on a pizza or in a Subway sandwich (though I take everything else on my Subway sandwich). But when it is charred on a braai, is there anything more perfect? When you melt a knob of butter on it and crunch into the black bits first, can the taste be surpassed? And can I think of any other ways to bang on about sweetcorn? No, on all three counts. No.

Don’t start me on the thin and delectable barbeque steak. The sauce they put on it...

Suffice to say I am having a beer.

And then I put on two potatoes, lovingly wrapped by Kim in tinfoil (the potatoes, not Kim), and put them directly onto the coals. Get out of here. Go home right now and get out of my sight! No, I am not even joking.

The chicken drumsticks here taste better than they do in the UK. Part of it is the sauce that is already on them and part of it is because they are in South Africa.

And the funniest thing is that I am finding it impossible to overcook any of this stuff. You whack it on and leave it there for ages and then take it off and eat it up. Bingo.

The Daily Sun

2009-02-18T02:32:00.001-08:00

No, I am not going to bang on about the weather again. It is sunny today though, and I love it!

I spoke to Safiso (you remember, the Soweto guide) about newspapers. He said that the newspapers in South Africa are not left or right wing and do not support any particular party. I don’t believe him, so I am reading them to find out.

Red tops are always a good place to start. The Daily Sun’s tagline is “Make Noise!”. This is always the first of their many exclamation marks. I have always been against the exclamation mark, except when it is really necessary! Inside I was interested to read about some guy who found a curse under his shop. He has had a rubbish time for 6 years, with most of his family dying from really bad headaches and business going sour. The curse (tokoloshe) consisted of “a lizard, a key, a woman’s bra (not a man’s bra), a rat, a baby’s dummy and a human shit!” (their exclamation mark, not mine) and was found under the pavement by a sangoma (I am guessing a witch doctor of sorts). After digging it up, the sangoma burned the evil muthi and everything appears to have been much better since. If anyone puts a poo and a bra under my house I am going to go mental. But, to reflect, this is just the sort of poo that you read in the UK Sun, so that is reassuring, or not. In fact Safiso and I had a discussion about papers. He said that the Sun was full of unbelievable stories. I started off by trying to relate “Freddie Star ate my hamster” and diverted onto that story when they found a double decker bus in the North Pole.

The Sunday Independant is a bit more words, fewer EXCLAMATION MARKS! and quite a lot of odd interest stories. I think it is like the Observer, ie pish. It had a go at Trevor Manuel, the Finance Minister, who is raising some consumer taxes and, interestingly, plastic bags, airport taxes and road tolls. I say “interestingly”, knowing that approximately 1% of my already modest readership will find it interesting, but bugger it, let’s digress:

Driving the 350 odd km from Pretoria to Kruger cost a bit less than a tenner. And all with not one gantry in sight. Massive hard shoulders are abused at will; signposts are pretty good on the whole. When the traffic lights are out at a junction, you just take it in turns. Sarah was a fan of this, but we had a nightmare with it. Ah, the merry banter. Good old DfT.

Hot?

2009-02-18T02:29:00.000-08:00

Yes, it is. It is extremely hot. I just went outside to sunbath and verily had to come back in because it is so hot. The only way one is able to cope with this heat is with cold coke and beer. They provide sweet respite so that it is again possible to brave the outdoors. Salty crisps also help, as does the knowledge that I am on holiday and have very little to achieve today. But we must be brave if we are to get a tan. So we soldier on.

It is a sleepy afternoon that we are having today. This is justified as we got up at 03:40 to head to Kruger. When we got to the gate at 04:45 we were told that it was unlikely that we were actually going to be going on our walk because we are not staying inside Kruger. We sat and contemplated how crap it would be to turn around and head home. But then lights appeared and we knew we were on and that the security gate dudes did not know what they were on about (despite quite a measure of certainty, which may well be a South Africa thing).

We joined a group of two guides and 5 others for a walk in the bush. It is at this point that I remembered the text message that my friend Calum sent me days before our departure for SA: “I have just looked up your hospital on Google Maps. You are going to be eaten by a lion.” So we walked in the dim light away from the big pick-up and into the wilderness. Our two be-rifled guides were out front (“99% of trouble comes from the front”, apparently). I was at the back trembling like a small, malnourished girl in the cold (it was not cold).

