I woke up at 6:30am just like on any other work day, feeling tired and desperately wishing the snooze button could be hit one more time. It was already warming up outside preventing me from ever cooling down during the night after a 38 degree day before. Once I was ready for work and had grabbed breakfast, I was out the door by 7. It’s about a 10min walk to my combi stop which is right in front of the football stadium (when I say football, I mean soccer) where the Zebras play, the Botswana National Soccer team. My combi route is very popular so there are often a few that pass when full. Once I cram myself into one, the ride only lasts 10 to 15 minutes depending on traffic and how aggressive/crazy the driver is.
My day at the Hospice starts at 7:30, insanely early I thought at first, but you do get used to it (and really, what choice do I have). I greet my coworkers with ‘Dumela’ who stop to ask me how I am (each one using a different phrase in Setswana to throw me off --- this greatly amuses them as I struggle to come up with the correct response). There is a bit of down time at the beginning of the day as everyone is sorting out what needs to be done. I am often asked to do some typing or editing for any number of things (reports, proposals, resumes, and letters) but today I am going on home visits. I enjoy these days the most because I feel the most useful. I pile into the company minivan with the nurses and we head out to Old Naledi (the poorest part of the city – basically the slums). Driving through Old Naledi is an experience in itself. There are families who live in one-room shacks, there are kids running around with no clothes on, playing around old car parts or hot grills as mothers make their pap and fatcakes in their outdoor kitchen. I find it overwhelming, mostly because I don’t know what to feel when I see this. To say these people are poor is an understatement and yet, this is their way of life and they find ways to enjoy the small things.
Our first patient is a 36 year old man who is immobilized by an unexplained frozen hip, he is also suffering from other side effects from the ARV’s that are compromising his health on top of the HIV. Due to this mysterious symptom in his hip, he stays in bed most of the day and can only venture outside if someone is there to help him into a wheelchair. Once in his wheelchair, I do stretches and basic exercises with him to get his strength back trying to reach the goal of restoring basic function of his body. I help him move all his joints as best he can, as well as do strength testing, (like grip tests, flexion with resistance, etc.). I also try to make him smile by struggling with some Setswana, sometimes that helps patients just as much.
Throughout the morning, we make a few other stops, some are to recruit new patients if we have the space, others are funeral visits. I usually see about 2-4 patients on home visits who I help with ‘physio treatment’. We make it back to the Hospice in time for lunch. A variety of traditional foods is served each day for the patients and staff. The patients who come each day receive medical treatment, counselling, a social network and free, wholesome meals, for some, it’s their only meal. Lunch consists of pap (pounded maize which looks like mashed potatoes), dumplings, rice or noodles, a soup (used as a gravy), one or two of cooked spinach, beets, butternut squash, or coleslaw, and beef or chicken. Needless to say, I don’t have a big dinner when I get home at the end of the day. My afternoon is spent visiting with the patients and then planning new activities for them for the next day once they have gone home. I am currently working on putting together a library for them at the Hospice.
We ‘knock off’ at 4:30pm and I make my way to the combi stop to head home. This evening I am meeting up with the girls for dinner. The other volunteers in Gabs are Kate (from Toronto), Vanessa (from London, ON) and Iman (from Ottawa). Vanessa is my housemate and we often make dinner plans with the other girls to keep in touch. After dinner at Iman and Kate’s, we head home and watch a pirated DVD before going to bed. Since I’ve been in Bots, my bedtime is around 10pm, I don’t know if it’s the heat or the longer days at work but I am exhausted by this time. The next morning I get up and do it all over again with a few variations here and there.
On the weekends, I usually hit up a coffee shop (my only coffee of the week), and fit in grocery shopping as well. Other than that, the girls and I usually get together and do something. Last weekend we went to a concert of local jazz artists, and a friend of ours took us to see his pig farm in a village outside of Gabs.
Overall, this lifestyle is suiting me just fine.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Holiday
It’s all about the journey.
