The day began like any other day – I got up, was running late, but managed to get to morning report just in time. Then, 10 minutes into the report, one of the attendings got a phone call and interrupted the resident who was presenting with, “There’s a resuscitation on the ward.” Prema and one of the medical officers got up to go, and I hurried after them, dumping the contents of my bookbag on the floor in the process of pulling out my stethoscope.
I have been dreading this for the entire time I’ve been here, though I had thought that it would have happened sooner, with the high acuity of the patients and the lack of basic equipment. I also had a morbid curiosity, though, about how a resuscitation would be run in the middle of the ward, since there are so many other parents and children in the same room. The answer is: it’s pretty much run in the middle of the ward. There were some dividers on wheels positioned around the bed, but you could still see 10 people crowded behind them, and hear every word that they were saying. And the dividers didn’t extend all the way to the head of the bed, where Changi was bagging the child. It was eerily quiet, as all the parents looked on in horror or tried to shield their children’s eyes.
Part of my interest was purely for myself – I’ve known the whole time that I’ve been here that the true test of whether or not I want to go into pediatric critical care is whether or not I can handle the death of a patient. We lost a patient last week, but I wasn’t there to see it happen, so in a lot of ways it was still pretty remote. The baby was there one day, and not the next. But this was very, very real – compressions, alarms on the monitor, medicine bottles, discarded gloves and syringes. There was a debate about whether or not to intubate the child, because it was a case of TB meningitis, and there is no isolation ward for children. TB is usually not a problem in kids, because they can’t work up the strength to cough out any infected droplets/sputum; intubating them just opens all of that up to the world. The decision was made not to intubate, and within 5 minutes, it was over. Time of death was called at 7:50 am.
To be honest, it all felt pretty surreal. I didn’t really take part in the resuscitation, because there were already enough people. I kind of hung around on the edges, then walked back to morning report with Prema. I couldn’t tell which of the mothers was the child’s, if she was there at all. But overall, I felt the same as I have when I’ve seen other patients pass in the ER – it’s a tragedy, especially for a child, but it also is a relief to their suffering. You hope that they’re in a better place.
I passed the rest of the day in clinic, where I can pretty much zone out anyway. A lot of these kids are absolutely beautiful, and incredibly adorable, and I wanted to take them all home. We had a few cancellations, so Dr. Kung spent the down time quizzing Dr. David, one of the second year residents who’s doing a sub-specialty rotation this month and is shadowing Dr. Kung with me in the clinic. Dr. Kung gives balloons and stickers to every patient, and the last patient was a super-cute little boy who discovered that dropping his balloon and making Dr. David pick it up was a really fun game. I was also endlessly entertained.
Entered some charts in the afternoon, and avoided the wards for the rest of the day.
I was cranky and hormonal when I got home, and maybe I was more affected than I realized by the morning's events, because I nearly set the dorm on fire after putting olive oil in a pan to heat on the stove and forgetting about it. Good job me. Went to bed early.
Thursday 30 June 2011
Day 42 - 27 June 2011
Super long morning report – so long that they ended up not doing report on all the patients, and Dr. Kung rushed through her usual Monday morning talk, the syndrome of the week.
Since I finished all of my data entry last week, I was a little unsure what my new task for this week would be. Dr. Kung and I sat down briefly, and we talked about coding my data, and about how I could help Kat with her project. Her data entry is similar to mine (though charts from 2010 as opposed to 2009), but she has to enter much more information than I did, and she’s using a database program called Microsoft Access that’s ONLY made for PCs. The original plan was for her to enter three months’ worth of data from 2009 – July through September. However, it’s much more labor intensive than Dr. Kung realized, so Kat only just finished the first month, last week. Dr. Kung asked me to go through the July charts, and cherry-pick all of the pediatric patients.
She took me to the new place where I’d be working on the charts, because that’s where there is a desktop available for me to work on. It’s in the Gaborone Dental Clinic, which is a sort of forgotten, tucked-away corner of the PMH compound. We were admitting again today, so I decided to spend the morning working on charts, and join things on the ward in the afternoon, if anything interesting came in. The new office is cold as mess, though, so I spent most of the morning moving the space heater progressively closer to my desk.
Boring rest of the day – missed rounds to work on charts ☹, got through a few days’ worth, had lunch with Kat, etc.
Since I finished all of my data entry last week, I was a little unsure what my new task for this week would be. Dr. Kung and I sat down briefly, and we talked about coding my data, and about how I could help Kat with her project. Her data entry is similar to mine (though charts from 2010 as opposed to 2009), but she has to enter much more information than I did, and she’s using a database program called Microsoft Access that’s ONLY made for PCs. The original plan was for her to enter three months’ worth of data from 2009 – July through September. However, it’s much more labor intensive than Dr. Kung realized, so Kat only just finished the first month, last week. Dr. Kung asked me to go through the July charts, and cherry-pick all of the pediatric patients.
She took me to the new place where I’d be working on the charts, because that’s where there is a desktop available for me to work on. It’s in the Gaborone Dental Clinic, which is a sort of forgotten, tucked-away corner of the PMH compound. We were admitting again today, so I decided to spend the morning working on charts, and join things on the ward in the afternoon, if anything interesting came in. The new office is cold as mess, though, so I spent most of the morning moving the space heater progressively closer to my desk.
Boring rest of the day – missed rounds to work on charts ☹, got through a few days’ worth, had lunch with Kat, etc.
Day 41 - 26 June 2011
I slept somewhat fitfully, but I woke up feeling completely rested, if a bit stiff from lying in the same position all night. I have concluded that being here and waking up at 6:15 every morning has definitely destroyed my natural sleep rhythms – I woke up, and I could tell it was getting light outside, so I tried to very quietly stick my head of the tent to get one last look at the incredible stars. Instead, the sky was already light at the horizon, though the moon was still out, and Julia heard me moving and asked if I was going to the bathroom. We both crept out into the freezing cold, and admired the sunrise. Becca woke up just a little afterwards, and we started poking around Tim’s various boxes, looking for a way to restart the fire. We were unsuccessful in that endeavor, but we made enough noise that Tim woke up and started the fire for us. Yay!
Had some tea and rusks when everyone was awake – rusks are basically like the British version of biscotti I guess, though not quite as sweet, but definitely delicious (especially dipped in tea). Then we bundled into the car for a morning game drive. Again, I was dragging my feet at the thought of looking at more antelope, but I was happy once we got out there and saw some giraffes. They’re so dignified and peaceful looking. Also, I did not adequately explain the phenomenon that is the Kalahari desert in my last post, and many of you are probably looking at my pictures of lions and ending up quite stumped by all the grass. So the Khutse/Central Kalahari Game Reserve is, as the name suggests, in the Kalahari desert – it’s just now what we traditionally think of as a desert. It looks kind of like a grassland, with lots of scrubby, thorny bushes, some white/tan sand/fine brown dirt, and a tree here and there. According to wikipedia, it "supports more wildlife than a typical desert." Go here if you want to learn more :)
Came back, and had breakfast of yogurt and granola (basically what I have for breakfast every day). A few of the more adventurous among us had some leftover sheppard’s pie and chocolate mousse (gross). Then it was time for dishes and packing up the tents. I now officially know how to set up and take down a tent – be proud. Also, folding up the tents got us all moving, so by the time we were done I was quite toasty, and able to remove some layers. It was kind of amazing to get back down to two shirts. I felt like I’d lost 20 pounds.
Once everything was loaded, we piled back into the car. We stopped at the research center again on our way out, to give them our pictures and tell them about where we’d seen the lions. We ended up staying to chat for quite a while, because they gave us tea, and the guy who helps them catch the cats was there (he’d been napping the day before). He was American, and a very super cool cowboy type. We learned a lot about the differences between cheetahs, leopards, and lions. Other fun fact: pumas, cougars, and panthers are apparently all the same thing.
When we finally managed to tear ourselves away, we settled back in for the 4-hour drive back to Gabs. For whatever reason, Tim decided to take back roads back most of the way, so instead of spending just an hour or two bumping around on the dusty dirt donkey lanes, we spent closer to three. We also had to pee in the bushes, and cut our quiche (aka lunch) with a porcupine quill because all of our utensils were packed up. Very classy.
