Wrapping Up. (Christmas pun intended.)

Ok so now its time to return to my epic, incredibly whirlwind East African trip and talk about Tanzania.

After spending seven hours in the Nairobi airport reading and falling asleep on the chairs with my bags’ straps wound tightly around my arms, I arrived in Dar es Salaam. I was momentarily held up at customs when I was informed that I needed $100 USD for my entrance visa. However, after getting escorted out of the airport doors to withdraw Tanzanian shillings at the ATM right outside the arrivals gate, then getting said shillings converted to American dollars, I was free to go. (Note to self and all other world travelers: carry at least 100 USD wherever you go. I had to pay entrance visas and fare everywhere and prices are often better when you pay in dollars.)

It was dinner time so after dropping off my bags, we went off to have some barbecued meat for dinner. Mmmm, even now as I think of those delicious shish kebabs, my stomach grumbles, though it’s definitely 8:00 AM right now and I just had breakfast. After dinner, we went back to my friend’s place, opened a bottle of wine and talked for hours. I’m going to digress to say that my absolute favorite aspect of this year has been the people I’ve gotten to meet. Coming to Durban has opened me up to whole new world of people. There are those who live in South Africa and who I will definitely come visit again one day. Then there are those whose paths have crossed mine whether through medicine, HIV care or just service in resource-poor areas. The friend I visited in Tanzania is exactly one of those friendships. We met in September, when all the Africa-based international fellows came to Durban for an international HIV/AIDS conference and we hit it off immediately. I promised to visit her and I’m infinitely glad I did; one more link in an already incredibly strong friendship. It’s a friendship I would have never made had I not come here. It’s also one that will undoubtedly remain strong even after I go home, given that she lives a mere few hours away in Boston. Even as I write this, I get that warm happy feeling you get when you realize your world has been made a happier place because of a new truly amazing friend.

Aaanways, less gush, more story-telling. On Thursday, we made our way to the ferry landing near my friend’s flat super circa 7 AM to catch the first ferry to Zanzibar! A little bit about Zanzibar. Although it technically belongs to the Republic of Tanzania, it is a semi-autonomous group of islands, the largest of which is referred to as Zanzibar itself. An interesting thing about Zanzibar (to me at least) is that while it is a hot island with absolutely gorgeous beaches, it is 99.9% Muslim and thus one needs to dress conservatively while there. It was my first time in a predominantly Muslim region and I have to say, I was super impressed with how the women manage to show only their faces despite the blistering heat.

It was a gorgeous, gorgeous island. We took a 2 hour ferry ride where we managed to sneak into first class. (I’m convinced this was simply because a) my friend had friends who had legitimately bought first class tickets and waved us in and b)we are light-skinned.) I felt momentarily guilty, but as the AC kicked in, I simply uttered a prayer of thanksgiving and settled in happily. Upon arriving at Stonetown, the town where the ferries port, we immediately went to go get coffee and some breakfast at Zanzibar Coffeehouse. Stonetown is a bustling little town with large open-air markets, many delicious coffeehouses and lots of charm. The cobbled stoned streets are narrow and windy, with merchants vying for your attention at every turn. After breakfast, off we went in search of a dala dala with the number “101” on it. Dala dalas are just the name of the Zanzibarian version of the public transport minibuses. They are more open aired than Kenyan and South African minibuses and thank God, for the hot weather combined with lots of conservative clothing makes for very…colorful sights and smells.

After about two hours of starting and stopping, we finally made it to the northern beach town of Kendwa. Otherwise known as heaven of earth. Literally. Pristine white sandy beaches, Eden-like gardens and palm trees and an ocean sporting at least six different shades of blue by my count. Our cabin, complete with its own hammock was literally in the sand itself. We hurriedly changed into bikinis and ran to the water. Thus commenced our 24 hours of complete and utter beach relaxation. The lodge provided these adorable huts with mattresses that one could commandeer for the day. We alternated between lying out on beach chairs made of twine, then giving our skin a break under the huts. Whenever the heat would get to be too much, we’d go for a dip in the crystal clear waters.

The ocean was like a pool with only the slightest ripple every now and then; it was so calm in fact, that I started doing some yoga poses inthe water. (I’m crazy I know, but I’d missed two sessions of my beloved Bikram class for this trip.) The trips to the water and to the bar for some ice-cold Kilimanjaro beer were the only times I moved from my lounge chair that day. A good female friend, my Kindle when said friend was napping and a cold drink…those were my only companions for those 24 hours and I could not have asked for more.