For the last weekend in September, 4 other volunteers and myself ventured out of the country for a mini trip to Zambia. It was a long weekend in Bots for Independence Day so we all took an extra day or two off of work and started packing. The plan: Victoria Falls (Zambia), Chobe National Park for a safari (northern Botswana) and home again.
First things first, choose route and mode of travel (not as easy as it sounds). We chose the night bus, straight through to Zambia. Funny enough, Bots doesn’t really have a bus schedule or bus station, for that matter. We had to sort out where it was leaving from and when it was leaving through word-of-mouth and that’s what we based all our other plans on. We had to ask about 6 different people before we got a phone number to find out the actual times from someone else. Once it was all sorted, we made sure we were there 2 hours early to ensure a seat and a spot for our luggage then we were off. Trying to sleep on a bus like this was just short impossible (for me anyway). Picture a greyhound but the seats are closer together with less room on every side, a temperature of roughly 30 degrees, and the smell of everyone sweating. Oh yeah, good times. And we were on this bus from 8:30pm to 9am the next morning.
The traveling portion of the trip didn’t end there. We arrive at the border of Zambia, well, the border is pretty much the Zambezi River and just before that, we went through immigration. At this point we are all a bit groggy, we get into the line and notice the bus suddenly drives away. No one else seems shocked by this observation so we act like we know what’s going on. Our passports are stamped, we head outside and watch as every other passenger begins walking down the road. And we follow suit. Along our walk we find out from some friendly strangers that the bus has gone to the edge of the river to wait for the ferry and we are to cross separately and return to the bus on the other side. The riverbank was a gong show. There were trucks and buses backed up for at least 2km and a sea of people, waiting to get onto the next ferry (barge). It took us about an hour of waiting around before we got onto a barge but finally we made it across and once our visas were purchased on the other side, we headed to our hostel.
The best hostel ever! It is called Jolly Boys and I wish we could have spent more time there. It had a warm but eccentric decor to it, swimming pool, bar, restaurant, lounge area with huge pillows to veg on, gift shop (of course), pool table, and options of dorm rooms, chalets or tenting sites. They also book everything for you, tours of any kind, special dinners, you name it. Needless to say, I highly recommend it to those of you planning to travel to Africa.
Vic Falls is one of the 7 wonders of the world, so it goes without saying that it be spectacular. It wasn’t in full bloom due to the time of year (lower water levels) but it was still quite impressive. We spent 2 days exploring the falls and river by foot, boat and raft.
A few interesting encounters...
While walking through the trails around the falls, 3 Zimbabweans tried to convince us to go bungee jumping before telling us they would be our tour guides across the bridge to the Zimbabwe side of the falls. It was a short cut and they assured us they would (with a small fee) get us across the border without passports. After the attempts had failed, they tried selling us jewellery and Zimb dollars. We were, of course, not interested and wanted to be on our way so we backed out as politely as possible.
We decided to explore the top of the falls and met a local tour guide willing to lead us along the edge to get a different perspective. After some rock hopping across the drying river, we were able to look down into the gorge from the top of the falls. Incredible!
The latter half of that day we went rafting on the lower section of the river, probably the highlight of the weekend for me. It’s known as the best white water rafting in the world! I’ll save the rafting stories for another time otherwise this will get a bit lengthy. I have many pictures to go along with it as well.
Now this was only half our trip, after the falls we were off on safari. An overnight safari! So we made our way across the border, back into Bots and began the tour with a guided boat cruise on the Chobe River. After 2 hours of seeing hippos, crocs, buffalo, elephants, waterbuck, and giant lizards, we were taken to our campsite where lunch was served followed by a siesta. Later in the afternoon was the game drive which took us on a tour of giraffes, more and more elephants, lions, zebras, baboons and hyenas. I’ll save the rest of the details for the pictures to explain, they will do a better job. But I will say this, camping in the middle of all that was a little more unnerving than expected. We fell asleep listening the elephants trumpeting close by and hyenas walking through our campsite, quite the experience.
Alright, I will leave it there. If you have made it this far, thanks for reading. There’s so much more I could add but we will save that for a later date.
