Back again!

Hello long-lost world of blogging :)

It has rather been ages, but farewell to Africa in August meant farewell to the blog as well! But now that I'm back and settled again in the South Coast, here we go again... I can't make any promises that this time around will be any more successful, or any more frequent, but it is worth a shot!

For the past 3 months, I was back in my hometown and at my job at Sunbeam Residential Development Centre, nursing there for medically fragile children and adults with cognitive and physical developmental delays. It was a fun return to work with the girls there and with the kids - I think I was asked about Rehoboth and my time in South Africa every shift I was in; either that or recognized by the new people there as "oh! YOU'RE the one who went to Africa!"

I flew back to Durbs about 2 weeks ago now, and have been enjoying some sunny R&R before starting up at the clinic again next week. It's been an absolute blast seeing friends and Carl again and just enjoying the fact that it's snowing back in the homeland, and I've got sunburned from the awesomeness of warmth here.

I visited the kids at Rehoboth a week ago Sunday and absolutely got bowled over by the affectionate mobs of children running to say hello - so so lovely! Sometimes it's nice to go away, just to have the fun of coming back again :) It will definitely be fun to be with those kids all the time again!

I'm looking forward to jumping back into the South African health care system and dealing with all the fun little problems we don't get to see in Canada, and work towards making the little clinic something major and effective and productive. It's fun to have your own space to set up how it goes and be able to make change, and see changes made in the little lives :)

And on that note, turrah for now! We'll see how good I get at this!

Goodbye South Africa! See you Just Now!

Today, I packed up all my things and walked around the village to hug all the children and housemums goodbye...so hard to believe that my 7 months of being here are over! It's become such a home to me, that it's strange to think that tomorrow I'm getting on a plane and going back to my other normal life in Canada (!). Unreal.

This morning in devotions, the kids sand and danced as a goodbye and I got to say a few words to the whole group about how much I've enjoyed my time here and that there's no way that I can't return. Rehoboth, the clinic, and espeicially the kids can't keep me away for long :) So even though I've been a rubbish blogger, the blog will continue somewhat, sort of, when I remember to update...so probably infrequently ;)

Can't write much now, but a last farewell for now from,
Nurse Heather in South Africa

It's been a long while!

Hello blogging world!

It has been absolute ages, but now that I've splurged out on my very own Blackberry (!), hopefully updates will happen on a slightly more frequent basis. No promises though...otherwise, in a few months time, this will just look silly.

Let's start out with some more FUN SOUTH AFRICAN VOCAB!

Sizey - means big, or a large amount. Basically to describe anything of bigger-ness.
Bru - what guys call each other. Think 'bro' or 'mate' kind of thing.
Chop -means any range of insult: from idiot, to jerk.
Is it?- said in response to any statement. Doesn't matter if the statement refers to a plural, grammar takes a back seat.
Laanie - means 'fancy'
Slops - the SA term for flip flops
Lightie - means a young person. No age limit, just have to compare to an older person.
Chillo's - like 'chilly'
Aircon - what people say instead of AC as a short form for air conditioning

Ta daaa!

Life continues to be super awesome here. Two weeks ago, I presented to the KwaZulu-Natal (provincial) Health Department about developing a service agreement between us at Rehoboth and the local hospital. So the day of the presentation, Yvonne and I gathered everything together in the board room ... Laptop, projector, screen, promotion DVDs, handout binders, tea, coffee, cookies... And none of our high profile docs and Health Dept people showed up! Not until an hour later, did our fellow meeting people arrive! So that time period gave me some time to just relax the nerves, and be fully ready. Advocating is one of the things about nursing that I absolutely love - that's me in my element. And the fact that I got to do that here, for something I really care about, and for something that's such a big deal with important people in the health care system, is just...woah, amazing! The presentation went so smoothly, and so well! The whole proposal for the service agreement was completely agreed upon! So I'm now in the process of drafting the contract for all parties to sign, which has been pretty cool. :) makes me feel like I'm making a difference, as corny as that sounds! Ha!

Anyways, that's all that my fingers are going to manage writing out on this little keyboard!
Oh, and for those who are curious... I've managed to meet a very nice South African boy here named Carl. Quite the awqesome surprise on this South African adventure! :)

Turrah for now!
Heather

A lesson in language mix-ups: Ek is lekker!

 Hello once again!

I’ve been a super lazy blogger and I really don’t think I can even attempt to write out absolutely everything that’s happened since the last post (!). Nursing and Rehoboth have become just like normal life – it’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 4 months of being here… it’s gone by so fast, but at the same time feels like this has been forever. It’s a very natural flow of things. My job is seriously amazing. I think I’ve said it before, but even after more time being solo in the clinic and being more and more involved, this nursing is just so me. It’s hard to think about going back to Canada and going back to the kind of nursing there… There’s definitely different challenges here, but that’s kind of what makes it fun – it’s just such a different experience than anything I would see or have to handle in Canada, no matter the capacity of job I had. I can only be so full of thanks that I got to come here!!

Another part of having spent a significant amount of time here is picking up a whackload of South African slang:

Jersey = sweater

Vest = tank top (if boys wear them)

Takkies = running shoes

Lekker = good/great/delicious

Ungaas = I don’t know (Zulu)

As well = same as regularly used, but pronounced with more emphasis on the AS, and used a lot more often!

