The second day at Tau

We got a wakeup call at 6:30 am today for our second early morning game drive. The first thing we saw were these little vervet monkeys sitting right on our roof! They were pretty cute. During our gram drive, we spent most of the first part of the morning chasing after the mother lion and her 5 cubs, but it was so cold she probably had them hidden away. I was glad I brought all these warm clothes – it was pretty windy and chilly. Some of the other people didn’t realize how cold it was going to be (which I think is a little silly) and didn’t bring much warm stuff.

The first things we saw were more elephants – two more bulls traveling together. Hein also took us on a short walk to see to some elephant bones. This female elephant was one of the lucky ones and actually died of old age. They live about as long as humans do – up to 70 years. Even years after they die, the other elephants will drag their bones around and spread them around. Hein said this was a sign of respect. A few of us took pictures holding Hein’s gun next to the elephant bones – which was a little silly. Being medical people, we also spent some time trying to figure out exactly which bones were which - there were maybe 5 large pieces strewn about. The skull was easily identified of course (it has a huge nasal cavity!), but the rest of the pieces were a little tougher. We thought we identifed the hip bone and maybe a femur, but we were just guessing. Hein thought we were funny. :)

Then Hein took us to a fenced enclosure to see these 3 wild dogs that the park was releasing in a few weeks. They looked like they could be pretty savage animals – I’m glad they were fenced in. There’s already one pack of wild dogs in the reserve, and I think Hein said they were hoping that another pack would form. Hein said that the existing pack once took down a rhino! And they start eating it before it dies, and he said it was pretty brutal – it was several hours before the rhino finally died.

We finally also saw some zebras – there were 3 or 4 of them right next to the trail! They weren’t too scared of us – we stopped right next to them to take pictures and they didn’t run away. Kiona really liked these, and I thought they were cute, but nothing that great. We had a break where we had coffee and tea, and Kiona did some acrobatics. :) And finally, we saw some white rhinos in a pack. They were a little away from the dirt road, so Hein took us off-roading (which he’s not supposed to do) to get a little closer. They were pretty skittish and ran away a little bit when we drove up, but we still got pretty close to them. We saw a few other deer-like things, I think kudu, but they were mostly running away from us and we didn’t get a good look.

When we got back, breakfast ready! It was a huge buffet of eggs, pancakes, bacon and sausages, fruit, cereals, sautéed mushrooms, breads, breakfast pastries, and I’m sure a ton of other things I can’t remember. It was great, especially the sausages. I really can’t say enough good things about the sausages here. It was also somebody’s birthday and towards the end of breakfast, the entire staff came in dancing and singing, bearing a birthday cake! It was a pretty impressive scene and must have lasted close to 20 minutes. One song would end, and they would start another one. It’s amazing how well every single person can sing, and even harmonize.

Then it was time to leave… Goodbye Tau!

It was a super busy weekend already, but it was Steve’s last weekend in Botswana (although he will be coming back in six weeks) so Michael organized a Braai (barbecue) at ICC flats (where we live) and had Steve and Barry over. None of us were hungry, but we had a huge amount of meat again. And Steve made bananas foster, served with ice cream for dessert. He also made a little speech saying how well we were all doing, and how well we had adjusted to everything – I bet he gives a similar speech every time he leaves. :)

It’s actually very nice outdoors – our flats have a large outdoor area, which includes a pool, a large barbecue pit, along with smaller grills, tables and chairs, and shaded wood benches for sunbathers to lie on. It’s also very nicely landscaped, with all sorts of different flowers, plants and trees around. I think it takes quite a bit of water to keep it up, which is a commodity here in Botswana. It actually rained for about 5 minutes! I bet Motswanas were overjoyed for a split second. Apparently last summer they got a ridiculously low amount of rain, something like 3 cm. And they need the rain.