Made it back to Gabs after what seemed like an eternity, where Olivia, Lina and MK were waiting for us with a bottle of wine and 90s music. The only thing to put a damper on this outstanding reception was the fact that the water had apparently been off most of the day, and was freezing cold now that it was back on. Julia and I had both been looking forward to hot showers – apparently, we brought the desert cold home with us. Awesome. Still, we enjoyed telling stories from the weekend, and relaxed the rest of the evening, in our clothes that still reeked of campfire.
Had some tea and rusks when everyone was awake – rusks are basically like the British version of biscotti I guess, though not quite as sweet, but definitely delicious (especially dipped in tea). Then we bundled into the car for a morning game drive. Again, I was dragging my feet at the thought of looking at more antelope, but I was happy once we got out there and saw some giraffes. They’re so dignified and peaceful looking. Also, I did not adequately explain the phenomenon that is the Kalahari desert in my last post, and many of you are probably looking at my pictures of lions and ending up quite stumped by all the grass. So the Khutse/Central Kalahari Game Reserve is, as the name suggests, in the Kalahari desert – it’s just now what we traditionally think of as a desert. It looks kind of like a grassland, with lots of scrubby, thorny bushes, some white/tan sand/fine brown dirt, and a tree here and there. According to wikipedia, it "supports more wildlife than a typical desert." Go here if you want to learn more :)
Came back, and had breakfast of yogurt and granola (basically what I have for breakfast every day). A few of the more adventurous among us had some leftover sheppard’s pie and chocolate mousse (gross). Then it was time for dishes and packing up the tents. I now officially know how to set up and take down a tent – be proud. Also, folding up the tents got us all moving, so by the time we were done I was quite toasty, and able to remove some layers. It was kind of amazing to get back down to two shirts. I felt like I’d lost 20 pounds.
Once everything was loaded, we piled back into the car. We stopped at the research center again on our way out, to give them our pictures and tell them about where we’d seen the lions. We ended up staying to chat for quite a while, because they gave us tea, and the guy who helps them catch the cats was there (he’d been napping the day before). He was American, and a very super cool cowboy type. We learned a lot about the differences between cheetahs, leopards, and lions. Other fun fact: pumas, cougars, and panthers are apparently all the same thing.
When we finally managed to tear ourselves away, we settled back in for the 4-hour drive back to Gabs. For whatever reason, Tim decided to take back roads back most of the way, so instead of spending just an hour or two bumping around on the dusty dirt donkey lanes, we spent closer to three. We also had to pee in the bushes, and cut our quiche (aka lunch) with a porcupine quill because all of our utensils were packed up. Very classy.
Made it back to Gabs after what seemed like an eternity, where Olivia, Lina and MK were waiting for us with a bottle of wine and 90s music. The only thing to put a damper on this outstanding reception was the fact that the water had apparently been off most of the day, and was freezing cold now that it was back on. Julia and I had both been looking forward to hot showers – apparently, we brought the desert cold home with us. Awesome. Still, we enjoyed telling stories from the weekend, and relaxed the rest of the evening, in our clothes that still reeked of campfire.
Wednesday 29 June 2011
Day 40 - 25 June 11
7 am on Saturday dawned bright and far too early, but Julia and I somehow managed to drag ourselves out of bed. We had no idea what to expect for our camping trip in the Kalahari – Olivia had helpfully passed on that her friend who had gone on the trip last year said that it was the coldest she had ever been in her life – but we pretended to be enthusiastic. I literally packed every piece of non-work clothing I had into my book bag. And the layering began…
Phase 1 - Base layers:
Bottom - Leggings + jeans = 2 layers
Top – sports bra + thin, long sleeve cotton shirt (not to be removed the whole weekend) + white light-weight jacket + pea coat = 4 layers
We had heard that we were potentially riding in an open-air truck for the 4 hour drive to Khutse. That, combined with the 8 am departure time (the second coldest time of day), meant that we started out heavy on the layers.
Tim, our driver and guide for the weekend, picked us up at UB, and we happily piled into the truck when we realized that it was an 8-seater Land Rover with doors and windows. We didn’t even care that there was no heat, we were so ecstatic that it was covered. And so the adventure began.
Most of the drive to Khutse, which is in central/eastern Botswana slightly north of Gabs, was on a paved highway. At the 2-hour mark, by which time we had all gotten sick of talking to each other, fallen asleep, and then realized that we had to pee worse than ever before in our lives, we stopped at a gas station to refuel/deal with basic bodily functions. Thank goodness we did, because past there it was an unpaved dirt road into the bush for two hours, with all the jostling and bouncing that entails.
Just when we thought we must have reached the ends of the earth, we got to the gate for the Khutse Game Reserve, just south of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Just outside the gates is a Leopard Research Center. Tim knows the staff and scientists there, so he drove us over to check out their set-up and learn about big cat research. There we met Cleo, Jan, and their adorable two-year-old son, Luka. What they do there is super cool – trapping cats, putting tracking collars on them, and then studying their movements – and they also have a pretty sweet camp for being in the middle of the desert. People have been doing research there for 10 years, though they’ve only been living there for a year, and they have solar panels, hot-water showers, and computers. If I didn’t already love what I do at the hospital so much, I definitely would have been asking where to sign up.
After we were done, we climbed back into the truck to drive out to our campsite within the game reserve. It was a longer drive than I expected, and I was just starting to doze off when we finally got there. We were literally in the middle of nowhere – it was basically a clearing in the grass with a tree, a fenced latrine and bucket shower, and us. Tim unpacked the trailer that we had been toting, and we set up our tents. Now, dear readers, I have never been camping before, and this was quite an entertaining and somewhat dirty experience. I loved it. Then we had a quick lunch of egg sandwiches with tomatoes. Very British, I think.
Phase 2:
Top – Added on a grey wool sweater = 5 layers
After lunch, we washed our dishes and packed back into the truck for a game drive. It was about 3:15, so we only had a few hours of daylight left. There was a fairly steady breeze that was quite chilly, despite the sun, so as a preventive measure I added on another sweater before we set out, since we’d be getting back after dark probably.
It was at about this point in the trip that I decided I’m getting quite tired of game drives. We go on them pretty much everywhere we go, and mostly all you see is lots and lots of antelope (usually impala). Here, the pans are big and the animals spread out a lot, so on top of being a bunch of antelope you’ve already seen before, they’re so far away that you can’t really get a decent picture of them either. Harumph.
Started dozing off after a while, then came across some ostriches that were too absorbed in their mating ritual to run away from us. Snapped some pictures, moved on. Then, there were lions. I didn’t even see them at first, they were hidden in the grass, which was lit by the fading sun. There were 7 of them, a pride that Chloe and Jan had been saying they were trying to get more information about, but seemed to be a mother and her 5 male cubs. They sat watching us, and we watched them, mesmerized. Then the first, most curious one, started coming towards us, and we all freaked out. Cameras were clicking, flashes were bursting, and pretty soon we were surrounded by lions. It was AWESOME. (Don’t worry, pictures will come eventually).
After about 20 or 25 minutes of “oohs” and “aahs,” Tim started trying to drive away, because we aren’t allowed to be out after dark (more for the animals’ safety than ours), but one stubborn cub kept staying in front of us. We had to stop, and wait for him to decide to join the rest of his pride in walking the opposite direction. Even when we finally did drive off, I was vaguely worried that they would follow us.
Phase 3:
Bottom – Added pajama pants + another pair of socks = 3 layers
Top – Added blue, long-sleeved running fleece + hat = 6 layers
The temperature drops super quickly once it gets dark, which it more or less was by the time we made it back to camp. Tim immediately started working on the fire, and we all added another layer. At this point, I was starting to feel a little bit like a Pillsbury Dough-Boy, and couldn’t quite put my arms down.