Ja = Yeah

Shame = not used always as ‘what a shame!’ but more like a filler word – there’s a pause, say ‘shame’! Yvonne said when she had her son here, people would come up and ask ‘so what did you have, boy or girl?’ she or Alfons would say ‘boy’ and the response would be ‘aw, shame!’

Rubbish = like in the UK, meaning garbage or trash

Naughty = used much more commonly in reference to misbehaving children

Plaster = bandaid (also like in the UK)

Eish = kind of like an ‘oh man’

Hey = used like our ‘eh’

Baggies & Costume = swimsuits, male and female. So if someone tells you to bring your costume, they don’t mean Halloween.

Oke = short form of ‘bloke’, but they don’t say bloke, only ever oke… so means a guy

Manky = gross

Pitch = verb, means to show up somewhere, like to an event or to work “he didn’t pitch at work today”

Packing with laughter = laughing really hard

Pancakes = crepes; also: our pancakes are called crumpets and are much smaller

Potjie = long-cooking layered stew, pronounced like ‘porky’ in a new york accent

Bobotie = kind of like shepherd’s pie… that’s the closest comparison I can make, from Cape Malay

Vaalies = people from the Transvaal that come to the South Coast (where I am) on holiday for the beaches, notably recognized by wearing speedos/bikinis/surfing gear in the shopping centres, bright red burned skin, and carrying bodyboards around with them everywhere to try and fit in with the locals – the locals don’t like them, but makes for a fun game of ‘spot the tourist’, even I can spot them!

And there’s probably even more, but that’s all the vocab I’ll bore you with today :)

Some quick highlights from the past month or so:

1. Realized how small the world is. A guy in my cell group grew up with my cousin’s cousin in Zimbabwe!
2. Had Easter on the beach at a sunrise service – so beautiful, and so cool to have a HOT Easter and spend the rest of the day on the beach, swimming and soaking up some sun. Gorgeous!
3. Realized I’m a bad Canadian… it’s becoming autumn here, so it will get warm during the day, but once the sun sets, it’s something like 16-18 degrees… and now I’m absolutely FREEZING once it hits that! Wearing long pants and long sleeves; huddling under blankets and cuddling with a hot water bottle! I made so much fun of my South African friends when it was still summer here about their ‘freezing’ temperatures of winter, and now I’m worse than some of them! Man alive. Terrible! How will I cope ever again with -20 degrees??

That’s all for now!

Turrah,

Heather

An ... interesting week.

This past week was hectic! Filled with lots of busy times, nice times, but also WOAH times.

 

Monday was really nice actually in that the preschool at Rehoboth was starting their week on 'people who help us' and they started out with nurses! The preschool is right outside the clinic so I'm usually in and out and see the children (and hear them) throughout the day. When I walked in first thing on Monday after doing the shop, the children were all lined up with hand-made nurse's hats on! It was TOO CUTE. I took pictures. Then Dianne, the preschool teacher/education supervisor, asked if I could help 'inspect the nurses' so we talked about washing hands, and being professionals and taking care of people - oh it was just too cute, really warmed my heart! Dianne had made a 'hospital' in the preschool for the children to play in with dolls as patients and a sink to 'wash hands' and doctor's bag kind of toys like stethoscopes, bandages, thermometres, white coats. You could hear them saying things that you KNOW they must hear all the time, "don't cry, it doesn't hurt", "finish your medicine", "it's just a small pinch" (pinch is what they call injections/having blood taken). Later on, I brought out my real stethoscope and each one had a chance to listen to their own heart. That was really fun! They were so in awe of this beating thing inside of them.

 

After Monday, life got a little more .... interesting. Had some appointments at the hospital, so went there to pick up the monthly medication as well. Usually there's no problems, just long waits sometimes. When they brought out the meds, the pharmacist asked me "you know that we've stopped giving out meds to NGO's other than ARV's (meds for HIV), right?". Of course I said that no, I hadn't known that, and when did this come about - "oh just recently". Ooook? So we took the meds that they gave us, but as Rahel and I were driving back to the village, my brain was racing to remember what we have stock of and what we were depending on this monthly medication coming in ... we have kids on TB medication, anti-epileptic medication, inhalers, so much that is really important! There will be a meeting next week (after we called teh medical director of the hospital), but at the moment we really needed the one boy's anti-epileptic meds - they were goign to be finished on Wednesday. Fortunately, it was also the big clinic day this week on Thursday, so after some frantic-ish calling around, we came to the silly conclusion that Sphe would just have to be there at clinic in person, and THEN the hospital would give us his meds. So ridiculous - she saw him a few weeks ago to prescribe the new meds... gah. Whatever, it's Africa.

 

This month's clinic is Blood Clinic - meaning, blood tests! Only 16 of the children needed testing done (compared to the norm of all 55), so that was a little less to arrange, but I did a huge amount of prep to get ready for our paediatrician to come to Rehoboth with gathering supplies from the hospital, filling out all the virology request forms, other forms, labelling the blood tubes, and figuring out how to calmly get 16 children (including infants and toddlers) into the clinic and out again in the space of about an hour and a half. I'd been working on this for more than a week, so I was definitely ready. I had prepped all the housemums with appointment cards and announcements during devotions, had rearranged teh clinic slightly to make it a more usable space, and had even cleaned! We were all set for the paediatrician to arrive on Thursday morning at 0900.