A traditional Botswana dinner

We were hoping to go to Mokogolodi game park today for a game ride, but it turns out they were all booked. So it was a pretty chill day, which was nice for a change. And to my surprise after the night before, I actually didn’t feel too sick when I woke up. I thought I was going to get a raging cold, with maybe fever and chills, maybe GI symptoms like other people had. But it was mostly a super sore throat with congestion. I stayed in my PJ’s until noon, and then threw a Frisbee around with Lisa and Kristy for about half an hour. Then I took a 2-second dip in the pool at the apartment complex – it was freezing! I guess the nights are still pretty cold here and the pool doesn’t have enough sun or time during the day to gather any warmth. But laying out in the sun felt pretty good. I also managed to set up my blog for the first time, and took a nice nap.

For dinner, we went to the house that Dr. Gluckman and Dr. Nathans are staying at (Malek house) where they cooked us a traditional Botswana dinner. It was soooo good. We had chakalaka, which is actually a vegetable stew dish with all sorts of different Botswana spices. You can buy it in a can, and it's still really really good - you can dress it up some, add some stuff to it, and it can also come with beans added, or other things, and it’s just really good. We also had this thing called sampa, which is a starchy corn dish that you eat with all the flavorful stuff. Also on the menu were beets, salad, veggie skewers and of course, the barbecued meat. The meats here are amazing! I especially like the sausage here, but they also made barbecued chicken wings with a special sauce, and beef skewers. They just have so many different types of meat in Botswana - beef, chicken, fish, ox, goat, livers, and other types that I can't really think of right now, and they cook them all so many different ways! I wish I knew what spices went into these dishes so that I could replicate them when I get back to the states.

So at the dinner, I ate until I was stuffed! Man, I thought I would be eating less here in Botswana, which turned out to be true the first few days, but now I'm eating even more! It's a problem. But not one I'm super upset about. The thing is that lunches here are so cheap and huge and chock full of meat. You can go to the cafeteria and buy this huge lunch for the equivalent of $3 or you can go outside to these ladies with pots of food on tables and buy similar food to what's in the cafeteria for the equivalent of $2. And it's all meat laden (although you can just get vegetarian if you want - and the veggies and salad are amazingly good too), and huge portions. I always eat it all too, it's just soooo good. I usually eat such a huge lunch that I'm not very hungry for dinner, but that's good - I don't need to be eating a big dinner when I have such a large lunch.

Pelagano art colony in Gabane

Today was a huge adventure! Lisa and I wanted to go to Gabane to see the art colony there and maybe buy some stuff, but we didn’t really know how to get there. We got the general directions that we had to take a combi to the combi station, walk over to the bus station and take a bus to Gabane. The combis are an experience in themselves! It’s Gaborone’s mass transit system, and it’s really just a bunch of rickety private vans that go on specific routes. They pack in as many people as humanly possible into each van, usually about 15 people, with people almost sitting on each other or crouching in the van. But they’re very cheap, only P2.5, which is like 40 cents. There are certain stops, but you can really flag them down anywhere, and you have to know where you want to get off because you shout it to the driver.

So first we get on the combi going the wrong way. We have to get off, cross the street, and flag down a combi going the opposite direction. Oh no, another 40 cents. :) Good thing for us, the combi stop is the last stop – and there are rows and rows of combis. It’s a pretty amazing site. Good thing we met this guy Reuben on the combi because he then took us to the bus/train station, which is across this big foot bridge – we would never have found it on our own. Or at least, it would have taken us a lot longer! And there are about 200 lines of different buses waiting to go to different towns and cities. They all say the name of where they’re going on the front of the bus, which is helpful, but he led us to the right one for Gabane. And these buses aren’t really buses – they’re really just combis, maybe a little bigger. And we squish in, and once it’s full, we were off for Gabane! Again, we rode it to the last stop, which took about 30 minutes, but we definitely did not see any art colony. So we had to ask around – good thing there are at least a few people who speak English and almost everyone is very willing to help out lost tourists. A guy basically told us that we had to walk 2 or 2.5 km down this dirt road to get to the art colony at the base of a hill, and that it was called Pelagano.