We all took our seats by the fire, which became quite comfortable within a few minutes. The fee we paid for our tour included food, and, we were pleasantly surprised to find, drinks as well. Tried “St. Louis,” a local beer that we’ve seen signs for EVERYWHERE. Tea was much more satisfying though.
Tim also started cooking dinner, which was a mystery hidden under foil in a large lasagna dish. It turned out to be sheppard’s pie, which was quite tasty and filling. Also garlic bread warmed in foil, which they have at every braai here and is one of my favorite things EVER. Mmmm, drool.
To top it all off, there was chocolate mousse, and before long we were stuffed and happy.
Phase 4:
Bottom – Another pair of pajama pants + a third pair of socks = 4 layers
Top – Long-sleeved, cotton shirt = 7 layers
As long as we stayed by the fire, we were quite cozy, but every time we wandered further than 3 feet, a startling, mind-numbing cold immediately set in. It was quite shocking.
By the time we finished eating, it was pitch black outside, and the stars emerged. It was the most incredible night sky I have ever seen in my life, and made it totally worth it to brave the cold. I wish that I could do justice to how beautiful it was, but I’m just not that poetic. Suffice it to say, we are missing out on literally THOUSANDS of stars in the States. We all stayed up as long as we could to soak it in (and avoid leaving the warm fire), but eventually it was time to sleep.
We retired to our tents, where our beds consisted of foam pads, a sheet, a comforter, and a pillow. It was also as cold as I imagine the surface of the moon would be. I tried to stay awake to read for a little while, but my hands became so painfully cold even through my gloves that I had to stop. I doubled up my comforter, so everything was warm except my feet, which have terrible circulation to begin with. As long as I didn’t move, and remained in a position reminiscent of a mummy/Dracula, I was actually quite comfortable. I also stole a fleece blanket from the car, and pulled it over my head, then eventually fell asleep.
Total number of pieces of clothing on my body = 18
Overnight low = -2.5°C
Phase 1 - Base layers:
Bottom - Leggings + jeans = 2 layers
Top – sports bra + thin, long sleeve cotton shirt (not to be removed the whole weekend) + white light-weight jacket + pea coat = 4 layers
We had heard that we were potentially riding in an open-air truck for the 4 hour drive to Khutse. That, combined with the 8 am departure time (the second coldest time of day), meant that we started out heavy on the layers.
Tim, our driver and guide for the weekend, picked us up at UB, and we happily piled into the truck when we realized that it was an 8-seater Land Rover with doors and windows. We didn’t even care that there was no heat, we were so ecstatic that it was covered. And so the adventure began.
Most of the drive to Khutse, which is in central/eastern Botswana slightly north of Gabs, was on a paved highway. At the 2-hour mark, by which time we had all gotten sick of talking to each other, fallen asleep, and then realized that we had to pee worse than ever before in our lives, we stopped at a gas station to refuel/deal with basic bodily functions. Thank goodness we did, because past there it was an unpaved dirt road into the bush for two hours, with all the jostling and bouncing that entails.
Just when we thought we must have reached the ends of the earth, we got to the gate for the Khutse Game Reserve, just south of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Just outside the gates is a Leopard Research Center. Tim knows the staff and scientists there, so he drove us over to check out their set-up and learn about big cat research. There we met Cleo, Jan, and their adorable two-year-old son, Luka. What they do there is super cool – trapping cats, putting tracking collars on them, and then studying their movements – and they also have a pretty sweet camp for being in the middle of the desert. People have been doing research there for 10 years, though they’ve only been living there for a year, and they have solar panels, hot-water showers, and computers. If I didn’t already love what I do at the hospital so much, I definitely would have been asking where to sign up.
After we were done, we climbed back into the truck to drive out to our campsite within the game reserve. It was a longer drive than I expected, and I was just starting to doze off when we finally got there. We were literally in the middle of nowhere – it was basically a clearing in the grass with a tree, a fenced latrine and bucket shower, and us. Tim unpacked the trailer that we had been toting, and we set up our tents. Now, dear readers, I have never been camping before, and this was quite an entertaining and somewhat dirty experience. I loved it. Then we had a quick lunch of egg sandwiches with tomatoes. Very British, I think.
Phase 2:
Top – Added on a grey wool sweater = 5 layers
After lunch, we washed our dishes and packed back into the truck for a game drive. It was about 3:15, so we only had a few hours of daylight left. There was a fairly steady breeze that was quite chilly, despite the sun, so as a preventive measure I added on another sweater before we set out, since we’d be getting back after dark probably.
It was at about this point in the trip that I decided I’m getting quite tired of game drives. We go on them pretty much everywhere we go, and mostly all you see is lots and lots of antelope (usually impala). Here, the pans are big and the animals spread out a lot, so on top of being a bunch of antelope you’ve already seen before, they’re so far away that you can’t really get a decent picture of them either. Harumph.
Started dozing off after a while, then came across some ostriches that were too absorbed in their mating ritual to run away from us. Snapped some pictures, moved on. Then, there were lions. I didn’t even see them at first, they were hidden in the grass, which was lit by the fading sun. There were 7 of them, a pride that Chloe and Jan had been saying they were trying to get more information about, but seemed to be a mother and her 5 male cubs. They sat watching us, and we watched them, mesmerized. Then the first, most curious one, started coming towards us, and we all freaked out. Cameras were clicking, flashes were bursting, and pretty soon we were surrounded by lions. It was AWESOME. (Don’t worry, pictures will come eventually).
After about 20 or 25 minutes of “oohs” and “aahs,” Tim started trying to drive away, because we aren’t allowed to be out after dark (more for the animals’ safety than ours), but one stubborn cub kept staying in front of us. We had to stop, and wait for him to decide to join the rest of his pride in walking the opposite direction. Even when we finally did drive off, I was vaguely worried that they would follow us.
Phase 3:
Bottom – Added pajama pants + another pair of socks = 3 layers
Top – Added blue, long-sleeved running fleece + hat = 6 layers
The temperature drops super quickly once it gets dark, which it more or less was by the time we made it back to camp. Tim immediately started working on the fire, and we all added another layer. At this point, I was starting to feel a little bit like a Pillsbury Dough-Boy, and couldn’t quite put my arms down.
We all took our seats by the fire, which became quite comfortable within a few minutes. The fee we paid for our tour included food, and, we were pleasantly surprised to find, drinks as well. Tried “St. Louis,” a local beer that we’ve seen signs for EVERYWHERE. Tea was much more satisfying though.
Tim also started cooking dinner, which was a mystery hidden under foil in a large lasagna dish. It turned out to be sheppard’s pie, which was quite tasty and filling. Also garlic bread warmed in foil, which they have at every braai here and is one of my favorite things EVER. Mmmm, drool.
To top it all off, there was chocolate mousse, and before long we were stuffed and happy.
Phase 4:
Bottom – Another pair of pajama pants + a third pair of socks = 4 layers
Top – Long-sleeved, cotton shirt = 7 layers
As long as we stayed by the fire, we were quite cozy, but every time we wandered further than 3 feet, a startling, mind-numbing cold immediately set in. It was quite shocking.
By the time we finished eating, it was pitch black outside, and the stars emerged. It was the most incredible night sky I have ever seen in my life, and made it totally worth it to brave the cold. I wish that I could do justice to how beautiful it was, but I’m just not that poetic. Suffice it to say, we are missing out on literally THOUSANDS of stars in the States. We all stayed up as long as we could to soak it in (and avoid leaving the warm fire), but eventually it was time to sleep.
We retired to our tents, where our beds consisted of foam pads, a sheet, a comforter, and a pillow. It was also as cold as I imagine the surface of the moon would be. I tried to stay awake to read for a little while, but my hands became so painfully cold even through my gloves that I had to stop. I doubled up my comforter, so everything was warm except my feet, which have terrible circulation to begin with. As long as I didn’t move, and remained in a position reminiscent of a mummy/Dracula, I was actually quite comfortable. I also stole a fleece blanket from the car, and pulled it over my head, then eventually fell asleep.
