On a work front March was awesome! Monique arrived, our new Pharmacist. This meant we got two working days back to fill in the gaps of the ARV system and gain as much hospital experience as possible. I sometimes forget this is also my work experience year. I figured; if I can get a grip of the basics in such a rural hospital as Zithulele, I shouldn’t struggle too greatly at home. Oh I just realised, you guys can’t read minds, and probably have no clue what I’m talking about (unless you’re mam & dad) in February I got and Unconditional offer to study Nursing at Stirling University!
I was working with Becky in OPD the other week and I was taking blood, and I helped with abdominal drains and dressings, all the fun things! I guess I owe Becky great thanks for being so trusting. I’ve also been doing a bit of counselling with the patients, an incredible Peer Educator. It’s actually so insightful to be a part of that side of the process, and good to use as motivation when the admin work piles up. One patient at the end of a session said “thank you, I’m no longer scared of HIV. I’m ready to take it on!” and that, in a nutshell is what it’s all about here. That phrase, for me, defines my year.
March was also “the month of the drought”. I’ll explain… so in Transkei; Summer (winter back home) is the rainy season, and the summer rain in theory, fills up our water tanks to last us through winter (summer back home) or the dry season as it is here. However, we had incredibly scarce rain over the summer months, which already caused a concerned expression on a few people’s faces, and then….the pump that brings us water from the dam inevitably broke. As with most things in this part of the word there was a huge song and dance about getting in fixed, something about the guy who fixed it last time wasn’t paid by the government blah, blah, blah. That’s one thing I won’t miss about SA, the faff caused to fix something simple. God Bless the people at the hospital, as far as I could see everything in their power was done to try and fix the problem, it’s unfortunately the people higher up that like to cause such a fuss. Okay, rant over. Ultimately, we had no water for over 2 weeks, the hospital included, and causing easily solved illnesses to progress into life threatening problems; dehydration in to renal failure being the prime example. The effect wasn’t just on people’s medical health, we had no water to wash dishes, have showers, and flush toilets…it causes early staged insanity. It did, however make us understand the value water has in our lives and how grateful we are to have grown up with running water. 15+ litres of water to flush a toilet, crazy hey? The ‘being able to shower’ hasn’t quite worn off yet, still appreciating every last second of the fresh and clean feeling.
March also brought us our (slightly delayed) PT staff visit. Unfortunately our Desk Officer went down with some weird jungle illness/fever thing in Guyana on another visit, and was on doctor’s orders not to fly, so we were visited by our Assistant DO, Heloise and our in-country rep, Ian. It was lovely to see some faces from home bearing gifts of MINI EGGS…*please send all food donations to PO box 702, Mqanduli, 5080 Eastern Cape, South Africa* ;) ;). The visit was fairly brief due to circumstances we won’t go into at other projects, but we’ve been promised more quality PT time on debrief!
Ciao for now! x
March also brought us our (slightly delayed) PT staff visit. Unfortunately our Desk Officer went down with some weird jungle illness/fever thing in Guyana on another visit, and was on doctor’s orders not to fly, so we were visited by our Assistant DO, Heloise and our in-country rep, Ian. It was lovely to see some faces from home bearing gifts of MINI EGGS…*please send all food donations to PO box 702, Mqanduli, 5080 Eastern Cape, South Africa* ;) ;). The visit was fairly brief due to circumstances we won’t go into at other projects, but we’ve been promised more quality PT time on debrief!
Ciao for now! x
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