It’s not as desolate as it sounded though – there were cars that went down the road from time to time and people walking down it along with us. Every once in a while a car would honk at us and look, I think expecting us to hitch hike. We almost did it a few times, but it wasn’t that far to walk. It was pretty interesting too - there are domestic animals (donkeys, sheep, cows, etc) wandering everywhere, and we got to see what type of places normal Motswana (that's the term for someone from Botswana) live in. Most of them live in these cement square rooms, with an outhouse in the back. Some of them have thatched roofs. But they look tiny, and I'm sure a whole family lives in there, with a small stove and everything all squished in. The picture I took was of a really nice one with a store attached to it at the back. These guys kept coming up to us and chatting us up too. Most asked if we were single and things like that, but there was one guy who kept asking us if we wanted to buy his property! Pretty funny.

When we got to Pelagano, it seemed pretty deserted. But we wandered into one of the open doors, and met this artist Elijah. He was surrounded by all these large, nearly-life-size sculptures, and was working on this huge clay scorpion on the floor. We found out that most of those huge sculptures were made of fiberglass from molds that he designed – he also designed the outside entrance to the art colony. He seemed really talented! He had beautiful works in clay, fiberglass, metal, and watercolor, and we probably only saw a small portion of his work! And apparently he had a twin brother who did a lot of art as well – I think mostly glass-blowing. But we didn’t meet him. Anyways, after talking to him a bit, we wandered around. It was pretty empty, but he told us that it was much busier on the weekdays, when the colony was more open. It didn’t really matter though, people would see us walking by and invite us in. And the glass-blowing and pottery shops were also both open. It was very impressive stuff – if I didn’t think some of it would break on the trip back, I might get some of it. And it was not nearly as expensive as in the states, although it was probably expensive by Botswana standards. We ended up buying some stuff from this boy artist that looked like he was 13! He did some amazing stuff though – he painted on cloth, and he had wall hangings, linens, etc. The wall hangings were the most beautiful, but I already have so many that I can’t even hang up. Lisa bought a wall hanging and I bought these cloth placemats. Still super cool.

The first day at the Princess Marina Hospital

This was the first day of work! I started my first day on call on the pink male ward (there are female/male pink/green/blue wards). Kiona and Kristy are on blue female. Philip is on pink female, so we are on call the same nights. The good thing about being on call Monday is that the rest of the week is free! However, I only got 4 hours of sleep the night before. So the morning was rough. Every day starts out with intake at 7:30 am, where we go over the previous day’s admissions. Monday intake is super long because it includes all the weekend’s admissions in addition to Friday’s admissions. Then I rounded with Boipelo Lecoge (an MO, or medical officer, which means she’s finished internship at some point and may be working or in transition to residency) and Dr. Stefanski, a specialist (what they call attendings) from Australia. The residents act as specialists here, so Sarah would have been my specialist, but she left yesterday for 2 weeks to go back to the US to take boards. So Dr. Stefanski is covering for her. Mike Chattergoon is also a resident from HUP who is a specialist here, and he is on blue male, so he can be a resource for me when I’m looking for help with procedures or other things.

It wasn’t too crazy of a day, but I ended up admitting 3 patients all by myself – Dr. Lecoge did all the ongoing patient work while I was going to lecture and admitting. She had to go home at 4pm and came back at 9pm because she was on call. Mike left early because he got sick, so I didn’t really have him to help me out either. All the other students are on the female side so I don't really have their support either. Meanwhile this other MO Suna was the covering MO for both the female and male wards and she was awful. She kept disappearing for an hour at a time and she didn’t really want to help me out until Dr. Stefanski made a point to ask her to help me out. All in all it was an okay day. It will definitely take a while for us to adjust to this new hospital and figure out how everything gets done.

Going to Gabs with the Senegalese President

I didn’t sleep too well in Jo’burg – must have been the time change. I think I slept only about 2 hours in all. Maybe 3. I definitely kept waking up every hour because I think I was worried that I would miss the pickup to the airport the next morning. The owner of the transport company was the one that came and picked me up! We had a pretty interesting conversation about Johannesburg, and he showed me the Chinatown on the way to the airport.