Total number of pieces of clothing on my body = 18
Overnight low = -2.5°C
Sunday 26 June 2011
In Review
Day 35 - 39
June 20 - 24
Now that we've settled into a weekly routine at work as well as at home, I decided that I don't have enough interesting material to make a daily post during the week. Instead, I'll summarize the funny/interesting/sad things that happened during my week, and devote the most time to that. Here goes...
Monday
Morning – report, Ward rounds w/o Tiny (not fun)
Lunch w/ Kat
Afternoon – back to chart sorting in the A&E
Tuesday
Morning – report, clinic
Afternoon – charts
Wednesday
Morning – report, rounds
Afternoon – ward work, clinic (briefly), more ward work
Thursday
Morning – report, rounds & ward work
Afternoon – ward work, charts
Friday
Morning – report, ward work, Mma Obama!
Afternoon – M&M, finished April charts!
Dinner at Embassy!
Interesting/funny/heart-breaking things that happened this week:
Interesting:
Michelle Obama came to Botswana. I was within 50 feet of her as she entered the site for the future “Baylor Adolescent Center.” Yeah, be jealous ☺ Fun fact: that lot has, up till now, been completely abandoned, full of discarded trash/junk, and overgrown with weeds. Two days ago, in preparation for her visit, they cleaned up the lot and started painting a random mural on the wall, which they were still finishing as of 7 am the day she arrived. That’s Africa (TIA – it’s a thing).
Heart-breaking:
One of our patients this week was a severely malnourished child who had Kwashiorkor, a life-threatening protein deficiency. The mom had been following a strict feeding regimen monitored by a dietician, but the child still had a critically low potassium level of 1.93, which is virtually incompatible with life. In the U.S., that child would have been started immediately on a potassium infusion and placed on continuous cardiac monitoring. Here, they don’t even carry IV potassium on the units because the nursing support isn’t there to provide the right kind of monitoring, and potassium has to be given very, VERY slowly, or it will stop your heart – they used to give IV potassium solution orally, and a nursing student misunderstood and pushed it FAST, via IV, and the patient died. So now, families have to buy multivitamins from the chemist and bring them to the hospital pharmacy for special preparation. We told the mom for two days to get the potassium, but the family took a long time, and by the time they brought it on Thursday evening, the hospital pharmacy had closed and refused to mix the preparation until the next morning. (What kind of hospital pharmacy is not open 24/7?!?) The child died that night.
Frustrating:
In order to diagnose our patients who have TB, we collect gastric aspirates, which I've written about doing before. However, what I didn't add is that said samples get sent out of the hospital for culturing. The PMH lab is able to do the first part of the test, which is a smear, but the most important thing is the culture. Seems pretty inefficient, but whatever. Well, at the beginning of last week, Dr. Joseph mumbled something to me about the lab no longer doing TB cultures, and I ignored him. Then, over the course of the week, three different nurses told me the same thing, and I had no idea what to do, so I still kept collecting the aspirates when told, and marking down the culture on the order sheet. Someone finally mentioned the issue again in front of Dr. Kung, and she unequivocally said, "No, we need the culture, it's the most important part, mark it down." When the nurses persisted in following me around telling me I was doing it wrong, she took action and called her husband, who is an infectious disease specialist, and the true story finally came out: apparently the lab contracted by the hospital to do the TB cultures had closed last weekend for renovations, and there was no other lab to do the cultures, so they were being cancelled. Thanks guys, think you could have told us sooner? Or, I don't know, arranged for a different lab to take over while you're closed? AUGH!
Funny:
Kat has joined me working in the paeds medical ward office on chart entry because all the outlets in the room she usually works in randomly stopped working. She told the doctor who’s the head of the A&E (because it’s the A&E’s office), and he told her to tell one of the nurses, because they can fix it. Honestly, some things never change – do they think that nurses just have a toolbox hidden somewhere that we can use to fix anything and everything, but we'll only bring it out to use if you pester us enough?
I drew blood on one of the kids on the ward on Thursday afternoon, and the mom roughly translated what the child was saying as “I want to eat your guts.” I suppose if someone was sticking a needle in my wrist and I was three years old, I would probably express similar sentiments myself.
One of the attendings, Dr. Brewster (AKA “Prof”) is not afraid to vent his feelings about the adequacy of the residents’ skills (or lack thereof). This morning a resident was presenting a 2 year-old patient, which he diagnosed with bronchiolitis (an inflammation of the airways in the lungs, basically, usually a viral infection in young children). As he’s said more than once before, Prof pointed out that bronchiolitis can only be made as a diagnosis in children under 2, but he let it slide on this patient. Then, the resident presented another patient, this time a 3-year-old, and again diagnosed bronchiolitis. This time, Prof lost it, and said something along the lines of, “That’s an inappropriate diagnosis, and if you persist in making it, it’s simply shameless a display of your ignorance.” Seriously, Prof, tell us how you really feel.
June 20 - 24
Now that we've settled into a weekly routine at work as well as at home, I decided that I don't have enough interesting material to make a daily post during the week. Instead, I'll summarize the funny/interesting/sad things that happened during my week, and devote the most time to that. Here goes...
Monday
Morning – report, Ward rounds w/o Tiny (not fun)
Lunch w/ Kat
Afternoon – back to chart sorting in the A&E
Tuesday
Morning – report, clinic
Afternoon – charts
Wednesday
Morning – report, rounds
Afternoon – ward work, clinic (briefly), more ward work
Thursday
Morning – report, rounds & ward work
Afternoon – ward work, charts
Friday
Morning – report, ward work, Mma Obama!
Afternoon – M&M, finished April charts!
Dinner at Embassy!
Interesting/funny/heart-breaking things that happened this week:
Interesting:
Michelle Obama came to Botswana. I was within 50 feet of her as she entered the site for the future “Baylor Adolescent Center.” Yeah, be jealous ☺ Fun fact: that lot has, up till now, been completely abandoned, full of discarded trash/junk, and overgrown with weeds. Two days ago, in preparation for her visit, they cleaned up the lot and started painting a random mural on the wall, which they were still finishing as of 7 am the day she arrived. That’s Africa (TIA – it’s a thing).
Heart-breaking:
One of our patients this week was a severely malnourished child who had Kwashiorkor, a life-threatening protein deficiency. The mom had been following a strict feeding regimen monitored by a dietician, but the child still had a critically low potassium level of 1.93, which is virtually incompatible with life. In the U.S., that child would have been started immediately on a potassium infusion and placed on continuous cardiac monitoring. Here, they don’t even carry IV potassium on the units because the nursing support isn’t there to provide the right kind of monitoring, and potassium has to be given very, VERY slowly, or it will stop your heart – they used to give IV potassium solution orally, and a nursing student misunderstood and pushed it FAST, via IV, and the patient died. So now, families have to buy multivitamins from the chemist and bring them to the hospital pharmacy for special preparation. We told the mom for two days to get the potassium, but the family took a long time, and by the time they brought it on Thursday evening, the hospital pharmacy had closed and refused to mix the preparation until the next morning. (What kind of hospital pharmacy is not open 24/7?!?) The child died that night.
Frustrating:
In order to diagnose our patients who have TB, we collect gastric aspirates, which I've written about doing before. However, what I didn't add is that said samples get sent out of the hospital for culturing. The PMH lab is able to do the first part of the test, which is a smear, but the most important thing is the culture. Seems pretty inefficient, but whatever. Well, at the beginning of last week, Dr. Joseph mumbled something to me about the lab no longer doing TB cultures, and I ignored him. Then, over the course of the week, three different nurses told me the same thing, and I had no idea what to do, so I still kept collecting the aspirates when told, and marking down the culture on the order sheet. Someone finally mentioned the issue again in front of Dr. Kung, and she unequivocally said, "No, we need the culture, it's the most important part, mark it down." When the nurses persisted in following me around telling me I was doing it wrong, she took action and called her husband, who is an infectious disease specialist, and the true story finally came out: apparently the lab contracted by the hospital to do the TB cultures had closed last weekend for renovations, and there was no other lab to do the cultures, so they were being cancelled. Thanks guys, think you could have told us sooner? Or, I don't know, arranged for a different lab to take over while you're closed? AUGH!