Actually, before we got away from the motor the guide pointed out a hyena. Right there in front of us, casually walking quite near the dirt track. It was beautiful, with big old ears and a slope from head down to bum. You don’t see much on walking tours because over thousands of years animals have learnt that humans means bangbang (or twangthwack) you are dead. You see more from a car because they have only had 100 years to learn to fear them. So a good start indeed. There followed another hyena, some wee spiders, several impalas (if I see one more impala I swear that I am just going to come straight home), lots of cool birds (don’t know why, but they just don’t do it for me) and the odd zebra. We foraged around in elephant poo, but we could not find the pooer. I really wanted to see a rhino but no joy there either. We stopped on a rocky outcrop for biscuits and juice, which had a magnificent effect on my blood sugar level and, hence, spirits. The view was just like one from Jurassic Park, but there were no dinosaurs. Big David the American – sincere, slow talking – kept spotting things far off: “I think that’s a lion under that tree...”. No David, that is another impala. It has horns and is impala shaped and is not a lion.
So we got back to the vehicle and headed off through 6 million impalas, back to the lodge to drop off half of the party. David and Kim and I shopped for tat before getting back into the motor to go back to the gate.

THEN WE SAW A LION IN A TREE.

The guide slammed on the brakes stammering something about a leopard.

Guide – “I have never seen a lion in a tree in 3 years of guiding. Leopards are in trees, but not lions”

Lady in car – “I come to this park every day for 4 years and I have never seen a lion in a tree”

Me – “It’s a lion in a tree”

Sat there with back legs dangling either side of a substantial limb, left, front leg dangling and head slouched on bent right paw, she was amazing. Occasionally she lifted her big bonce to look about, before resting it back down. It was getting hot, by now. We sat transfixed for a good while, abusing the good David’s binoculars to look into her big lioness eyes.

She then jumped down from the tree and ate Kim, so I hope that Calum thinks that he is really clever, because I don’t.

Shame (Kimmy's comments)

2009-02-15T11:26:00.001-08:00

There are lots of funny phrases out here. I already say ‘Ya’ instead of ‘yes’, I’m so in with the locals. Another word is “Shame”, said in a sort of Australian twang. They say it all the time. It sort of means ‘oh what a shame’ but also means ‘really?’. I’m trying to slip it in to conversation but it always seems to sound insincere when I say it.

So, Angelique’s parents Alex and Electra have been so lovely. Electra has traipsed round lots of car places, fed us, given us beer, taken us for dinner, and even let us sleep in her daughter’s room. Then, she announced she has credit to claim on a timeshare just beside Kruger National Park (the number one safari (or bush drive as they say) destination). She has kindly given us a week of free accommodation at a lovely quite swanky bush resort. We are now sitting in this massive thatched house with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, private braai (BBQ) etc. Pete is loving all the braai action and also the ratio of meat to veg in our fridge. Electra even lent us cool boxes so we can take cool drinks in our car around the park.

We arrived yesterday evening and today went in to Kruger. It only costs about £10 entrance, and we are in a slightly clapped out banger of a hire car, but again, it was super cheap. We drove around all afternoon and saw giraffes eating the leaves high up in the trees, zebra grazing or crossing the road ahead. Some African Elephants having a mud bath, wildebeest looking scary. No sighting of lions or rhinos yet....but we shall get up at 4am tomorrow and go for a sunrise drive to try and find the buggers. Every time I saw a cute baby animal today I was thinking “oh , I hope a lion appears and eats it up right now”...how selfish of me!

9021Greek

2009-02-15T11:21:00.000-08:00

On Friday night we were given the option to a) stay in and sort out our stuff, maybe watch a DVD, b) go back to the mall (we have spent more time in that mall trying to get our computer fixed than I care to think about) to the cinema, or c) go to a mental 21st birthday party at Electra and Alex’s friends’ house.

Let’s go back a few days. I have been neglecting you and A LOT has happened.

Electra and Alex are awesome. They are the parents of a Greek-South African girl called Angelique who Kim knows from doctoring. She is in Glasgow, funnily enough, and hooked us up with her parents. We did have an inkling that it was ‘good to have contacts’ – reference Sarah being amazing and settling us in from the get go.

So Electra and Alex came and got us from the gated community outside Joburg in their Merc and took us to Moyo (googleit). Moyo was a big, mad, posh, African chic restaurant. Alex started to try to teach me about wine and we had a lovely feast and interesting conversation. Both are very easy to talk to.