 

Thursday morning at 0845: text from the doctor, "We can't come to Rehoboth, can you bring the children here?" ............. ahhhhhh!

Thursday I learned the value of flexibility.

We managed to coordinate enough drivers and enough housemums to come along to help manage the kids, I packed up everythign necessary to take with us, and we trucked over 17 children, 3 house mums, all their files, all their blood tubes, all their forms, myself, and Tamara. Yikes! Once we arrived, our doctor told us that the hospital had not ALLOWED her to come to Rehoboth. There is definitely something tricky going on... she was upset about this as well, because we had to bring all the kids into an already rather crowded, small paediatric ward and can you imagine if it had been a month when all the kids needed to come? It'd be unreal! Luckily, she will be at the meeting next week to discuss what services the hospital will be providing for Rehoboth, and I know she will help advocate for us. Definitely something to pray about!

 

Thankfully, the craziness of the week was over by Thursday afternoon. The rest of the time since then has been wonderfully relaxing... cell group Thursday night, Friday was just calm in the clinic (besides the norm busy things), and today Rahel and I explored the Uvongo flea market, and went to the beach before coming here to the internet cafe! It's nice to have the weekend :)

The Kindness of Strangers

This past weekend I had an absolutely lovely time going on a mini-safari kind of adventure at Lake Eland Game Reserve - a place actually quite close to where I live - with two ladies in their 60s. How did this come about? Let me tell you.

A long, long time ago in January when I was first flying here, I was on the last leg of my three day journey and waiting in the Joburg airport to catch my flight to Durban. A few of us sitting around the gate to board were just chatting away mostly about nothing and about flights, and it was a nice little sociable time to keep me awake in my state of complete jetlag. As we boarded the plane, an older couple that had been part of this chatting were actually my seat-mates for the flight, so that was a happy little coincidence. They pointed out different sites as we flew over the landscape, and we had a nice talk over the whole flight. I told them I was a nurse from Canada and I was going to a children's village called Rehoboth near Port Shepstone - "we're FROM Port Shepstone!" So we sort of chatted about where I thought Rehoboth was, and they were interested a bit since they hadn't heard of it before. When the flight ended, we said a little goodbye, and off I went - didn't think about it again really.

Three weeks ago, a phone call came to Rehoboth - 'is there a volunteer from Canada there with you? Heather?' - they had tracked me down! And wanted to visit! How old world friendlier can you get?! It was so sweet. :) We had a nice chat on the phone and made some potential weekend plans that we ended up changing to this weekend when Denise's (that's her name) friend could also join us since she 'really knew' Lake Eland and 'where all the animals like to hide'. We talked on the phone a few more times to solidify plans, and then it was Saturday and the big meet-up! I think I've been successfully adopted. Haha! It was like meeting an old friend, it was really lovely. Perhaps this means I've been accepted by the locals? Huzzah!

The animals were really spectacular to see and get close to in our massive 4x4 - we went off-roading almost the entire time to get closer to anything we saw. I think they called it "bushbacking" or something instead of 'off-roading'. Oh, South African slang :) Shame, man!

One of the house mums has started teaching me more Zulu:
Kubuhlungu? Laphi? La!
(It's sore? Where? Here!)

Turrah for now!
Heather

Want to Lose Weight, Fast?

...Move to South Africa!
Then start having lovely dysentery/dumping syndrome/food poisoning type symptoms, and POOF, in only 4 days time, you'll lose 3 kilo's!

In reality, last week I got sick with some sort of horrid GI virus which basically led to me not keeping any food in me for 4 days. I spent those 4 days basically on complete bed rest with zero energy to even walk myself to the bathroom and back. Horrible! I have huge amounts more empathy now for anybody on bed rest... I'm not a very good patient - my poor roommates!

Luckily, I'm on the mend and managed to get back to work and the clinic this week. Still not 100%, but at least approaching 90%.

On Wednesday this week, a Dutch film crew came to film us at Rehoboth! Tamara applied for this tv program in Holland that focuses on Dutch people who have emigrated to other places and what they're doing now - and she got in! So they've been following her around since Wednesday and it's been loads of fun to have them around. When they arrived, Rahel and I had just finished eating dinner together as Tam was waiting for them, and all of a sudden there they were with cameras and everything (!). So they filmed us at the house a little bit, and my other new claims to fame/time on screen happened over the next few days at morning devotions with the whole village singing and dancing with the kids, at the preschool, and last night we were at a friend's house in Port Shepstone for a braai that they came to film as well. It's a hoot! There's more filming today and tomorrow, and then it's all over. Apparently the camera man and sound guy have both taken a fancy to me - Tamara keeps coming back to the house and telling stories about how the two were talking: "You know that nurse girl who runs the clinic? She's nice, eh?" "Oh ya ya, she's nice" "Will she be comign to the braai as well?" "She was sick last week? We could've been there to give her CPR!" TOO FUNNY. Especially since they really dont' talk to me - haha!!! Tamara, Rahel and I have a good laugh at their expense, anyway. BUT - if I have made quite the impression with the camera guy, perhaps that means I will definitely become famous from extra air time ;)

Turrah for now!
Heather, International Television Star

Blogging Beginnings

So I was going to post this a week ago, but due to dramatic and completely unforeseen circumstances, it was delayed until now! You'll just have to pretend that any days mentioned were 2 weeks ago instead of actually 'last week' when it says things like that. Ok, those are all the instructions.