Funny:
Kat has joined me working in the paeds medical ward office on chart entry because all the outlets in the room she usually works in randomly stopped working. She told the doctor who’s the head of the A&E (because it’s the A&E’s office), and he told her to tell one of the nurses, because they can fix it. Honestly, some things never change – do they think that nurses just have a toolbox hidden somewhere that we can use to fix anything and everything, but we'll only bring it out to use if you pester us enough?
I drew blood on one of the kids on the ward on Thursday afternoon, and the mom roughly translated what the child was saying as “I want to eat your guts.” I suppose if someone was sticking a needle in my wrist and I was three years old, I would probably express similar sentiments myself.
One of the attendings, Dr. Brewster (AKA “Prof”) is not afraid to vent his feelings about the adequacy of the residents’ skills (or lack thereof). This morning a resident was presenting a 2 year-old patient, which he diagnosed with bronchiolitis (an inflammation of the airways in the lungs, basically, usually a viral infection in young children). As he’s said more than once before, Prof pointed out that bronchiolitis can only be made as a diagnosis in children under 2, but he let it slide on this patient. Then, the resident presented another patient, this time a 3-year-old, and again diagnosed bronchiolitis. This time, Prof lost it, and said something along the lines of, “That’s an inappropriate diagnosis, and if you persist in making it, it’s simply shameless a display of your ignorance.” Seriously, Prof, tell us how you really feel.
Thursday 23 June 2011
Day 34 - 19 June 2011
Woke up at 5:45 to be ready for our 6:30 am game drive. At this point you’re asking yourself, “Honestly, what kind of weekend/summer vacation is this?” – trust me, we were asking ourselves the same thing. I crawled out of my warm bed/cocoon and looked outside, and the moon was still out for goodness sake. It was also SUPER FREEZING (that is a scientifically proven level of cold beyond normal freezing, truly). I pulled my jeans on over my flannel PJ bottoms, heated water for some instant coffee, and jumped back into bed.
Amazingly enough, our guide came to pick us up ON TIME for our game drive (gasp!). We pulled the comforters off our beds and dragged them into the truck with us, along with hats, gloves, and scarves. Olivia looked like a burrito (pictures to follow).
The sky was starting to get pink as we started on the drive, and we got to watch the sun rise, which was very dramatic and awesome! We were pretty psyched, in spite of the cold, because we really wanted to see rhinos, and the sunrise was beautiful. After the first 20 minutes or so, though, our chattering died down, and we were bordering on cranky when Olivia finally spotted them! FOUR RHINOS! Including a BULL RHINO! We almost died of excitement, and I think I took close to 100 pictures. I felt bad for our guide, because she was trying to tell us things, but we were only half listening. She also got very sassy with Lina when Lina asked questions – she would make a sound that I can only describe as a typical Motswana sound akin to what they describe in books as a woman “clucking” in disapproval, and say, “I was getting to that” every time Lina asked a question. Out of a sense of guilt for what terrible tourists we were, as a brief homage to our tour guide I will now share…
Things we learned about rhinos:
1. There are white rhinos and black rhinos (no, I am not a racist, that’s what they’re called) – they’re both grey, but the two kinds have a different hoof shape. Don’t ask me which one’s which, but one is a C shape and the other is a U shape.
2. White rhinos live longer (45 years vs. 40 years)
3. White rhinos are more social – the moms and babies travel in groups, while black rhinos tend to hide out… somewhere.
4. Rhinos occasionally eat dirt, because they need the salt that’s in the soil.
5. Rhinos actually do roll around in the mud – it’s their version of sunscreen.
6. All rhinos are stinky.
Once we saw the rhinos, we all settled quite contentedly back in our seats and were not particularly picky about everything else we saw. But in fairness to the other creatures of the Khama Rhino Sanctuary, I’ll give an honorary mention to: kudu, elan, wildebeest (prn. wild-beast, not wil-dee-beast, the way they pronounce it in Lion King; aka gnu), impala, yellow hornbills, wild dogs, quail, and springboks (those were my favorite – I love saying the name).
Our guide dropped us off back at our chalet, and I changed into normal clothes, because the temperature outside changes dramatically once the sun comes up. It was still a little chilly, but definitely trending warmer. Then we packed and girded ourselves for our next great adventure: getting the bus back to Serowe. Remember how I mentioned that the bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere the day before? Yeah, well “the middle of nowhere” does not by any definition include a bus stop, and the middle of nowhere in Botswana is no different. Essentially the process of returning to Serowe had been explained to us like this: stand next to the road, and flag down the next bus you see. In other words, hitch-hiking. Awesome.
Our guide returned to take us back to the front of the reserve, and luckily we had the brilliant idea to stop in the main office to check out before giving ourselves up to the hazards of the road. The lady at the desk asked us what we had been laughing about the night before, which set us off laughing again as we explained our lack of cell signal. When we mentioned that we needed to get the bus back to Serowe, she went running out the door to try to catch “America,” who happened to be driving away in a combi. She didn’t catch him, but some of the other employees called him, and he came back within a few minutes to pick us up. Score!
He actually didn’t take us all the way to Serowe, but he dropped us off at a bus stop so that we could catch a combi. Also, the girl that he had originally been driving to the bus stop got off with us, and after a little while we (warily) started a conversation with her. She recently graduated from a university in South Africa after studying public relations, and she currently goes back and forth between Serowe and Gabs, visiting relatives. She was really nice, and there were also some totally adorable children playing behind the bus stop. They kept peeking around the walls to look at us, and eventually some of them worked up the courage to walk in front of us. We talked them into letting us take pictures of them, and then some of them went running up the street shouting in Setswana – our new friend (Mpho) translated for us: “The whites are here!” Excellent. (According to Mpho, the kids had only ever seen white people driving along the road in cars, so they probably had never seen any up close, and certainly not waiting at the bus stop).
The combi came after about 10 minutes, and after a quick pit-stop at Choppies (for breakfast) and an ATM (for me – unsuccessful again) with the help of our trusty guide, Mpho, we hopped on the bus to Gabs. We gave her our number, and she gave all of us hugs before we got on the bus. It was refreshing to have made a friend that we had initiated a conversation with, as opposed to being harassed for our numbers.
The ride to Gabs was (thankfully) not terribly crowded, and after eating we all were tired enough from our early morning to doze most of the way back. It was still only 4 hours back, but it felt like DAYS. The bus driver elected to play (very loud) Setswana gospel songs for the first half of the trip, then somewhere along the way switched to house/electronic/dance music, including some Usher and other popular American artists. I felt like I was in the middle of a club by the end of the ride.
Uneventful rest of the day – a bit of grocery shopping, cab back to UB, showers, phone calls for Father’s day, watched Pleasantville, slept.
Amazingly enough, our guide came to pick us up ON TIME for our game drive (gasp!). We pulled the comforters off our beds and dragged them into the truck with us, along with hats, gloves, and scarves. Olivia looked like a burrito (pictures to follow).
The sky was starting to get pink as we started on the drive, and we got to watch the sun rise, which was very dramatic and awesome! We were pretty psyched, in spite of the cold, because we really wanted to see rhinos, and the sunrise was beautiful. After the first 20 minutes or so, though, our chattering died down, and we were bordering on cranky when Olivia finally spotted them! FOUR RHINOS! Including a BULL RHINO! We almost died of excitement, and I think I took close to 100 pictures. I felt bad for our guide, because she was trying to tell us things, but we were only half listening. She also got very sassy with Lina when Lina asked questions – she would make a sound that I can only describe as a typical Motswana sound akin to what they describe in books as a woman “clucking” in disapproval, and say, “I was getting to that” every time Lina asked a question. Out of a sense of guilt for what terrible tourists we were, as a brief homage to our tour guide I will now share…
Things we learned about rhinos:
1. There are white rhinos and black rhinos (no, I am not a racist, that’s what they’re called) – they’re both grey, but the two kinds have a different hoof shape. Don’t ask me which one’s which, but one is a C shape and the other is a U shape.