At the U.S. airport, they had told me to get to the Jo’burg airport 3 hours ahead of time. I was doubtful, but I got there about 2.5 hours ahead of time… nobody was even at the South African Airways desk! They didn’t even open until about 6:30am. And it was a little annoying – I had to wait in line to weigh my bag, and they gave me a little slip of paper with the weight. Then I had to wait in line for the agent to give me a boarding pass. But apparently they can’t do everything, and since my ticket had a different date on it, I had to go to a ticketing agent who put a sticker on my old ticket saying I was traveling on a different date. Then I went back to the first agent to get my boarding pass. I guess it was good that I had a few hours to kill.

Something interesting that happened was that I was trying to figure out how to get to my gate, and the signs weren’t very clear, so I asked a random security guard how to get there. He says “come with me” and I follow him. He took me through all the security checkpoints, bypassing the lines that the normal people had to wait in. And of course, as we were walking to my gate, he was walking with me, and I was sort of trying to figure out how to get rid of him, and he asks for my phone number and to be taken to the United States. I eventually got rid of him by asking for his phone number and saying that I didn’t have a phone number yet. It was sorta funny. :)

My flight was the first flight of the day out of Jo’burg to Gaborone, so I wasn’t too worried about delays and things like that. We were waiting, and nothing was happening when we were supposed to be boarding, and then they kept delaying the take-off of the flight 15 minutes. In the end, we were delayed about 45 minutes, which I thought was pretty odd, given that this was the first flight of the day. It turns out the president of Senegal was on the plane! We didn’t know though, until the end of the 1-hour plane ride. They just called them VIPs. And they made a few people move so that the VIPs could move up front and disembark first. But they did not make me move, so one of the people in the delegation sat right next to me. He knew no English and I knew none of his language (Senegalese). The only thing we had in common at all was French, and my French is really really bad since it’s been about 12 years since I learned it. But he got it across to me that the guy sitting at the very front was very important. So we start to land, and I see one military guy standing alone in a field – I thought that was pretty odd. Then I see a row of 5 cannons (which apparently fired as we were landing), and military people! Then the guy sitting next to me says that all of this is for the guy at the front, and we roll to stop in front of a red carpet that leads to a raised platform. And there are people standing with umbrellas on the platform, and all these soldiers and a military band in front of it. Behind the platform are all these people watching, and press I believe. The guy gets off with all these cheers and the music going, and they proceed to the raised platform to meet the Botswana president, and the Botswana military puts on a whole show with music and marching and everything! It lasted for about 15 minutes, and we watched on the plane. I took a few pictures of it, but had to stop when the flight attendants told me I wasn’t supposed to. :) Dr. Gluckman picked me up, along with the resident, Sarah.

By the time I got to the ICC flats, I was super tired. I think I’d really only slept 4 or 5 hours in 2 days. I had to stay awake for about 2 more hours for this orientation meeting Dr. Gluckman gave us, but once that was over, I took a 3 hour nap while most of the others went hiking up some hill where you have a good view of all of Gaborone, and ended up going to one of the three malls, Game City, where they saw baboons running around!

I eventually woke up, and everyone was still gone. I went to local grocery store, Choppies, which is about a 10-15 minute walk on dirt sidewalks, and bought a few things, came back, and Lisa and Phil were making a yummy vegetarian dinner. Which reminds me, I had bought some beef jerky at the Jo’burg airport – it was so good! And I hung out for a bit after dinner with Lisa, Phil, Josh, and Mike. Tim was there for a bit too but he was leaving the next day. Then I sort of got ready for work as best as I could and went to bed. I slept pretty badly though. I went to bed at 10pm, woke up at 12am, and couldn’t sleep again until 4am. So I didn’t start off my week so well, but I guess I have to expect some of that jet lag.