------------------------------------------------------

Hello world of blogging!

I suppose this counts as my first ‘real’ blog instead of just copy-pasting old emails. So this is clearly a significant event – maybe I should get a gold star for remembering to post? Most definitely.

It’s been yet another eventful and busy and wonderful and full week. Time just flies by, for real. Life here now feels totally like it’s been like this forever. It seems normal now that:

-          I burn everytime I forget sunscreen,

-          my hair gets lighter and skin darker every day,

-          that when someone says to meet at 9am it really means 9:30am at the earliest,

-          that ‘tea’ is always Rooibos,

-          that ‘just now’ doesn’t mean now it means anytime in the future (‘now now’ is actually now),

-          that I’ll be called anything from ‘Auntie Hegga’ to ‘Auntie Hatha’ to ‘Auntie Hedar’,

-          that children will immediately start coughing or suddenly start feeling ill when I walk by and haven’t paid them enough attention that day,

-          that frogs and millipedes and moths will rule the house by the time the sun sets,

-          that the day really ends around 8pm when it’s already been dark for an hour,

-          that you never just say ‘hello’ it’s always followed by ‘how are you’ (or: sawubona! Unganji?)

-          that I will frequently not understand conversations since they’ll either be in Zulu or Dutch

-          that every morning starts with singing and dancing and prayer with the whole village

-          that HIV status is something incredibly secretive and incredibly stigmatized

-          that any kind of hospital visit to any of the multidisciplinary team will always involve a significant amount of waiting (we’re talking hours)

-          that nursing here is so much more than any ‘scope of practice’ the RNAO or CNO could ever write up

 It’s always hard to sit down and write about what’s been going on here – there is so much I want to say to people, and so many things that have gone on! I think I mentioned last time that a new little girl was coming to Rehoboth and I had developed this new tool for admission and assessment – I’m actually super pleased with how that turned out, and how useful it was to organize all the information (and lack of information) she came with at transfer. Considering she was brought to us directly from a hospital, my expectations for clear info about her current diagnoses, current treatments and relevant forms (like immunization record, ID#, last CD4 count and viral load) were apparently higher than they should’ve been – although she came with 3 different transfer and referral forms and a social worker to do the actual hand off, none of these forms seemed to correlate as to if she had pulmonary TB or not still (she had defaulted on her TB meds and HIV meds [ARV’s] at home 3 times prior to hospitalization and abandonment by her family once admitted). Some of the records said she was on TB treatment, but then didn’t specify what stage of treatment, which meds and the extra ARV that kids with HIV have to be on if they have TB was not listed as a current medication on the form that actually did list the TB med on it. They did send along a package of her current meds, some of which were unlabelled bottles, but it was such a mess that in the end, I decided what we were going to treat her for and how we were going to do it. Ahh, the power of running the clinic!

 I love being the centerpiece for the health needs of the kids here – you get to deal with not only the acute events that happen, but also the big picture stuff: I assess and decide upon need for referral and then pursue that referral until it happens by directly contacting the specialists myself. There’s no middle man. There’s only me, and a telephone. The level of independence is amazing. Things can happen so quickly! In just this past week, Ezinhle (our new little girl) was able to have solid appointments with the paediatrician, OT, and audiologist with appointments booked over the next two weeks with the dentist and urologist. It’s all about the connections you have. I’ve really enjoyed the big advocating role that’s part my job now – and that it can be so successful is a big motivation to keep going and keep pushing for the best care possible.

Oh man, there’s just so much awesomeness going on with the nursing part of being here that I seriously can’t even write it down. I love it all. I love that I get to live where I work and can just nurse as a part of regular daily life mixed in with the normalcy of kids going to school and returning, having meals together, etc – it reminds me a lot of my time at L’Arche, where working and living together was a big part of the ethos of care. I know some people have to have that separation between work and their own life, but I think I like it better to not have to distinguish between the two. I like that I don’t have to keep that barrier of ‘professionalism’ in the way of caring for the kids – I don’t have to keep a distance; I can be there and be ‘auntie’ to these kids that have been abandoned and abused and malnourished and neglected and starved for love and acceptance.    

This past Sunday afternoon, I organized a village-wide soccer game for all the kids that wanted to join in. I think about 30 or 40 kids came! There may not have been a whole lot of actual soccer played (only 10 were serious about playing consistently), but everyone from 3-12 years old got to be on a team, even if most of the younger ones spent the hour having a water break J There was a lot of hand-balls, off-sides, and I’m sure that more official soccer rules weren’t followed, but I think I can safely call it a success.

Goodness, there’s so much more I could say or write about, but this will have to do for now – I’m much too wordy for my own good.

Turrah for now!

Feb 4, 2011: Sunburns, Zebras, Clinic, oh my!

Hello!

I missed writing last week, so here I am with most likely even more of a novel of an email (I don’t know yet how much of a novel since I’m just starting it, but if the past is any indicator…. you're in for a doozy!)