It was late when we got back to their massive gated house in Pretoria, behind electrified wire and cameras. They have the softest guard dogs in the world. One has tried to lick my legs into submission several times. I am yet to yield.

Thereafter we have spent what seems like several days going around looking at cars and trying to get the computer fixed. This has been pretty knackering and not a little boring at times, especially when you just know how much cool stuff there is to do, but it was all necessary and we are making progress.

We chose c). And ended up in what I must describe as a tasteful Columbian drug-dealer’s mansion. That is not to be unkind to the non-drug dealer host Mike, but it gives the quickest picture. The house, now surrounded by Mercs and BMWs, was chock full of beautiful, wealthy young things (most of whom have had Alex as their paediatrician from birth) dressed Hawaiian-style. For this was Anthula’s 21st and it was not to be done by halves. Tables adorned with big orchids in glass houses, projected images of the kids on the walls… Oh let’s cut to the chase, there was a big free bar.

Speeches were made and they were really thoughtful and nice. Friends and siblings and parents all commented about how great Anthula was and then she stood up. Hers was slightly less cool as she mentioned several times that her sister likes the cakes a bit too much. Maybe it is an in-joke. Anyway overall they were really sweet and demonstrative. And by then I was hammered, so that helped.

Kim popped off to the loo (about which, more later), and at that point, Mike came up and offered to show us his cellar. His cellar (on the first floor) was the best room I have ever known. To get to it, you had to prize open a double cupboard door in a messy IT room. Then another door appeared and through we went. Red brick arches were filled with bottles of red and white, all kept at somethingorother degrees. We walked out with a bottle of Laborie Merlot which apparently costs 24985723409875 rand, or more than seven pounds.

If anyone is not jealous yet, come here and I shall slap you, you are mentally ill.

Mike’s whisky collection was a bit weak to be honest, with several bottles of Whyte and MacKay, but then I know buggerall about wine, so there you go. And he was a nice bloke.

The party raged on below and we rejoined it, with Alex sneaking away to get another bottle of Zsomething (red Sambuca). By now the kids were in a tight circle with some boys doing that Greek stepping-about dance thing. They were already surrounded by debris and added to it by smashing more plates. Not like the old days, Electra told me. No, in old Greece they rarely smashed them on their heads. These kids! The plates were a bit Hollywood, I get the feeling.
Note that I have not yet commented on how awesome it is that Electra is called Electra. Well it is time. What a fantastic name.

Yes we definitely owe Angelique a few pints and I plan to pin her to a chair for several hours whilst I bang on about her fantastically kind parents. Once again I see really good hospitality and I feel lucky / hung over.

Kimmy's comment on museum

2009-02-11T07:06:00.001-08:00

Kim here, though I'm considering renaming myself Kimberley since it is a big city here.

Our guide was brilliant. He says BMWs are a status symbol in SA. He says the local guys give them nicknames, for example Black Mans Wish, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Be My Wife, Break My Window and take me home. Hilarious! If you have any other suggestions for BMW please comment!

Apartheid was bad

2009-02-11T06:15:00.000-08:00

Okay let's just gloss over yesterday. It was poor on many counts and decidedly boring. Exciting points were that I got my phone working and we lost Kim's in a mall, then regained it (only after Sarah's histerical "why have you got my friend's phone!" phone conversation with the guy who found it in the burger joint". We got stuck in crap traffic for over an hour in the rain and then we had pizza. And we didn't find the blasted IT shop so our laptop is still not connecting to tinternet. This is Sarah's - cheers Sarah.

The key thing is that we still have no car, but we are working on it. You need one in South Africa.

TODAY we went out and did stuff, for shizzle. And it was a top, top day. First Soweto and then the Apartheid Museum, abley guided by Sifiso (which I have undoubtedly spelt wrong). He was awesome, driving us about in a wee old red VW Golf.

Soweto was not as bad as I thought it would be. No, I do not want to move there, but I was not as afraid for my life as the media would have me. We didn't get shot once. There was a range of expensive houses down to the wee corrigated iron huts that you see on telly. Not a rabble hoard in sight. Winnie Mandela's house is not very nice, Nelson's is better. Tutu's is silver and shiny, but he doesn't live there any more because some scumbag broke in and stole his Nobel Prize. You would, I do not need to tell you, have to be a complete a-hole to do that. Tutu is hilarious and very adept at taking the piss out of Mandela's crap taste in shirts. He came out and said that Afrikaaners have a place in SA. Not really controversial, but being used for ping pong by the papers and radio pundits.