Getting to Jo'burg

Well, I was supposed have a short flight on United from JFK airport in NYC to Dulles airport (IAD) in DC on Thursday August 9^th, 2007, then a longer flight on South African Airways from DC to Johannesburg (Jo’burg), that took me into the afternoon of August 10^th, 2007, and then finally a short flight on South African Express from Jo’burg to Gaborone (Gabs) in the late afternoon of August 10^th, 2007, which was a Friday. Due to weather in DC, we sat on the tarmac in the plane at JFK for several hours, and then they finally let us off to get some food back at the terminals. I was only supposed to have a 1.5 hour layover in Dulles so I completely missed my 5:20pm flight to Jo’burg, and since I was sitting on the plane on the tarmac, and they wouldn’t let us off earlier, I also completely missed a 5:20pm flight from JFK to Jo’burg. I thought, well, I can do the same exact route a day later, since I had arranged to be in Gabs several days early to prepare for working. However, the South African Airways reservation agent told me the flight from DC to Jo’burg the next day (Friday) was completely full! And there was only one spot left on the Friday flight from JFK to Jo’burg! So I really had no choice to but to take that spot. It turns out later that another student was on that DC to Jo’burg flight on Friday, and said there was plenty of room! So maybe there were a lot of no-shows? I dunno. Anyways, another problem was that the flight from JFK to Jo’burg got there several hours later than the flight from DC to Jo’burg, even though they both left at 5:20pm. This was partly due to the fact that the flight from JFK to Jo’burg had a short stopover at Dakar. That meant that I would miss the last flight from Jo’burg to Gabs on Saturday late afternoon and would have to stay the night in Jo’burg at my own expense to catch the first flight out Sunday morning.

So on Thursday night, I waited about 1 hour for our luggage to get sorted and finally come out of the plane (most others were still waiting for the plane to get off the ground to DC, which probably was not going to happen for at least 8-9 hours). Then I waited about another hour for Super Shuttle to pick me up and take me back to Carol’s house ($50 round trip!). I didn’t get back until after 8pm, and emailed all the appropriate people saying I was going to be late, and started looking for places to stay in Jo’burg Saturday night. I was so tired Thursday night, I was falling asleep at the computer around midnight, so I emailed a few lodges, and decided to finish it up Friday morning. The super shuttle wasn’t picking me up until around noon. The next morning, I made arrangements at a place that was going to cost R550 (Rand, or ZAR – at the time, ~R7 = $1) that had 1 free airport transfer, and I think would have cost another R200 or something for the 2^nd airport transfer. But then Kiona and Kristy, who I had emailed about my situation, emailed me about the Thulani Lodge in Melville, Jo’burg, where they stayed Thursday night, and it was R450 per night. So I switched to the Thulani Lodge. Little did I know that the airport transfers were not covered – they were R300 each! So I ended up having to pay a total of R1050 (about $150) for the overnight stay. Man was I pissed!!! I ended up having to fork over close to $200 for the delay. :( I guess that’s just international travel…

The flight from NYC to Jo’burg was long. There was a stopover halfway in between the 18-hour flight in Dakar. We didn’t get to get off the plane though. There was this super bitchy white South African woman (Afrikan?) who was supposed to sit next to me. I had the aisle seat in the middle row of 4 seats, and she had the seat to the inside of me. She seemed really nice at first… she was talking to the young undergrad on her other side and giving her all this advice about traveling in South Africa and Johannesburg and everything. She even gave out her phone number in case people needed help. She was basically super nice to everyone but the attendants and the black natives. Before the plane took off, she switched seats to an aisle seat and talked to this other girl from America for a long time. She practically became the tour guide of the plane – people started asking her all sorts of questions, and she was super super helpful. Very nice. But she sorta had attitude. She stowed her small carry-on under her seat instead of in front of her, taking up someone else’s space, but the African couple behind her didn’t have it in them to complain, I don’t think. The first incident that really got me disliking her was after we had a meal (i had like 3 meals on my flight! - 3 big ones!) and they took most of her tray, but for some reason she had the silverware left, so she threw it in a plastic bag with all this other trash (candy wrappers, napkins, plastic cups) and threw it on the floor where her seat was - she was sort of like that in general. Her trash was everywhere, like she expected to be cleaned up after. So her trash is on the floor and somehow makes its way out to the aisle, and a flight attendant comes by and picks it up, and says, whose is this (she had gone to the bathroom)? And the girl sitting next to her says it's the bitch's, who then comes back from the bathroom. The flight attendant says miss, I just want to let you know that the silverware is stainless steel, and we don't throw that away – we reuse it. And immediately she got very aggressive and angry for not a very good reason. I couldn't hear exactly what she said, but it was a very angry tone, and the flight attendant sort of got angry too and he said, well, it's stainless steel, and we don't throw that out, and she got more mad, and said something back, and at that point, the flight attendant, said whatever or nevermind or something like that and walked away. The bitch turns to the girl next to her and says something like "can you believe that man?" If I was that girl sitting next to her, I’d either say something rude back, or just try to ignore her from that point, even if she was very helpful earlier with travel tips.