2. White rhinos live longer (45 years vs. 40 years)
3. White rhinos are more social – the moms and babies travel in groups, while black rhinos tend to hide out… somewhere.
4. Rhinos occasionally eat dirt, because they need the salt that’s in the soil.
5. Rhinos actually do roll around in the mud – it’s their version of sunscreen.
6. All rhinos are stinky.
Once we saw the rhinos, we all settled quite contentedly back in our seats and were not particularly picky about everything else we saw. But in fairness to the other creatures of the Khama Rhino Sanctuary, I’ll give an honorary mention to: kudu, elan, wildebeest (prn. wild-beast, not wil-dee-beast, the way they pronounce it in Lion King; aka gnu), impala, yellow hornbills, wild dogs, quail, and springboks (those were my favorite – I love saying the name).
Our guide dropped us off back at our chalet, and I changed into normal clothes, because the temperature outside changes dramatically once the sun comes up. It was still a little chilly, but definitely trending warmer. Then we packed and girded ourselves for our next great adventure: getting the bus back to Serowe. Remember how I mentioned that the bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere the day before? Yeah, well “the middle of nowhere” does not by any definition include a bus stop, and the middle of nowhere in Botswana is no different. Essentially the process of returning to Serowe had been explained to us like this: stand next to the road, and flag down the next bus you see. In other words, hitch-hiking. Awesome.
Our guide returned to take us back to the front of the reserve, and luckily we had the brilliant idea to stop in the main office to check out before giving ourselves up to the hazards of the road. The lady at the desk asked us what we had been laughing about the night before, which set us off laughing again as we explained our lack of cell signal. When we mentioned that we needed to get the bus back to Serowe, she went running out the door to try to catch “America,” who happened to be driving away in a combi. She didn’t catch him, but some of the other employees called him, and he came back within a few minutes to pick us up. Score!
He actually didn’t take us all the way to Serowe, but he dropped us off at a bus stop so that we could catch a combi. Also, the girl that he had originally been driving to the bus stop got off with us, and after a little while we (warily) started a conversation with her. She recently graduated from a university in South Africa after studying public relations, and she currently goes back and forth between Serowe and Gabs, visiting relatives. She was really nice, and there were also some totally adorable children playing behind the bus stop. They kept peeking around the walls to look at us, and eventually some of them worked up the courage to walk in front of us. We talked them into letting us take pictures of them, and then some of them went running up the street shouting in Setswana – our new friend (Mpho) translated for us: “The whites are here!” Excellent. (According to Mpho, the kids had only ever seen white people driving along the road in cars, so they probably had never seen any up close, and certainly not waiting at the bus stop).
The combi came after about 10 minutes, and after a quick pit-stop at Choppies (for breakfast) and an ATM (for me – unsuccessful again) with the help of our trusty guide, Mpho, we hopped on the bus to Gabs. We gave her our number, and she gave all of us hugs before we got on the bus. It was refreshing to have made a friend that we had initiated a conversation with, as opposed to being harassed for our numbers.
The ride to Gabs was (thankfully) not terribly crowded, and after eating we all were tired enough from our early morning to doze most of the way back. It was still only 4 hours back, but it felt like DAYS. The bus driver elected to play (very loud) Setswana gospel songs for the first half of the trip, then somewhere along the way switched to house/electronic/dance music, including some Usher and other popular American artists. I felt like I was in the middle of a club by the end of the ride.
Uneventful rest of the day – a bit of grocery shopping, cab back to UB, showers, phone calls for Father’s day, watched Pleasantville, slept.
Tuesday 21 June 2011
Day 33 - 18 June 2011
An early morning, because the bus ride to Serowe is four hours, and we wanted to make sure we had some time to walk around when we got there. MK decided not to go because she was feeling bad and she needed to work on her med school applications. Bummer. ☹
Left at 9:15, only fifteen minutes after our planned departure time because Lina for some reason hadn’t packed yet. Walked to the west gate to catch a combi to the bus rank. Unfortunately we couldn’t remember which combi we were supposed to take, because we took a cab the last time, but Lina thought it was the Broadhurst 5 (opposite direction from last night). The first one that came had room, amazingly enough, so we hopped in and were there in about 7 minutes. We were super confused, because a) it was so much faster than the last time we went to the bus ranks, and b) we weren’t actually at the bus rank. Julia and Lina haggled with the driver a bit out of frustration, but then we just decided to walk back to the main road. Luckily the next person we asked was more articulate than our driver had been, and explained that we were just up the street from the bus rank. We walked in the indicated direction, and sure enough, we were on the far side (the bus stop is actually split by a highway, and you have to walk across a skybridge to get to the other side). That problem resolved, we quickly found the row for the bus to Serowe, and after a bathroom stop for Olivia and a phone credit buying mission for me, we were off!
Like last weekend, the bus to Serowe was a big tour bus, because it was a longer trip. The seats were fairly comfortable, and luckily the bus wasn’t full, so we ended up spreading out across two rows. We played “I’m going on a picnic” again, but it was harder with four people, and poor Olivia had started to get some indigestion before we left, so the game died out after a while and people went to sleep. Lina and I did a crossword, which proved to be virtually impossible. Then Lina fell asleep, and I worked on my blog (hand-written, because I didn’t bring my computer, oh my!). We stopped after about 2 hours for a bathroom/food stop, and all hell broke loose. Basically vendors just hang out at bus stops waiting for buses to come, then they all rush on at once and compete with one another in the meager space available in the tiny aisle of a bus to sell as much as they can in the 5 minutes that the bus is stopped. Usually this would just be purely entertaining, because I didn’t want to buy anything and they quickly lose interest in me, but unfortunately, Lina wanted a drink. Two of the male vendors were seriously SHOVING one another while they leaned over my seat to push their drinks in Lina’s face. It was incredibly overwhelming.
At the next stop, we faced a similar situation, except all three of them got off to go to the bathroom, and I stayed to watch our stuff. Most of the vendors lost interest in me, except one, who leaned over the row of seats in front of me and proceeded to stare me down for 5 minutes. I kept saying I didn’t want anything, and after a few minutes of this, she replied, “I want you to buy a drink for me.” It took a couple of repetitions before I realized what she meant, at which point I replied, very uncomfortably, that I couldn’t. An older woman who was also selling things and had lingered behind my seat (possibly touching my hair – creepy, but that’s what it felt like) said something in Setswana to her and made a swiping motion. My best guess is that she was telling the girl that foreigners only use credit cards. I was quite alright with her applying that stereotype if it meant that they would leave me alone. Yeah, I’m a horrible person. Not only that, but then the bus started moving forward before Julia, Lina and Olivia had come back, so I sprinted down the aisle to tell the driver to stop. Luckily the ticket girl knew they hadn’t come back, and as soon as she saw me she told me not to worry, they were just moving the bus to a different spot.
We finally made it to Serowe and disembarked, at which point we were immediately rushed by people offering us taxis. We knew that we needed to find the bus to Orapa to get to the Khama Rhino Sanctuary, where we were going to be staying, so we politely declined. We ate lunches that we had brought, made a bathroom stop, then set off to check out the town. We realized that we didn’t know whether or not we could drink the water there (it’s safe in Gabs), so we decided not to risk it and bought water bottles at a grocery store. Our walk about town lasted about another 10 minutes, then we concluded that there really wasn’t all that much to see and we all just kind of wanted to sit and chill, so we walked back to the bus station.
We found a bus to Maun, another city in northern Botswana, that would apparently drop us at the Sanctuary on our way there. This bus was WAAAAAAY more packed than the first one, and we had to spread out to get the available seats scattered all over the bus. I ended up in the back, next to an old woman and man. After a little while, the man started chatting with me – he was some kind of supervisor in the Ministry of Environment and something or rather, and his job was to manage forest conservation. Pretty neat actually. Deforestation isn’t a huge problem in Botswana, because a large portion of the country is desert, but in the northern part of the country near the Okavango Delta, the climate is much more tropical. Botswana doesn’t have a well-developed construction or manufacturing industry, but people will apparently chop down trees to sell across the border in Zimbabwe or Zambia. He told me that one of the Ministry’s programs involves growing saplings, and a few times a year they have a big event in which they distribute the saplings to people around the country to plant. In some ways, I think Botswana may have better ideas about taking care of the environment than we do (although there’s no recycling here, at least not anything significant, and every combi we’ve ever ridden in has reeked of exhaust fumes).