It’s been another busy 2 weeks – hard to believe that it will be a month of being here on Saturday (!) – the whole time has just blown by. There’s been masses of new people, new faces, new names, new languages, new health care environments, new living arrangements, new weather conditions, and lots and lots of new things to learn. It seems bizarre that so much new stuff and new life really has been jam-packed into only 4 weeks, because it’s like having built a whole life in the same amount of time – that’s the fun part about wandering the world independently, I suppose … you really get to start from scratch no matter where you set step.

Last week, I had a lot of driver training time with Marinde in the VW Golf … it had its ups and downs of success, hah! One of the days of driving lessons was a massively rainy day, and living up in the hills as we are, it’s super misty/foggy – so conditions needless to say were not ideal. And then there’s me, Marinde and Rahel packed into this little car, trying to practice left-side driving and gear shifting on the mud-slide that has replaced the dirt road. Real Africa ! Haha! It was quite ridiculous – especially since we made the brilliant decision of attempting to practice uphill starts on a 70 degree grassy incline…. Oh man, we just had to laugh at ourselves – or at least I did, since the most trouble I had was wrestling with the hand-brake: I simply COULD NOT get it to unlock from its position, even using both hands! SO funny! It was so stubborn! It is a very fortunate thing that I have not wrecked anything important in that car yet…

Highlights from last week also include: surviving through the lack of water for 5 days with foraging for rain water (which we had plenty of) and being creative for a rain collection system including a drainpipe, awnings, and buckets. The second half of the week was dominated by massive sunshine, and accordingly, I sunburned to a crispier version of Heather than probably ever seen before. Luckily, this has turned into what I am calling a “protective” tan. We’ll see how protective it turns out to be.

Last Friday, I drove out into the community with Mirande and Priscilla, one of the Zulu workers who is a really plucky lady and one of the physically strongest people I have ever met (cultural side note: that’s quite common in Zulu culture to have the women as the stronger ones… they do all the heavy work, the men really don’t do much of anything). Anyways, the three of us were driving in the ‘bakkie’ (pick-up truck, pronounced ‘bucky’) to deliver building supplies and a seriously massive water collection tank to one of Rehoboth’s house mum’s homes in the shanty-town nearby. Rehoboth does quite a lot of work to improve living conditions for their workers, which I hadn’t known about before. This was my first time really out in the community. The house mum, Eunice, is a lovely woman and it was so pleasant to see her at her home. She has, comparatively, a nice place to live. Her house has a garden out front where she grows corn and herbs and flowers, and there are two trees that she hangs her clothesline between. The house is made up of 3 rooms: kitchen, living room, bedroom. There’s no running water, but there is a tv, stove, and furniture. You can tell she’s put a lot of care into making it a nice home for her family: very clean, and a lot of pride put into the maintenance of the old cupboards and pseudo-linoleum put over the concrete floor. She shares the bedroom with her two daughters and her granddaughter who is only just learning to walk. They have no toilet in their house either – there are community-shared outhouse buildings and water supply a 5-10 min walk away. This new water tank we brought will make a big difference, collecting rain water to keep it filled. It’s humbling to see how so many people live – not to pity, but to recognize that life is very very different for others.    

 

This week has been the beginning of my solo working in the clinic since Marinde is now on holiday for the next 3 weeks - it's been busy, but so fun to get to run it! I love all the different things I get to do and enjoy the challenge of caring and managing the care of 55 kids all at once. Today we have a new little girl coming in, so to prepare I've been developing an assessment and admission tool for Rehoboth since there wasn't one - that's been a sweet project and makes me feel rather professional!

 

This weekend the roomies and I are going off to Tala (spelling may be something else) which is a big game reserve about 2 hours away, so I will hopefully have some big animal sightings! The coolest thing earlier this week was seeing 3 zebras galloping across the hill opposite my flat - sooo incredible. Probably one of the most amazing things of my life. Who gets to see wild zebra up close and personal? So awesome!

 

That's all for now,

Turrah folks!

Heather

Jan 23, 2011: Updating continues...

Hello Everybody!

Once again the time has come for a massive update on what's been going on in my little part of South Africa.

This week has been super busy! It just flew by. This was the kids’ first week back to school, so the first few days seemed like there were hardly any kids around (preschool is taught at Rehoboth, and there’s programs for the toddlers and babies). My brain is on overload of trying to remember all there is to running the clinic since Mirande and her husband Johan are going to return to Holland for vacation for the first 3 weeks of Feb and I will be in charge of the clinic at that point. There’s a lot that goes on! So I’m trying to write down as much as possible or have Mirande talk me through the usual tasks as well as potential trouble-shooting. Many of the meds are unfamiliar to me (different standard meds for diseases/disorders) so to figure out what to ‘prescribe’ is a bit of a challenge until I become familiar to what we have and we don’t have. The most basic difference is that there is no Tylenol, no acetaminophen. So when we have a child with a fever, I was a little stumped at first, since this is just the standard back in Canada . Instead, we have Panado, a similar analgesic/antipyretic. So there’s a few minor things like that where I need to re-train my brain to think what is here instead of thinking what I would do instinctively.

This week was also my first instances of driving standard AND on the left hand side. The left hand thing didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would (mind you… I wasn’t driving on any roads that were remotely busy), except that I would look for the rear-view mirror in the wrong place. It’s just a little VW Golf that I’m learning on, which is a tiny little car (!). I have the feeling that car and I will build many funny memories together in my struggles to gear shift at appropriate times and into the correct gear slot. Yikes! Progress is being made though… hopefully to be driving in a month maybe? We shall see. That’s the best goal I can give myself so far!

