May and June....Posted in July...Sorry Jenny.

Well, well, well….May brought lots of goodies and the doom and gloom of injury…again! Playing Frisbee…again!

I’ll enlighten you…SO my parents came to visit in May, how awesome! I met up with them after a road trip to Durban with Monique and her doggy Juno, lots of fun, with improvised music as her car stereo was broken. Monique, if I haven’t mentioned her before is our super, amazing life-saver of a Pharmacist, as well as being the only pharmacist in the hospital she is doing her master’s degree. She juggles all of this and still manages to be such a lovely, fun-loving person! She showed me the sights of Durbs, (well, the night life) and we met up with one of the British med students we had at ZLE a few weeks prior, lots of fun. So the time came, after almost 10 months I was to meet my parents, I saw their bus pull up and sprinted out of a (rather posh) hotel much to the great amusement of the staff and pounced on my Mam, closely followed by my Daddio, then it was back to normal, like I’d never been away! Lots of good food, drink and laughter followed, then on to Zithulele.

Work-wise, Cath had her baby Calum (2 months early) in the beginning of May, meaning she had obviously left a lot earlier than plans, so things at first got a but crazy, but back into the swing of things J My huge clinics have now split, so this means that they are all bi-weekly except one, although this was initially a lot of extra work, it has worked beautifully in the grand scheme of things and the work load is now a lot more evenly spread through the months. It is a bit of a double edged sword, in the sense that one day the programme is going to get too big to be managed the way it is now, but it is amazing how accepting the country is becoming to HIV and epic by all proportions how we have so many people now ARVs. Yippppeeee!

I guess this was the highlight of my trip as it made me realise how much I had taken for granted that I was living in one of THE most beautiful places in the world, thanks to my parents sat in awe, gawping at the country-side scenery. It gave me a renewed buzz for this awesome place! After a quick tour and an introduction to Ultimate Frisbee, we eventually let our bums touch the seats. Tuesday we did a bigger tour of the hospital showing off the wonderful ARV clinic that manages crazy numbers of incredibly needing patients.  Wednesday brought a picnic on the cliffs looking over Lubanzi bay, our local beach; about 5km away. Not to brag (of course) but it is STUNNING! The day didn’t end well as I ended up hitting the deck during Frisbee that night resulting in torn ankle ligaments, a “pudding” foot that went bluer and bluer by the day. Sad times, maybe one day I’ll learn I’m just not cut out for Frisbee. We then spent a nice long weekend in East London with Cara, getting spoiled. We departed by bus on the Sunday, to meet again in 8 weeks!

We returned in time for Cara’s birthday and an en mass South African style jubilee party hosted by our fellow Brits, Tom and Becky. Fun times galoreee! Cucumber Sandwiches, Victoria Sponge, and all of the other bunting clad clichés. June was also the month of D-Day. The SA-England rugby game in Port Elizabeth. There were copious amounts of threats, bets, and general “banter” (bullying) surrounding the situation. Luckily, or maybe not so, it was a draw; so no humiliation to be had…to some extent. PE was a lot of fun, wow, what a city. We stayed with Pieter who spoilt us rotten and was an incredible host, whipping up some master meals, and sorting emergency pizzas when our braai was called off. Oh, the important things in life.

Onwards, and upwards…in to July with only 4 weeks, watch this space for the tears and traumas that come with leaving this wonderful place, Kleenex at the ready.

Africa Time; Time is different here…..apparently.

Okay. Africa Time. It’s a foreign concept that often leaves me baffled, even after being here for 8 months. Mainly because they have several versions of “now” in this country; “Now now”, “just now”, “now”, and “I’ll be there now”. Obviously….?

This made our first few weeks a living nightmare, turning up early, late and everything in between!  We eventually went to seek some true South African help on this pressing issue. So…
Now now à is roughly in the next 5 mins, generally means you are literally on your way.
Just now à well, this is tricky, supposedly it can mean anything from 5 mins to over half an hour. I guess in UK we’d say “soon” or “in a while.” This caught Cara and I out big time on our first day!

Now à is generally in between “now now” and “just now”

I’ll be there now à …..we still don’t know….or maybe it’s just South African time keeping on that one ;)

African Time; “now’s” aside as, to be honest, it really doesn’t even look like a real word any more… is generally of a very slow pace, even just walking we’ve found we have stopped storming ahead pace wise and have slotted nicely into the local’s slow meander, so apologies in advance if this annoys you when I’m home, I’ve also started picking up on the “now’s” so it may also be best to ask me for specific times for at least a few months. The excuse if anyone is late, although, if you’re within an hour of the specified start time you’re kind of okay, is “TIA”…or This Is Africa.

There we go, it is officially NOT my fault if I am still running on Africa Time for my first few months back home. 

March; droughts and all things fun.

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

FEBRUARY; Half Way!

So, so sorry for the lack of blogging going on recently, so a brief update on life over the last 2 months, truth is, they’ve flown so quickly, it’s as if I blinked and 2 months of my life went with it!

Well, February, still incredibly hectic at work, but there was a lot of fun students and volunteers around at the time so a fair amount of much needed R&R was endorsed. We ventured on a trip to the beautiful (shark-infested) waters of Port St John’s. Wowwweee it’s pretty! We drove up to this airstrip to apparently see the “most beautiful sunset in South Africa” and we got so distracted by the almost Amazonian river and jungle below us, we actually completely missed the sunset!

As most of you know, if not I’m sure I made you aware of it in the build-up, it was my birthday in February too, I was well and truly spoiled rotten!! Parcels from home, with lots of goodies, the most beautiful memory box from my ‘hubby’ Cara, I can’t wait to get it properly started at home, it’s one of those things you know you’ll pull out for the grandkids in 50+ years to come! The Zithulelean’s all contributed for me to get an amazing hair cut in East London, which just felt heavenly after roughing it for so long, split ends; no more! With my birthday being on 16^th Feb, it felt only natural to combine it with Valentines, and we had a mass Valentines dinner at White Clay in Coffee Bay; “table for 28 please” I don’t think they’ve ever has so much service here in the Wild Coast.

 So, East London….Tom, Becky and of course Miles (I’m sure I’ll have mentioned these guys previously but if not, they are 2 English doctors and their incredibly cute 2yr old son) took Cara and I to the CITY for my birthday. Ah, it was bliss! Although we were in Cape Town for Christmas and New Year’s there wasn’t really a ‘city vibe’ as most shops were shut due to public holidays etc. So like a bunch of eager beavers we pranced around Vincent Mall shopping like crazy people. I got some nice new clothes and perfume and then it was HAIRCUT TIME!! All in all a lovely birthday, celebrated with awesome people. One I doubt I will forget, needless to say though, I am looking forward to celebrating the big 20 at home J
March will be with you soon….

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!!!