Ciao
For the last weekend in September, 4 other volunteers and myself ventured out of the country for a mini trip to Zambia. It was a long weekend in Bots for Independence Day so we all took an extra day or two off of work and started packing. The plan: Victoria Falls (Zambia), Chobe National Park for a safari (northern Botswana) and home again.
First things first, choose route and mode of travel (not as easy as it sounds). We chose the night bus, straight through to Zambia. Funny enough, Bots doesn’t really have a bus schedule or bus station, for that matter. We had to sort out where it was leaving from and when it was leaving through word-of-mouth and that’s what we based all our other plans on. We had to ask about 6 different people before we got a phone number to find out the actual times from someone else. Once it was all sorted, we made sure we were there 2 hours early to ensure a seat and a spot for our luggage then we were off. Trying to sleep on a bus like this was just short impossible (for me anyway). Picture a greyhound but the seats are closer together with less room on every side, a temperature of roughly 30 degrees, and the smell of everyone sweating. Oh yeah, good times. And we were on this bus from 8:30pm to 9am the next morning.
The traveling portion of the trip didn’t end there. We arrive at the border of Zambia, well, the border is pretty much the Zambezi River and just before that, we went through immigration. At this point we are all a bit groggy, we get into the line and notice the bus suddenly drives away. No one else seems shocked by this observation so we act like we know what’s going on. Our passports are stamped, we head outside and watch as every other passenger begins walking down the road. And we follow suit. Along our walk we find out from some friendly strangers that the bus has gone to the edge of the river to wait for the ferry and we are to cross separately and return to the bus on the other side. The riverbank was a gong show. There were trucks and buses backed up for at least 2km and a sea of people, waiting to get onto the next ferry (barge). It took us about an hour of waiting around before we got onto a barge but finally we made it across and once our visas were purchased on the other side, we headed to our hostel.
The best hostel ever! It is called Jolly Boys and I wish we could have spent more time there. It had a warm but eccentric decor to it, swimming pool, bar, restaurant, lounge area with huge pillows to veg on, gift shop (of course), pool table, and options of dorm rooms, chalets or tenting sites. They also book everything for you, tours of any kind, special dinners, you name it. Needless to say, I highly recommend it to those of you planning to travel to Africa.
Vic Falls is one of the 7 wonders of the world, so it goes without saying that it be spectacular. It wasn’t in full bloom due to the time of year (lower water levels) but it was still quite impressive. We spent 2 days exploring the falls and river by foot, boat and raft.
A few interesting encounters...
While walking through the trails around the falls, 3 Zimbabweans tried to convince us to go bungee jumping before telling us they would be our tour guides across the bridge to the Zimbabwe side of the falls. It was a short cut and they assured us they would (with a small fee) get us across the border without passports. After the attempts had failed, they tried selling us jewellery and Zimb dollars. We were, of course, not interested and wanted to be on our way so we backed out as politely as possible.
We decided to explore the top of the falls and met a local tour guide willing to lead us along the edge to get a different perspective. After some rock hopping across the drying river, we were able to look down into the gorge from the top of the falls. Incredible!
The latter half of that day we went rafting on the lower section of the river, probably the highlight of the weekend for me. It’s known as the best white water rafting in the world! I’ll save the rafting stories for another time otherwise this will get a bit lengthy. I have many pictures to go along with it as well.
Now this was only half our trip, after the falls we were off on safari. An overnight safari! So we made our way across the border, back into Bots and began the tour with a guided boat cruise on the Chobe River. After 2 hours of seeing hippos, crocs, buffalo, elephants, waterbuck, and giant lizards, we were taken to our campsite where lunch was served followed by a siesta. Later in the afternoon was the game drive which took us on a tour of giraffes, more and more elephants, lions, zebras, baboons and hyenas. I’ll save the rest of the details for the pictures to explain, they will do a better job. But I will say this, camping in the middle of all that was a little more unnerving than expected. We fell asleep listening the elephants trumpeting close by and hyenas walking through our campsite, quite the experience.
Alright, I will leave it there. If you have made it this far, thanks for reading. There’s so much more I could add but we will save that for a later date.
Ciao
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