All the groceries, food, supplies for the kids’ houses are managed by the clinic as well, and once a month there is a massive re-stock of non-perishable food items and cleaning supplies … that was Wednesday this past week. What a busy day! It was so so hot that day as well – at least 35 degrees, no breeze – and we were lugging around heavy boxes around the village, loading and unloading, packing and unpacking. Oh man, I was tired after that day.

Thursday was clinic day, which also happens once a month. All the current health concerns, need for new prescriptions, follow-ups required, etc are compiled and Mirande and I headed off to meet the doctor at the hospital with one of our littlest boys, Andile, who we wanted to get checked out for a lingering rash on his head. The pediatrician is a wonderful woman who genuinely listens to the concerns we have and follows usually the same directions we see for the kids. She definitely makes Rehoboth a priority – she is the only pediatrician at the hospital.

When we got back to the village after clinic, we were called to one of the houses. Aphiwe, a 4 year old blind energetic boy, has just had two seizures (he is not epileptic, this is VERY unusual for him), and has not recovered from it – having vomited and lost control of his bowels and is still not responding. So we go from the hospital, back to the hospital. Aphiwe is a special friend of mine, he was one of the first to remember my name. He explores the world very well with his fingers and by smelling people to recognize them as well – he is an amazing little guy. It was so sad to take him to hospital, and after going through the admission procress to have to leave him by himself before he woke up. Nurses in South Africa are not the same as nurses in Canada or Europe …. Nursing is a job there, with tasks to be done. That’s it. No concern for people or giving information or even being friendly to the patients or families.

The next day, Tamara and Aphiwe’s house mum went to visit in the morning at the visiting hours at that time, and he was back to his normal self. After they left, he was panicking and crying and inconsolable. The dietician we work with is wonderful, and texted Mirande to let us know what was going on, and we went a little early to see him and see what steps had been done since his admission and to give him some comfort.

When we arrived, Aphiwe was just lying in the crib they made him stay in since he’s blind and couldn’t be bothered to help him out. I went over and said ‘hello, it’s Auntie Heather!” and his little face lit up as he said ‘Auntie Heather? It’s you!” We were able to take him home after talking with the doctor about what further testing we would appreciate being done before the official diagnosis of ‘epilepsy’ was given, but basically we were refused that and now he’s on meds that he probably doesn’t need to be on. No CT Scan, no EEG, no investigation if it was anything else. Ridiculous.  I’m going to keep pushing on that though – advocating is a very big role for nursing here. Fortunately, that’s something I enjoy doing. The important thing is though, he’s back and stable and happy.

After that kind of week, I was sooo happy to have a relaxing weekend! Saturday, a bunch of went to Pure Venom – the largest snake farm in Africa . Definitely a place that many would think is my ideal day trip…. (hint: sarcasm). It was actually better than I thought it would be! All the snakes were kept in very solid glass enclosures or deep outdoor protected pits, so it was actually interesting to see them all. I created a ‘wildlife survival kit’ by taking pictures of the poisonous ones that live in our area … basically, avoid all snakes as they will probably kill you. Yay? They were feeding the anacondas when we were there – very friendly staff who became unofficial tour guides decided they would go in and poke at the massive, rugby-ball thickness, 6 metre long anacondas so that we could get a better look as they swallowed whole chickens. I would definitely not poke at an anaconda. We volunteers had a braai with Yvonne and Alfons and their kids in the evening which was really nice – their little girl Yael has taken quite a liking to me, so we sit close whenever I see her. 

Today is Sunday, and I’m currently drinking some nice tea to try and stay cozy warm while writing this – it’s a cool day and raining, raining, raining… a day for indoor activities. The irony is, we have no water currently. The water pump minorly broke last weekend when some workers we had coming in to do plastering left the hose on all day and night by accident and drained our tanks of water. When the people came in to check it out and remedy the situation on Monday, I guess they didn’t fix any problems that resulted as of that, so as of yesterday, we have no running water. We were a greasy-haired bunch of people coming into church today! Ha! It’s very different to have to think of water consumption when you don’t have any other than rain water… we had bits of water stored up and big rain barrels that are always out… but you still have to be careful to not overuse the little we have to work with. No laundry, no mopping, no dishwashing, no showering! You learn to make shortcuts for sure. It’s a very new sensation to be without something that is so easy to take for granted: water. No workers work on weekends here, so we have to wait until tomorrow for the guys to come in and hopefully fix our pump for good, fingers crossed.

This little computer I’ve left on Ontario time, so it’s funny to see that it’s only 8:20am back home right now! Seven hours is a good chunk of time! Hopefully I’ll find some time this afternoon to pop over to the office to drop in and fire off this message as an email before this news becomes old news J

Jan 18, 2011: Update #2

Bonjour once again!

I’m going to try every weekend to sit down and write down what’s gone on during the week so that I know I’ve got it all down in one place, and in the years to come I’ll be able to come back and reminisce perfectly about what happened.