After spending a good 20 to 30 minutes packed like sardines on the bus, we stopped, and the driver called out, “Whites, get off!,” which the whole bus found wildly entertaining. Somehow I managed to squeeze out from all the way in the back, and we found ourselves standing basically in the middle of nowhere. Don’t worry, they hadn’t left us stranded, we were at the sanctuary – it just looked like the middle of nowhere. We went in and found the office where we were supposed to check in. The poor desk clerk unfortunately didn’t speak very good English, so we confused her a great deal, and she was unhappy with us because we hadn’t brought a car. First of all, no one told us we needed a car, and we can’t drive here anyway. We got charged a fee to have a driver and combi at the sanctuary drive us to our chalet and back for dinner, but it wasn’t expensive, so we signed on the dotted line and went our merry way. Our driver was very chatty, and he said that he had lived in Miami and worked at Disneyworld (two facts which confused me a bit) – we found out later that the other employees apparently call him “America.”
We were pleasantly surprised when we got to our chalet – when we had made the reservation, we had chosen the cheaper chalet option, one that was unelectrified and had no bathroom. However, we were charged a cheaper rate than the one that had been quoted on the phone AND our chalet had electricity, a working toilet, an electric kettle, and FOUR beds. We were thrilled. After setting our stuff down, we took a walk outside, because it wasn’t quite dark yet. We saw some really neat, electric blue birds, and wasted a great deal of time stalking them trying to get pictures, which was a ridiculous endeavor in the first place because none of us had a camera nice enough to take decent pictures of them except Lina. We eventually gave up and dragged our table and chairs outside to sit in the dusk and do crosswords together until dinner. We got excited again about trying to take pictures of a Zazu bird (actually called a yellow hornbill, but the Lion King names are so much funner) in a tree really close to us, then felt supremely stupid when it came up to us 20 minutes later while we were sitting and doing puzzles.
We had asked the driver to come back and get us at 6 for dinner. The sun went down, and the temperature started dropping, so we went back inside to wait. And wait and wait and wait. It was pitch black outside, but by 6:30 there was no sign of our driver. He had given us a number to call, because he said that he wouldn’t be the one to pick us up, but someone would come for us. As we pulled out our phones to check on our transportation status, we realized that none of us had cell phone signal. Great. The only food we had left was a bunch of oranges, apples, and fruit rolls from lunch, and some crackers that we had bought to help settle Olivia’s stomach. It was also incredibly cold. Like we all put on all the clothes we had and we were still freezing, kind of cold.
After a while, I decided to go outside to try to find some cell signal. I wandered around waving my phone in the air like a crazy person, then shouted much louder than was necessary when I finally got a bar of reception. I could only get it if I held the phone up over my head, though, so Lina came out to call with me, and I dialed the number on speaker phone. When the receptionist answered, she proceeded to jump up and down, shouting into the phone. This proved to be so hilarious to both of us that it took several minutes for the poor woman on the other end to understand what we were calling about, and she certainly had no idea what we were laughing about, though by the end of the call I think she had decided that we were so insane that she started laughing too. Maybe you had to be there. I could hardly breathe I was laughing so hard.
20 minutes later, the driver finally pulled up, and he and his passenger thought we were insane too, because we opened the door and started jumping up and down and clapping like 5-year-olds when we saw them. They drove us to dinner, and we chatted with the other passenger, who was an Australian named Robin who was employed by the Sanctuary for brush/fire control. He was friendly, though he clearly thought that we were ridiculous for acting like we were stranded when they didn’t show up at the appropriate time. Yeah, we did a lot to improve the American image on this trip.
We had dinner at the lodge, which was slightly warmer, but not much. We realized that the reason that our chalet and the lodge were so cold was because even though they have roofs, there’s a gap between the roof and walls that let’s ALLLLL the cold air in (you’ll have to look at the pictures to understand). We had yummy dinners, and about 20 million cups of hot tea each. We were feeling fairly toasty by the time we left, though the quote of the trip was Olivia’s “Is that an ice cube?” as we were looking at a potted plant next to the door. Someone had apparently poured out their drink, but it was so cold that the ice cube hadn’t melted. Great.
Our original driver, “America,” was at the lodge when we showed up for dinner, and he had apparently mentioned us to another group of ladies staying at the Sanctuary who worked for the UN in Gabs. They were having a fire and had invited us to join them, so we decided to be friendly and check it out. One of them was named Princess, and they were very friendly, though much older, Batswana who were very interested in us. We chatted for a while, and Robin came also, so he told us a little bit about the southern hemisphere’s constellations and a weird fruit on the tree next to us. It was called monkey oranges, and the Setswana word for it was mohorohowatsi (that’s an entirely phonetic spelling by the way, please don’t take my word for it that that’s right). The entire concept of the Southern Cross was extremely difficult for us to grasp, and took about 15 minutes and three people explaining it for us to grasp. Again, doing a lot of good things for our image.
After 20 or 30 minutes, we decided to leave, and unfortunately we think we kind of offended the ladies because we didn’t want to give them our phone numbers. They were very nice, and said they wanted to invite us to a braai at their house in Gabs, but we’re going to be traveling every weekend between now and when we leave. We also have just become really wary of giving our numbers to people. Oh well, we tried to be social.
We got back to chalet and grudgingly changed into our (freezing cold) pajamas, then put back on all the other clothes we’d had on before, and immediately crawled into bed. Each bed had two pretty thick comforters on it, and despite my anxiety about a spider we had seen earlier (which I tried unsuccessfully to kill -- twice), fell right to sleep.
Left at 9:15, only fifteen minutes after our planned departure time because Lina for some reason hadn’t packed yet. Walked to the west gate to catch a combi to the bus rank. Unfortunately we couldn’t remember which combi we were supposed to take, because we took a cab the last time, but Lina thought it was the Broadhurst 5 (opposite direction from last night). The first one that came had room, amazingly enough, so we hopped in and were there in about 7 minutes. We were super confused, because a) it was so much faster than the last time we went to the bus ranks, and b) we weren’t actually at the bus rank. Julia and Lina haggled with the driver a bit out of frustration, but then we just decided to walk back to the main road. Luckily the next person we asked was more articulate than our driver had been, and explained that we were just up the street from the bus rank. We walked in the indicated direction, and sure enough, we were on the far side (the bus stop is actually split by a highway, and you have to walk across a skybridge to get to the other side). That problem resolved, we quickly found the row for the bus to Serowe, and after a bathroom stop for Olivia and a phone credit buying mission for me, we were off!
Like last weekend, the bus to Serowe was a big tour bus, because it was a longer trip. The seats were fairly comfortable, and luckily the bus wasn’t full, so we ended up spreading out across two rows. We played “I’m going on a picnic” again, but it was harder with four people, and poor Olivia had started to get some indigestion before we left, so the game died out after a while and people went to sleep. Lina and I did a crossword, which proved to be virtually impossible. Then Lina fell asleep, and I worked on my blog (hand-written, because I didn’t bring my computer, oh my!). We stopped after about 2 hours for a bathroom/food stop, and all hell broke loose. Basically vendors just hang out at bus stops waiting for buses to come, then they all rush on at once and compete with one another in the meager space available in the tiny aisle of a bus to sell as much as they can in the 5 minutes that the bus is stopped. Usually this would just be purely entertaining, because I didn’t want to buy anything and they quickly lose interest in me, but unfortunately, Lina wanted a drink. Two of the male vendors were seriously SHOVING one another while they leaned over my seat to push their drinks in Lina’s face. It was incredibly overwhelming.