The next day we went back to Stonetown for some sightseeing and food market eating. The food market held every Friday night is huge and slightly overwhelming; there are rows and rows of every type of food on sticks: meat, chicken, shrimp, fish, vegetables, you name it, they’d stuck it on a stick and grilled it. I discovered that Zanzibarian pizza is delicious and that my new favorite drink in the whole word is called a “Dawa.” It’s the Tanzanian national liquor konyagi mixed with lime and honey. For the Colombian readers out there (read: my family), it tasted like spiked aguapanela con limon. Mm, mm good. That night, my friend and I drank Dawas as we watched the sun set from one rooftop hotel bar, then drank another pair at a bar that extended right into the beach. I dug my feet into the sand to protect them from the mosquitoes and savored my drink.

The next morning, we went on a dolphin excursion. Now, this may sound like one of those things you can do at Sea World or on some cruise destination, where you pay 500 dollars or something ridiculous to jump in a pool and pet a dolphin for 20 minutes. What we did was not that. Not that at all. We were picked up outside our hostel and drove an hour and a half outside Stonetown to a beach known for its school of dolphins. Our guide gave us flippers and snorkeling gear, and we walked out a long sand bank, barely covered in water to a small dhow-like boat. After a 10-minute ride, our guide suddenly sat up straight, stared at the water, then sharply commanded us to dive in. “What? Where?” was my initial thought before he nearly pushed me out. That was how the next hour proceeded. We’d ride around for a few minutes until someone would see a school of dolphins, then my friend and I would literally just jump out of the boat and into the water. Sometimes I’d manage to get my fins on, sometimes I’d just jump. It was surreal. The dolphins were so much bigger than I expected and almost always in pairs, at least. And they were oh, so close! It was exhilarating and…I must admit…slightly frightening. They’re not violent, but man if one of them sorta swam into me by accident…I’d definitely lose that battle. I guess that’s silly because a sleek, fast dolphin wouldn’t just accidentally run into a slowly, splashing around human. In any case, it was an incredible life experience. I mentally smacked myself several times when I thought about my waterproof camera sitting uselessly back in my closet in Durban. “Oh well,” I thought to myself, “I guess I just have to do this again one day.”

That night, we went back to Dar. After a quick nap, we were off to a big party that’s thrown once a month at a bar on the beach in a suburb of Dar called Mediterraneo. It was a crazy dance party, and the perfect end to a crazy, whirlwind 10 days in Kenya and Tanzania. The next day, I said goodbye to my friend and flew back “home” to Durban, where my surrogate mother/best friend Lee picked me up from the airport. I use quotes because Durban will never be home in the way that the United States is. That being said, the more I travel, the more I realize that for me, “home” is just a concept to describe where my heart feels at ease. Funny isn’t it? How you start realizing the truth in old adages as you get older? Growing up, I lived in Florida and I will always feel at home there. But nowadays, my family spends part of the year in Boston so that’s home too. Stepping on Colombian ground and seeing my extended family has ALWAYS felt like “going home.” And then there’s my beloved New York... I’m already picturing my homecoming in May and jumping into a certain man’s arms. Maybe that’s why it’s always so hard to decide on an answer when people ask me, “Where’s home?” “I don’t know,” I should say, “I have to check to see where my people are right now.”

Speaking of my people, tomorrow my parents and little sister land in Durban. I am busy making them a poster that will read, “Welcome home.” It’s an old Montoya-Fontalvo tradition to make posters to welcome whomever’s been away from home. And since they’ll be here with me for Christmas and New Year’s, here is where home will be.

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Merry Christmas, my dear readers, and Happy New Year! I will be back to the blogging world in 2011.

A Lesson Learned.

A note about this post: I wrote it when I was very sad. In the spirit of authenticity, I’ve decided not to change anything but spelling errors. But please don’t worry about me. This is what I signed up for, I knew this experience would make my heart hurt in many ways. And trust me. Despite the fact that, as many of you know, I’m an easy crier, I’m actually stronger than I look and I’m getting stronger by the day.

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I know I haven’t yet written about Tanzania, but I just got back from the wards and there is a torrent of emotions coursing through me that I really don’t want to vent as tears right now, given that I’m at work. I’m choosing instead to try to find release through words, through a blank page, even if it is electronic. After all, this is part of the reason I came here, right? To learn how to control the million and one difficult emotions children in pain elicit in me? Or at least how to transform them into something productive? Ok so here goes.

Let me start with some background. Contrary to what this blog may make it seem like, I don’t just spend my time cavorting around Durban and Africa, meeting people, throwing dinner parties and finding my inner yogi. I do work in an office, much like many of you. It’s just that my office work is so…flavorless most of the time that I choose not to spend time talking about it. I mean there’s only so much you can say about reviewing journal articles, sifting through musty old patient charts and filling out excel spreadsheets. As I mentioned once before, I’ve discovered I’m not really meant to spend my future in an office conducting research, so I have nearly zero motivation to write about my office work in this blog.