It’s hard to believe, but I finished a total whole complete week in South Africa ! Unbelievable. So much of this time has had a surreal quality to it – coming from cold and snow, and then 48 hours later to be walking into bright sunshine and heat with spectacular views that I’ve only seen in National Geographic or from pictures. You know that this world exists, but when you’re walking in it, and the beauty of nature is all around you and you’re breathing it in with your own eyes… just doesn’t feel like it’s really happening! To wake up each morning, and be greeted by the most amazing view as the first thing I see every day is like something out of stories. I hope that I continue to be amazed, and not get used to the beauty that can become every day life. I want to keep that awe. I know I’ve written to absolutely everyone about how gorgeous it is here (and you can even see it now with the luxury of fb photos!)

 This whole week I’ve been stuck to my pens and paper like white on rice. Whenever I had some free time, I was writing to everyone about what experiences I had had – it was my ‘connection time’ – I love narrating my life, and whenever I started missing people, I would just explode into stories and narrations from my day that I had just had, as well as any general observations I had newly thought of, or cultural things I had learned about, or worries I had about what was to come next. It was my ‘brain release’ time. I realized that I really need time to do that! If I were in Canada (or anywhere with broadly accessible internet), I would just go online and find someone to talk to about what was going on – I’d become so used to that from the past months living back at homehome that it was very difficult at first feeling restricted by not being able to do that (phew! That’s a lot of words!). So even though it isn’t instant – it really felt like ‘talking’ to people, while writing to them. Unfortunately, that method of communication will take a super long time to actually arrive with the chance of receiving a reply taking even longer. But for the time being between chances when I had time and opportunity to go online and check email, it let my brain feel more relaxed J. I mailed off all my letters and postcards today (since I had the chance to go and buy stamps!), and it actually feels a little bit like loss … those letters were my ‘conversations’ with friends abroad this week, and now they’re flying their little way on over across the ocean/land. Silly to feel that way!

Even with all my time spent scribbling away, I’ve actually had some good bonding time with my new roomies: Tamara and Rahel. Tamara and I seem to be quite like-minded and both rather chatty about life in general – she’s generally who gets to hear my constant life narration “now I’m going to do laundry” … “well, I’m going to run off to the toilet and then I’ll be back” … “oh! The potato looks moldy” …. Really deep, interesting stuff. I think she’s coping with it well ;)  Rahel is still getting used to English, but I can see that even just over the week she’s also been here that she’s getting more bold with her conversations and initiating talking or questions – really good! She seems like a nice girl, I’m looking forward to getting to know her better. Right now it’s almost like she’s too nice, if that makes sense – not the nice Sherky teasing so much, but that will come I’m sure. Also: note to self, probably not a good idea to use sarcasm in English since that would be rather tricky to understand. Hmmm. I’ll have to revert to some German teasing… “und der Eisel, der bist du!”

As the week progressed, I spent more and more time in the clinic with Marinde. I really love how she nurses – very similar to me! She has so much organized and you can see she’s very knowledgeable and that she continues to push herself to learn and see the big holistic health picture. I’m once again in learner-mode for a new nursing job (seems like constantly for the past half a year!). I’m so thankful for all the experiences I’ve had leading up to this time – from the summer of camp nursing right up to the week before leaving Canada and being at Sunbeam … it all seems to relate to what I’ll be doing here, and I can really draw from those times to be able to nurse to the best of my ability here. It’s exciting to be drawn into this new clinic nursing with a lot of health networking and connecting to other health care professionals to continue with optimal health maintenance – there’s a lot of independence and responsibility = totally right up my alley J I love the mix of chronic and acute types of care – there’s a lot of health maintenance and making appointments at the hospital for general check-ups in all fields and doing general assessments, but there are also emergent incidences where you have your brain with all gears whirling and focusing in on the immediate circumstances. I’m a little worried about my dermatologic assessment skills, as I’ve not had many experiences to diagnose skin conditions or assess differing types of rashes on dark skin – which is ridiculous, I’ve decided. All the anatomy and pathophysiology lectures we had at Mac only gave visual representations of eczema (for instance) on white skin. It looks very different on black skin! I’ve borrowed a textbook from Mariende for the weekend to look over all the different skin conditions – she took a tropical medicine course before taking over nursing responsibilities at Rehoboth so has specific textbooks which are a great resource.

My nursing role here is that of general practitioner/nurse practitioner/OT/PT/pharmacist/

Educator/empowerer/emergency responder/medical records/everything. Every bit that comes new makes me more excited about being a nurse – and getting to nurse here. There will definitely be challenges. That’s partly what makes it so stimulating and interesting – my nursing knowledge will be stretched beyond anywhere else I’ve been yet so far since I started nursing. I’m ready to be heavily challenged – I feel in a safe environment to be pushed to my limits and beyond.

I have to be frank. I love living in endless summer. Yes, it gets massively humid. Yes, I have to douse myself in sunscreen every morning (and bugspray). But somehow the bright sun, the warmth, wearing light clothing, feeling the sun on my skin, makes everything much happier. Perhaps I was born into the wrong climate?

This weekend, Tamara, Rahel and I went to Oribi Gorge – a nature reserve basically in my backyard ;) …. Only a short 20 min drive away? Something like that. Very close anyways. Absolutely gorgeous. I never thought of myself as a major nature person, usually I’m more interested in historical pretty buildings, but I keep getting completely floored by the sights I’ve seen! Just wow. More pictures to be posted from that day as well… I took Saturday as my personal photography day, and filled up my sd card with loads of instructive and beautiful pictures. Hopefully I will have remembered to post them as well!