At the next stop, we faced a similar situation, except all three of them got off to go to the bathroom, and I stayed to watch our stuff. Most of the vendors lost interest in me, except one, who leaned over the row of seats in front of me and proceeded to stare me down for 5 minutes. I kept saying I didn’t want anything, and after a few minutes of this, she replied, “I want you to buy a drink for me.” It took a couple of repetitions before I realized what she meant, at which point I replied, very uncomfortably, that I couldn’t. An older woman who was also selling things and had lingered behind my seat (possibly touching my hair – creepy, but that’s what it felt like) said something in Setswana to her and made a swiping motion. My best guess is that she was telling the girl that foreigners only use credit cards. I was quite alright with her applying that stereotype if it meant that they would leave me alone. Yeah, I’m a horrible person. Not only that, but then the bus started moving forward before Julia, Lina and Olivia had come back, so I sprinted down the aisle to tell the driver to stop. Luckily the ticket girl knew they hadn’t come back, and as soon as she saw me she told me not to worry, they were just moving the bus to a different spot.
We finally made it to Serowe and disembarked, at which point we were immediately rushed by people offering us taxis. We knew that we needed to find the bus to Orapa to get to the Khama Rhino Sanctuary, where we were going to be staying, so we politely declined. We ate lunches that we had brought, made a bathroom stop, then set off to check out the town. We realized that we didn’t know whether or not we could drink the water there (it’s safe in Gabs), so we decided not to risk it and bought water bottles at a grocery store. Our walk about town lasted about another 10 minutes, then we concluded that there really wasn’t all that much to see and we all just kind of wanted to sit and chill, so we walked back to the bus station.
We found a bus to Maun, another city in northern Botswana, that would apparently drop us at the Sanctuary on our way there. This bus was WAAAAAAY more packed than the first one, and we had to spread out to get the available seats scattered all over the bus. I ended up in the back, next to an old woman and man. After a little while, the man started chatting with me – he was some kind of supervisor in the Ministry of Environment and something or rather, and his job was to manage forest conservation. Pretty neat actually. Deforestation isn’t a huge problem in Botswana, because a large portion of the country is desert, but in the northern part of the country near the Okavango Delta, the climate is much more tropical. Botswana doesn’t have a well-developed construction or manufacturing industry, but people will apparently chop down trees to sell across the border in Zimbabwe or Zambia. He told me that one of the Ministry’s programs involves growing saplings, and a few times a year they have a big event in which they distribute the saplings to people around the country to plant. In some ways, I think Botswana may have better ideas about taking care of the environment than we do (although there’s no recycling here, at least not anything significant, and every combi we’ve ever ridden in has reeked of exhaust fumes).
After spending a good 20 to 30 minutes packed like sardines on the bus, we stopped, and the driver called out, “Whites, get off!,” which the whole bus found wildly entertaining. Somehow I managed to squeeze out from all the way in the back, and we found ourselves standing basically in the middle of nowhere. Don’t worry, they hadn’t left us stranded, we were at the sanctuary – it just looked like the middle of nowhere. We went in and found the office where we were supposed to check in. The poor desk clerk unfortunately didn’t speak very good English, so we confused her a great deal, and she was unhappy with us because we hadn’t brought a car. First of all, no one told us we needed a car, and we can’t drive here anyway. We got charged a fee to have a driver and combi at the sanctuary drive us to our chalet and back for dinner, but it wasn’t expensive, so we signed on the dotted line and went our merry way. Our driver was very chatty, and he said that he had lived in Miami and worked at Disneyworld (two facts which confused me a bit) – we found out later that the other employees apparently call him “America.”
We were pleasantly surprised when we got to our chalet – when we had made the reservation, we had chosen the cheaper chalet option, one that was unelectrified and had no bathroom. However, we were charged a cheaper rate than the one that had been quoted on the phone AND our chalet had electricity, a working toilet, an electric kettle, and FOUR beds. We were thrilled. After setting our stuff down, we took a walk outside, because it wasn’t quite dark yet. We saw some really neat, electric blue birds, and wasted a great deal of time stalking them trying to get pictures, which was a ridiculous endeavor in the first place because none of us had a camera nice enough to take decent pictures of them except Lina. We eventually gave up and dragged our table and chairs outside to sit in the dusk and do crosswords together until dinner. We got excited again about trying to take pictures of a Zazu bird (actually called a yellow hornbill, but the Lion King names are so much funner) in a tree really close to us, then felt supremely stupid when it came up to us 20 minutes later while we were sitting and doing puzzles.
We had asked the driver to come back and get us at 6 for dinner. The sun went down, and the temperature started dropping, so we went back inside to wait. And wait and wait and wait. It was pitch black outside, but by 6:30 there was no sign of our driver. He had given us a number to call, because he said that he wouldn’t be the one to pick us up, but someone would come for us. As we pulled out our phones to check on our transportation status, we realized that none of us had cell phone signal. Great. The only food we had left was a bunch of oranges, apples, and fruit rolls from lunch, and some crackers that we had bought to help settle Olivia’s stomach. It was also incredibly cold. Like we all put on all the clothes we had and we were still freezing, kind of cold.
After a while, I decided to go outside to try to find some cell signal. I wandered around waving my phone in the air like a crazy person, then shouted much louder than was necessary when I finally got a bar of reception. I could only get it if I held the phone up over my head, though, so Lina came out to call with me, and I dialed the number on speaker phone. When the receptionist answered, she proceeded to jump up and down, shouting into the phone. This proved to be so hilarious to both of us that it took several minutes for the poor woman on the other end to understand what we were calling about, and she certainly had no idea what we were laughing about, though by the end of the call I think she had decided that we were so insane that she started laughing too. Maybe you had to be there. I could hardly breathe I was laughing so hard.
20 minutes later, the driver finally pulled up, and he and his passenger thought we were insane too, because we opened the door and started jumping up and down and clapping like 5-year-olds when we saw them. They drove us to dinner, and we chatted with the other passenger, who was an Australian named Robin who was employed by the Sanctuary for brush/fire control. He was friendly, though he clearly thought that we were ridiculous for acting like we were stranded when they didn’t show up at the appropriate time. Yeah, we did a lot to improve the American image on this trip.
We had dinner at the lodge, which was slightly warmer, but not much. We realized that the reason that our chalet and the lodge were so cold was because even though they have roofs, there’s a gap between the roof and walls that let’s ALLLLL the cold air in (you’ll have to look at the pictures to understand). We had yummy dinners, and about 20 million cups of hot tea each. We were feeling fairly toasty by the time we left, though the quote of the trip was Olivia’s “Is that an ice cube?” as we were looking at a potted plant next to the door. Someone had apparently poured out their drink, but it was so cold that the ice cube hadn’t melted. Great.
Our original driver, “America,” was at the lodge when we showed up for dinner, and he had apparently mentioned us to another group of ladies staying at the Sanctuary who worked for the UN in Gabs. They were having a fire and had invited us to join them, so we decided to be friendly and check it out. One of them was named Princess, and they were very friendly, though much older, Batswana who were very interested in us. We chatted for a while, and Robin came also, so he told us a little bit about the southern hemisphere’s constellations and a weird fruit on the tree next to us. It was called monkey oranges, and the Setswana word for it was mohorohowatsi (that’s an entirely phonetic spelling by the way, please don’t take my word for it that that’s right). The entire concept of the Southern Cross was extremely difficult for us to grasp, and took about 15 minutes and three people explaining it for us to grasp. Again, doing a lot of good things for our image.
After 20 or 30 minutes, we decided to leave, and unfortunately we think we kind of offended the ladies because we didn’t want to give them our phone numbers. They were very nice, and said they wanted to invite us to a braai at their house in Gabs, but we’re going to be traveling every weekend between now and when we leave. We also have just become really wary of giving our numbers to people. Oh well, we tried to be social.
We got back to chalet and grudgingly changed into our (freezing cold) pajamas, then put back on all the other clothes we’d had on before, and immediately crawled into bed. Each bed had two pretty thick comforters on it, and despite my anxiety about a spider we had seen earlier (which I tried unsuccessfully to kill -- twice), fell right to sleep.
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