That wasn’t it with the bitchy girl either… so in Dakar, they tell everyone to go back to their original seats because it's completely a full flight. The girl decides not to, and to wait it out and see if somebody comes - which I sorta understand, i've done that too. She actually asked the flight attendant (a new one since they switched crews) if anyone was sitting there, and the flight attendant looked at her seating chart and said she didn’t think so, but there might be people flying stand-by that were going to have the seat, and said the girl might have to move if that happened. The girl basically said she wasn’t moving unless someone showed up, and the flight attendant rolled her eyes and basically let it go. But the girl did say she would move if someone showed up. People start boarding, and of course, this tall, big black guy shows up and says that it’s his seat. The flight attendant comes over and says she has to move, and the girls starts arguing! Can you believe her nerve??? She basically argued to the point where the flight attendant agreed to let her ask the other guy personally if he would mind trading seats with her (and he's watching this entire exchange by the way), so she does, and he says it's okay with him - but i'm sure he's just too nice to say no. He's also this big guy and he’s in this inside seat now. Plus, he's next to me, and he's so big (not fat, just big and skinny) that he's half into my space so that gave me a legitimate reason to hate her. :) That’s about it, but she really got my dander up. :)

The flight itself was pretty amazing though. The flight attendants were sooo courteous and there were so many amenities. Of course each person got a little bag of goodies (socks, toothbrush, night mask, etc), a pillow and blanket, and their own personal television. This television let you watch from a selection of like 16 movies, watch a number of TV shows, play video games (pretty hokey ones), and some other things. I ended up watching like 4 or 5 movies. One was Paris Je t’aime which was like 9 little vignettes about couples of all sorts in different quarters of Paris. It was an alternative movie, and sorta interesting at first, but it got tiring very quickly. There was no overall plot, but there were a ton of pretty famous people in it! Then I saw Blades of Glory with Will Farrell in it – it was just ok. I didn’t really even crack a smile until near the end, but it definitely had a few scenes at the end where I was totally laughing out loud. Then I saw Lonely Hearts with John Travolta, James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano) and Salma Hayek, which was super good. It was about the couple that became serial killers. Very good. Then finally I saw Jane, which is about a real-life flirtation that Jane Austen had with some guy. They took a lot of liberties with the story, of course.

Anyways, so by the time I got to my lodge in Melville, Johannesburg, I was exhausted. I set up my computer and rested a bit, and begrudged my overnight bill of over $200. But I eventually explored a bit – it’s supposed to be a pretty Bohemian and safe area. I ate around the corner and had a huge steak at Melville grille for like R105 (like $15!). I didn’t realize it was going to be sooo huge! I ate all I could and it was like only a third of it – it was a yummy T-bone. I ended up giving the rest of it to the maid of the lodge. It actually looked like a pretty hopping area… girls were really dressed up in makeup, jewelry, high heels, etc and there I was in my jeans and t-shirt. Oh well. The room was pretty cool at Thulani Lodge too, too bad I didn’t get to enjoy it too much. The keys were these old-fashioned metal ones, but the outside door to the lodge had a real lock, so I wasn’t too worried. :) I didn’t stay up too late because I had to get up at like 4:30 the next morning to get picked up for the airport. My flight the next day was scheduled for 8:15am.