Hope you're all doing well!

Heather

Jan 10, 2011: Update #1

Hello all!

I’ve decided to start a system of typing out my emails on word on the little laptop before I go to sleep at night, and then saving it on my handy dandy USB so all I have to do once I find a computer with internet access (not always the easiest task) is to plug in the USB, see if I need to add any answers to questions or more news, and then copy-paste the main part! See? I’m not just a pretty face.

I’ve started to write letters, but on Saturday when Tamara and I went shopping, we missed the post office being open – apparently it’s only open in mornings, and we finished groceries at around 1230 or so, so all the letters that eventually end up getting written will only be able to sent off next weekend! Oh the joys of living masses of miles away from anyone I would write to. We shall see how long it takes! I hope not too long… I want to hear from home, and be able to sit and re-read them at my leisure, instead of having to worry about the cost of being on the internet.

Sunday, January 9 we had the welcome Braai (Zulu for ‘BBQ’ that’s generally used by all South Africans) for me and the other new volunteer, Rhiall a Swiss German girl from a small town. She seems pretty shy and quiet, but I think that’s partly because of everything being in English so it takes a lot of mental energy to participate in conversations… hopefully she will open more as time goes by – she only arrived today, so it’s not unusual that she might be a bit out of sorts! I tried to be welcoming and talk with her for the couple hours before the Braai, and just smiled lots – so hopefully she doesn’t feel alone. She’s my next door room neighbour, in room #4! I’m room 5, so clearly we should be best of friends. Room #5 also happens to be closest to the bathroom, so that’s another added plus for having to go at night when it’s dark and there’s creepy-crawly things all over the place from going even just out my door, down the porch 10 steps, and to the toilet! Thank goodness for nice plumbing though – I’m quite thankful I don’t have to rough it quite too much other than the little animals and bugs. So far so good with no sunburns or bug bites though! We’ll see how long that lasts for ;)

I’m also super happy that I got my hair cut short before coming! The heat and humidity are quite intense, but it doesn’t really bother me so much  - I guess mostly because I knew it would be hot, it doesn’t seem like such a hassle compared to only the occasional 30 degree weather in Canadian summer!

The kids are still off school until Jan 16 or something like that, so this week is programming with activities on site. I’m hoping to get to be in the clinic lots, but we’ll see how it goes. It is the first week after all, they might want to do general orientation or something instead. I will just go with the flow until I get really settled and then can better voice my opinion on things ;)

I feel quite safe while on site – there’s an electric fence surrounding the entire village, and locked gates at the entrances. There’s no need to lock doors during the daytime – I only lock my bedroom at night since my door has a particular tendancy to open itself, and I’d really rather not wake up to a frog infestation of my room the next morning.

I have happened to make a little lizard friend. I’m not sure what kind of lizard he is exactly (or she, don’t want to discriminate) – but there is one that greeted me as I first entered the room that was on the wall across from the door near a vent to outside, and has since found a way to squirm inside my closed closet. It surprised me there yesterday morning when I went to open the doors to get to my clothes, and I haven’t managed to figure out where it was hiding… perhaps a shoe. I just have taken to shaking out all my clothes and things before using them. Paranoia? Perhaps. I prefer to think of it as safety. J

Believe it or not, we actually have a tv in our volunteer flat! There’s the 3 of us girls living in here now, so we share cooking meals and doing chores. Tamara and I have a good flow I think already started which is nice  to know!! We watch the news together after dinner to figure out what’s going on in the world and to see what ridiculous weather there will be the next day … and Tristan/Elaine/Karen/Beth on Sundays we watch TOP GEAR UK . (For real! I was so excited when I found out it was here!) There’s actually a surprising number of shows that have crossed the ocean and the continent from Europe and from the States – next after Top Gear was CSI: Miami , which we decided against. Funny! It was the same when going grocery shopping – so many brands not only from home, but from the UK and Europe … so silly to have traveled so far!

I’m definitely jet-lagged. It’s rather difficult to have to wake up at 7am here, which is midnight back in Ontario … ie. Usually the time I’d be just going to sleep. Mornings are difficult to stay awake! All this will come in time. I just have to force my body to realize what’s going on. It gets dark so early here! Earlier than I had thought… since it’s summer here, I just figured it would be light later, but nope. I forgot how the world moved around and all that important sort of stuff for daylight things… but nature clearly showed me differently.

Hopefully I’ve remembered to attach the photos I’ve taken so far, or I’ve posted them on fb or something equally useful. It’s really incredibly beautiful. Staggeringly different from anything I’ve seen before!

Love from,

African Heather (or AHHH for short … extra H’s added for emphasis and amusement)

Ps. Some vocab!

Bucky = pick up truck

Yebo = yes

Cha (where the c is a click) = no

… and some other stuff I’ve already forgotten. Whoops!

The Blogging Begins.

After being in South Africa for over a month now, I've realized that my emailing technique has much to improve - and that blogging might be a better alternative to reach the masses interested in what's been going on since I left Canada. So, ta daaa!

The first new posts are going to just be the simple copy-paste from emails I've sent already so that everybody is up to date and I can continue on from there :)

This is the plan, we'll see how it goes!