Week 1: St. Marys at Kwazulu-Natal

Where to start??? If I could sum up my first week in South Africa, I would use HURRICANE. Every day and night was busy, and every night I came home and promptly fell asleep. When I say that I am talking 6am until at least 8pm (often later), and repeating the next day.... for six straight days.

To start from the beginning.....

SUNDAY:
Met our driver, an extremely pleasant and heavily accented Zulu man named Roy, who got lost taking us to our house in Woodlands, Durban. My host family is wonderful, and consists of two sisters and two brothers and a single mom. My host moms name is Angel, a big bustling Zulu lady who runs everyone around, cooks, cleans, occasionally does laundry, and somehow finds time to run her own nutritional supplements company. She speaks English quite well, but sometimes she randomly starts laughing at things I say. My two sisters are 22yo Tobilae (Toh-bee-lay), and 12yo Nosipho (No-see-poh). Tobilae suffered a CVA (stroke) when she was 12, and is unable to speak anything other than Zulu and very limited English. Nosipho is a lot of fun as well, and thinks I am crazy for putting cold milk on cereal. THESE PEOPLE HAVE NEVER HEARD OF KETCHUP OH MAN. My two brothers are 17yo Sifiso (Sfee-soh), and 1yr8mo Blessing (Boy). The adventures with Sfiso are too numerous to count, and I will be relaying many of them in future posts to come. Boy is the cutest little kid and he always steals my flip flops and walks around with them. On his feet. How he gets around with them, which are almost literally half his height, is pretty incredible. I'll post pictures soon. Everyone speaks Zulu, and I am slowly picking up words and phrases. I will have to post audio sometime, they make clicks and hisses and weird noises with words and letters and it seriously took like a week to get used to. Leanna was actually taken aback with someone talking to her in Zulu who kept making 'kissing noises' at her until we realized that it was just part of the language. To say the least, it has been interesting.

MONDAY:
Today was our first day at St. Marys Hospital at Mariannhill. St. Marys is a religious hospital run by Sisters. There are few doctors and the sisters do most of the work that doctors would normally do. There are two operating rooms at the hospital, a pediatric ward, an OPD, a HIV/AIDS clinic, and a OB/GYN ward. There are also general wards, and some rehab areas.
NOTE: Let me give you the run down on ranks in South African medical personnel. Doctors: self-explanatory. The second rank is not nurses, but Sisters. Sisters are roughly equivalent in authority to American nurses. Sisters are always clearly marked by a maroon-colored shoulder placard. The third rank are nurses, which are equivalent to CNA's and technicians. The knowledge of the doctors here is really really widespread in the fact that some could probably be physicians in America, and others not so much. The South African education system allows students to enter a 5 year medical school right out of high school at 18, then follow up with two years of internship, then one year of community service. Doctors are certified at this point, but can choose to specialize in a particular area by returning to school of varying lengths, which they call residency. It's a little confusing, but I always get shocked looks when I tell people how long it takes American students to finish med school and residency! 'Crazy!' is a term I have heard quite often.
Returning to the story, we pretty much got a tour and got dropped off in different areas for the day. Mine was in OB/GYN and the first thing I saw was vaginal suturing post-delivery. It was really intense in the fact that they don't use local anesthesia and that the patient was screaming in Zulu. What was even more interesting was the surroundings, it was like walking back in time 25 years. I counted maybe 5 ECG's in the whole hospital, medications were left on shelves in torn up styrofoam cases, and the beds were tarnished sheet metal covered by tattered cushions. In the delivery area, women were in and out within four hours. Like drive in, wait in the chairs until they were I think 5cm dilated, then taken in back and prepared for pregnancy. It was insane! Like women would be sitting in waiting area in contractions, some yelling, and the sisters would be like meh, what can we do? The head Sister in that area was Sr. Thusi (Too-see), an efficient Zulu woman who at first appeared cold and unwelcoming before slowly warming to me when I persisted in following and asking questions. Later on, we got picked up by Roy and went to the university to get ID cards and register for internet/email. This took forevvver and then we were missing a paper and had to find some guy to make it, then his computer crashed so he had to do it manually, so we couldnt get it till later and just walked around for a while until we went home. We got home around 7:30, and had our first official night with the families, watching movies and eating chicken curry until falling asleep.

The rest of the week, and photos, to come tomorrow!

I'm late for a meeting!

Cheers,

Chris