Sifiso had really interesting chat about the place and merry banter to go with it. And, crucially, he didn't force us to go to all of the tourist stalls around the various sights we stopped at. He reckons Zuma is a 'good man', so we'll see how that goes.

The Apartheid Museum was really, really good. two and a half hours was not enough though. So much to take in there, with a nice mix of video, audio, photo and some hangman's nooses on the ceiling in case you missed the point. Actually the most interesting bit for me was video of white apartheid politicians justifying it (it is really 'just like being neighbourly', apparently) and ANC politicians condemning it (some of the most measured and articulate interviews I have seen, especially in the face of mental adversity). The tour ends with you coming out into a garden, which is a really nice touch as by then you are pretty messed up. I did that thing were I feel funny inside but I do not cry because I am emotionally disabled. Then I compared it with other hilarious destinations I have been like the killing fields and the S-21 prison in Cambodia and the Hiroshima Museum. All were so well thought out. There is also something really compelling about utter bastardliness. And a dose of overcomingness certainly helps.

But anyway, the really interesting part was when we left and got on the N1. Congestion like that at 4pm is a disgrace, and not a gantry in sight. They need our help, they need to open their hard shoulders. That was for my old work colleagues. DfT fo ev a.

Kimmys comments

2009-02-09T01:36:00.000-08:00

I (Kim) have been granted permission to write occasional bits on petes blog. Sorry for those of you that don't know me, bonus for those that know both of us, 2-4-1 offer !

So, honestly I am a bit shell shocked right now. All this craziness. The enormity of what we've decided to do has hit me right between the eyes. I'm sure I'll adjust though. I think I need some rest. It's great having a buddy to go through it all with, even if he does sweat profuse amounts.

SA mobile is up and running - thanks Neera for that one.

Haven't formed proper plans of what we'll do from here...maybe capetown, maybe port st johns. Who knows.

Next task...finding some 4x4 wheels to take us places...

Moooooooooorningsiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide

2009-02-09T00:54:00.000-08:00

We are in Morningside. Those of you who are Scottish will know exactly the accent to say that in, because it is a posh bit of Edinburgh. Basically extend the o and the second i. You also roll the r.

I am smelly and a bit tired.

It is about 11am in Joburg and a bit cloudy. Stormsacomin this afternoon, apparently as per usual.

Morningside is just north of Joburg and seems to consist of lots of massive gated communities chock full of flats. They look like big hotels in the Med, only bigger. We are in the exotic 'Vie Somethingorother'. It is huge and has walls about 12 foot high with razor wire on top. In that sense it differs from Morningside in Edinburgh, but the people are probably better craic here (rib punch to Edinburgh!).

It is great to be here but it is definately wierd, couldn't say it isn't. It is just going to be a very different way of life, especially in this infamous city. I am full to the brim with ignorance and fear, but determined to reverse both of those by learning stuff. I may even read the history of SA book that colleagues at the Dept for Transport kindly gave me.

Kim's friend Sarah is putting us up and came all the way from work between meetings to let us in, after getting us a 'Safe Taxi' to her place. The taxi driver, Baldwin, asked if we have safari in London. I said "sort of". Then we listend to Wackit Something on the radio. He does prank calls. From this I learned that South Africans swear a lot when under stress ("Wackit, you @~?t, man, I am gaa-ing to f@>?ing kill you bro"), and tabloid radio is the same all over the world. He did a pretty good joke interview with James Blunt which made me smile, because James Blunt is bad.

Sarah is very nice. Awesome of her to put us up like this and get us settled in. She is back off to work now so we get time to chill out BY HER SWIMMING POOL. Do not worry about me!

The flight was okay. We got an upgrade by taking my brother's name in vain and begging about volunteer work and stuff. Flight attendant was very discrete, walking us to our new seats and then casually pointing before walking off ignoring us. Our seats were together in Club and had a fully reclining bedwhatsit. Watched a Coen brothers' movie, drank a gorgeous chenin blanc and actually talked to Kim - a rare travelling treat for her. I love BA, there, I said it. The flight was not just okay, it was wonderful.

This is the start of our year in South Africa and what a lovely way to kick it off. Now to wash my sweaty body.