JJJJJJAAAAAAANNNNNNUUUUUUUAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRYYYYYYY!

January; After a once in a life time New Years in Cape Town, stories of which I’m sure I’ll be retelling  every New Year for the rest of my life, “this one time on my Gap Yah…” I can feel it coming. Coming back to work from Cape Town  was such a struggle, everything was so, so, so hectic, as we’re the only people that do our job, when we go away, we need to prepack for the days we are away, and then when we return we need to back date all of our work. To make life trickier, we now have no Pharmacist; since Pieter left early December, and Ian left over New Year to go and do his PhD. Everyone is under a fair bit of pressure in all things pharmacy related. On the upside, we have moved up into our own little officey-room-type-thing. This basically means we can keep ourselves organised (whiteboard inclusive) and make more vitally needed space in the Pharmacy. We’re now based in the ARV Clinic so we can get tighter liaison with the ARV team which is also vital to the smooth running of the project.

With January brings a mass influx on newbies! We have a bunch of new comserve staff (in SA all health professionals have to do a year of community service post-graduation.) So we have, a physio, OT, speech therapist, radiographer and dietician. They are all absolutely lovely! We also got a new Dentist to replace Stevie he is also a really cool guy, apparently there is another new physio on his way, so I’ll let you know what happens there. It’s so exciting having all of these new people around, we are no longer being called the “new girls” only 5 months later. People have also stopped calling me Katy (one of the girls who was here before us) so all things seem to be on the up, people learning my actual name half way through and all that jazz! It’s quite funny, because apparently, we all look pretty much exactly the same to black people, how bizarre?! The New Year has also brought an influx of certain creature we’re not too fond of, yes…the dreaded snake! Lucky we’re all being a lot more vigilant since Becky (a doctor from UK) got bitten by a Knight Adder! There was also a HUGE one found just next to the ARV waiting room. But not to worry, now we’re all aware of it, we actually watch where we walk now.

Being on the wrong side of the world didn’t stop us celebrating Burn’s Night! We gathered everyone together in the Community Centre for a huge Ceilidh and haggis! It was soooo much fun and even Ceilidh first timers loved it, Sal and Karl had a particular talent…..not. Being all hot a sweaty afterwards, only one thing was on the cards, BEACH! Yeah, it was late and VERY dark, but oh my, what a laugh?!  We stumbled down the incredibly uneven dunes in the pitch black and ran into the sea, which was surprisingly very warm. The moonlight reflecting on the water was simply beautiful, then we dried off gazing at a full sky of stars, it was simply amazing, I can’t think of a single time in my life I’ve seen so many stars shining so brightly….WOW. Anyway, that’s about it for January, eagerly awaiting February, for the half-way point and my birthday!! AHHH reaching the ripe old age of 19, the last of my teenage years, how quickly time flies ay? Lots of love to you all, and a special congrats to Beth and Matty on the birth of the beautiful Ellie Louise xxxx

DECEMBER!!!!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and everything in between! I hope you all had a lovely festive time back in chilly Blighty! My Christmas day consisted of a little boat trip out to the beautiful  Robben Island, dolphins, turtles and seals inclusive, followed by a braai with my 30 strong South Africa family, or fellow PTers as they are also known. It was lovely to have Christmas all together catching up, and meeting the Swaziland and Botswana volunteers, and hearing all of their stories. After a lot of good food, good drink, good cheer and very good company, we all shuffled ourselves to Camps Bay, (google it) with a bottle of champers to watch the sunset, well it was awesome in a nutshell. Perfect end to a perfect day. It was great for us all to do something totally different to back home and to do it together kept us all smiles. This was a pleasant surprise to the load of homesickness we were all experiencing. Although we all wish we could’ve had our families around us on such a special day, not many people (Brits at least) can say they sat on a beach watching the sun set on Christmas Day?!

So the Cape Town trip as a whole? Well we arrived in 34 degree heat on Christmas Eve, then didn’t see a cloud or a temperature gauge below 30 until we were on the bus on 2^nd Jan heading home.  Are you ready for a bold statement? I had the best moment of my life in Cape Town. New Years Eve, on the top of Table Mountain, truly the most beautiful view EVER. I feel like I’ve grown up in the sense that I was almost brought to tears by a landscape, but Oh. My. Word! It was amazing, we made our New Years Resolutions looking over Cape Town with a Champagne picnic, check the photos. So, so, so incredible! Add it to the bucket list if you haven’t been already. Back to reality with a bump ready to start a new year, Janurary’s update shouldn’t be too long :D

November's Update...(delayed)

Sorry for such a delay, my Dad only just told me I hadn't uploaded anything...much to my surprise...and then I found it sat waiting to be pasted in a word document! Epic Fail...so here goes

Well, well, well! It’s been a long time since I’ve updated this, so I’ve been here 3 months, now that is simply beyond crazy! We leave for Cape Town in about 4 weeks for Christmas and New Year, I’m sooooo excited to see all of the other PT girls (and boy) for a good old catch up. But with good times comes sad times, and during December we have to say goodbye to two wonderful people that have made our first few months in the world of Zithulele so easy for us to settle in. So THANK YOU to Pieter and Stephen and we wish you both the best of luck in your new jobs! You’ll be missed big time!!

The 10 clinics we have here are getting crazier and busier, which is by NO means a bad thing! Recently the SA government has increased the ARV start CD4 count to 350 which means patients are starting treatment when they are still relatively quite well, which in the long run, helps the treatment be as effective as possible. This has meant a rather steep increase in the number of patients we have starting at the clinics, which means we have a lot more to do, but this has been made a lot easier for us with DWF supplying us with a pre-pack assistant, honestly, it’s made us think where on earth did we find the time to do all of the other admin work? Zidindi, which is one of the newer clinics has grown to such a size we’ve had to make clinic days there every 2 weeks, rather than every 4. Everything with the project is getting very exciting and incredibly fascinating as I learn more and more about people living with HIV. Hopefully, in the New Year we will start side projects in the pre-school which will allow us to have a change of scenery from the hectic running of the clinics.

As always, we’re still having lots of fun!! A few weeks ago was Laura’s (one of the physiotherapist’s) Birthday Party. It was a pink themed party so everyone got with the spirit and dressed up…(or under dressed in some cases)…some of the guys sporting some incredibly flattering swimwear and hot pants, a possibility of some photos to follow. We have also had a BEAUTIFUL weekend break in Umdumbi, my word, the beach there is utterly stunning! (ask M&D for the picture or see facebook). On the evening we had a fabulous meal, drinks, lots of successful, and in the same respects, runsuccessful pool tournaments, and wonderful chitchats with wonderful people. A lazy morning followed, then a trip to the beach in true African sunshine and as a plea to stick to the ‘British tourist’ stereotype I somehow managed to burn ridiculously through MANY layers of factor 50 on my shins- of all places. Although I wasn’t the only one, the following days resulted in many cruel games of ‘slap the sunburn’ owwwwwch! All in all, another amazing month has passed, I cannot wait to see that the coming one’s hold! My next post may well be from Cape Town, if not I’ll update as soon as I get back. So to all of you, a VERY Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. ENJOY!! Xxxxxxxxxxxxx

PS…I have experienced my first dose of every traveller’s nightmare…FOOD POISONING. In fact I think it’s the first time I’ve had it in my life (thanks Dad for cooking my food properly for the last 18 years!!!) And I can safely say it is something I NEVER want to experience again!!! New Year’s Resolution…Check and double check food before eating it!!!