Internet Cafe (revised)

Septemeber 6th, 2006

I’m sitting in an internet Café in Durban South Africa, and it feels about as unreal as driving down the left side of the road in the back of a VWminibus listening to DL4’s Laffy Taffy, (Insert Explicit Lyrics here) song. I’ve spent an incredible first 72 hours in Durban, enjoying the city and expansion of my mind as quickly as my worldviews. The tick tick tick of the other 7 computers where my group members are typing in a row to my left makes my thoughts spin as faster than I can type because I want to hurry and catch everyone up on my experience before the incredible memories fall out of my head. Somewhere I read that the most important memories are the ones that are the hardest to loose. Let's hope that’s true. As I write, the room fills with shouts of Zulu echoing off the walls. The language mix has taken some getting used to and I’m sure my thick American accent is equally confusing.

On Sunday morning, adorned with teary cheeks, and spinning track five on Blue October’s Foiled CD, I boarded a plane in Washington D.C., that I spent almost the next 17 hours on. I flew from there to Senegal and from Senegal to Johannesburg, and from "Jo'burg" onto Durban. The plane ride was long, but included great conversation with some high school kids, from "Jo'burg" who informed me that the U.S. was over-rated, but Disneyland was good. I also met a girl, named Louise, who had just spent her first summer working at a summer camp in the States and we immediatley bonded on missing camp, camp withdrawls, and enless peanut butter. She told me about how her campers asked why she wasn’t black, if she was from South Africa, (SA) but didn’t believe her when she told them that her neighbors had pet lions. Which reminds me, there have been no lion sitings yet, but we have seen two vervet monkeys, and some cartoon looking birds.

Upon arrival at the Jo'burg airport, I cleared customs in less time than it takes me to make it through U.S. airport security. They didn’t even care to search my suitcase that was half full of medical supplies to donate. A very nice airport worker in Uniform, helped the lost-looking little American Girl find the domestic terminal, and pushed my “trolley” (luggage cart) which by the way are free to "hire" here. I must have looked like a good tipper, and lucky for him I had changed some of my money in D.C.

*Note: the exchange rate is about 6 or 7 Rand to the U.S. dollar, and has so far been very hard to get used to. Our cell phones are crazy expensive.Incoming calls are made for free and outgoing calls are 6 Rand, a minute!!!! I’m not Joking. This morning my roommate in my homestay, Sarah, had 35 rand on her phone and talked to her parents for less than 5 minutes before getting cut off.


My flight from Jo'burg to Durban felt like it was only 20 minutes long, though I think it was almost an hour. The view of the Indian Ocean crashing into the Golden Mile, a stretch of the coast where hotels and resorts meet the coast was beautiful. Breathtaking, I thought as our place coasted downward to touch the Durban Runway.

After meeting my 7 CFHI Intern-mates who were waiting in our little blue minibus outside the airport and our driver Karean, I had my first ride through the streets of Durban. The air was warm and from the freeway you could see the townships and the rows of Shack-like housing that line up by the hundreds on the hillside. My host family lives in a very nicely decorated 3 bedroom house in Woodlands, which is about a 10 minute drive from downtown. My host mother, is very mother like and we are fed almost constantly at home. Including the children(who are responsible for cooking), and housekeeper who lives in, and the uncle in the shack in the backyard, there are 9 plates lined up at dinner time. Sarah and I are unessicarily given the largest portions as a cultural extension of hospitality. Tondo, the youngest daughter was enchanted by the fact that Sarah and I both had portable CD players. When I told the girls that they could keep mine when I left, It sent them into a jumping, shouting frenzy for a half an hour, which was accompanied by our house mother telling us that we had saved her. I suppose she meant from having to listen to the music, now that the girls had the headphones, but also I think she was shocked by our generosity.

We stayed up late dancing as shouting to American pop music in the kitchen. The house exploded with joyful clapping and shouting. In the minibous the next day we discussed prayer time, which occurs in some of our homestays, but not all. Ian commented that at prayer time, the T.V. was flipped off and the room was silent instantaneously. We had prayertime on Monday night seated around our living room in chairs and couches, heads bowed and prayers made, thanking god, for they day and praying for safety and success of both Sarah and I, durring our time here in Durban.

Tuesday morning, my first morning in the clinic, everyone else’s second, we were thrown right into the heavy stuff at the Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis follow up clinc. We had to wear scary masks that covered our faces from below the eye to under the chin, and there wer four of us in the room with each of the two doctors who were examining paitients. Dr. Ramjee, did an incredible job of balancing her time between explaining to us exactly what drugs were being used, taking our questions, explaining x-rays; AND talking to and giving time and attention to her paitients. Our last case before Tea-time was an incredibly hard case where a woman was told she would have to have a lobe-ectomy(Lung Lobe) because she had not been responding to ANY of the 6 drugs she was on. It was hard to watch her tears stream down her face as she told the doctor, she did not feel any of the symptoms like the others she knew with the disease. Her only ailment seemed to be feeling sick as a side effect of the drugs she was on. There are so many challenges in this country due to the limit of drugs that are available, because health care is available to everyone for FREE and NO one is turned away, there are not enough resources to hospitalize everyone that should be and the cases that are MDR cannot be separated from the ones that are more treatable, therefore that strain is continuing to spread.

I am enchanted with the leisure time in this country and tea time is taken daily in the tea-room around ten AM, where we relax and drink tea or coffee. Today we had tea-time with the doctors after they let us sit in on their meeting to discuss cases, although I didn’t feel that many resolutions were reached.After each doctor's presentation, complete with x-rays on a light board, the other doctors discussed treatment options, often not really resolving anything, which made me feel very frustrated.

Caution: the weak stomached should leave the room, the following contains graphic surgical details!

Despite the heaviness, I’m having an incredible time here, and this morning I got to observe two surgeries standing at the head of the table inches from the doctors. The nice Doctor from England explained everything as he rewired the sternum together of a man who had been in an MVA. It was breathtaking and I was impressed with his creativity and improvisation skills, when we entered the room they had already opened. The Bottom fracture was big enough to stick your finger through. The Doctor did so to reveal the pulsing pericardium! He pulled so hard I thought he might lift the paitient off the table by his sternum.

We are off to dinner, downstairs in the mall. Happy Reading!