Given the near claustrophobia I sometimes feel in the office, I decided a few weeks back to spend some time daily in the pediatric ward of the hospital. Some days I listen to the infectious disease doctors round on their patients (“round” is just medical lingo which means go around discussing their patients). Sometimes, I watch one of the doctors perform whatever procedures her patients need that day, whether it’s a blood draw or spinal tap to sample the fluid bathing the spinal cord (or cerebrospinal fluid). But most of the time, I spend an hour or so just playing with the children. Why is this? Well the reasons are twofold. First, I STILL don’t have formal permission to perform procedures on patients. (I don’t even want to go into how frustrating this has been, waiting for the bureaucratic process to play out in Johannesburg.) So I can only shadow, just like I used to do back in my premed and early medical school years. Funny enough, where before I used to die of boredom shadowing, my hands aching to grab the needles or talk to the patients myself, now it is a breath of fresh air. I found this out about a week ago, when two hours flew by and all I’d done was watch this amazing physician draw blood from some of the most difficult to stick patients ever: bony, dehydrated children with nearly empty veins.

Anyways so that’s the first reason I spend most of my time just playing with the children. The doctor I shadow has told me she’ll let me draw blood, do biopsies and even perform spinal taps…as soon as my HPCSA registration comes through. In the meantime, I watch and play. The second reason I spend so much time just playing is because I’ve never seen children so in need of human attention and direct physical affection. I’ve volunteered in remote, rural underserved areas of Latin America before where children begged for attention as well, but at least in those places, they weren’t slowly dying of AIDS. Here the children are plagued by some of the most severe forms of disease I’ve ever seen, not to mention some terrible environmental tortures (swarms of mosquitoes descend on the sleeping children at night…nearly every child in the ward looks like he or she has chicken pox or measles but it’s all mosquito bites). For some reason, I can handle all that. It’s tragic, it’s devastating and quite frankly it’s unforgivable to have children dying of AIDS in this day and age, when on other side of the world, in America, we’ve managed to essentially eradicate pediatric HIV by aggressively treating pregnant women and newborns. So the pediatric death rate here due to malnutrition, tuberculosis and HIV is horrific and painful. Yet, I can emotionally take it in stride. But the problem I’m facing is that these children face one last barrier to well-being: some of them are also dying of emotional starvation.

I will tell you all the story of the one child who prompted me to write today and that’s all I think I can handle at the moment. As I mentioned, I’ve gone to the wards to play with the children several times in the past few weeks. While there, I met a little boy (I will call him Siyabonga, which means “We are thankful” in Zulu. That is not his name of course, to protect his privacy, but it’s one of my favorite Zulu names and fits him perfectly.) Siyabonga is a sweet four year old with a gentle disposition and severe medical problems; he is currently on treatment for disseminated tuberculosis, which means TB has infected various parts and organs of his body. His belly looks like that of a lifelong alcoholic with cirrhosis; it is painfully distended with fluid, a condition we call “ascites” and which in his case is due to the TB. (A side note for the medically inclined: This child actually had TB-related anasarca, or full-body fluid swelling, but with treatment, this has been reduced to just plain ascites.). Siyabonga is also HIV-positive but has not been started on treatment. According to the chart, anti-retroviral treatment is pending resolution of his “social problems.” In a word, his medical story is painfully typical of so many of the children admitted to this hospital. Sick, with advanced disease, yet not necessarily on all the medications he or she needs because of social problems or barriers.

So why am I writing about him? Well his medical story might be typical, but what struck me most about him was his personality, which somehow manages to shine through the encephalopathy (or brain damage) induced by four years of untreated HIV. Siyabonga is one of the most generous little patients I’ve met here. Many of the children are understandably a bit territorial with whatever “toy” they’re playing with. It’s not hard to understand that if you don’t have much, you’ll cling to what you do have. But when I first got to the ward with a toy I’d bought in the store, Siyabonga impressed me by always being willing to share. If I rolled the ball to him, he’d look at me questioningly and gesture to another child, as if asking me whether he should roll the ball to him too. When I’d nod encouragingly, Siyabonga would immediately relinquish the ball to the other child and patiently wait for it to return to him. (Compare this to some of the other children who would sometimes come at Siyabonga with bared teeth if he took too long to roll the ball to them.)

This is the kind of little boy we’re talking about, the little boy I met on one of my first play trips down there. Today, I saw him again. But today, he reminded me of the second reason why I am glad for the opportunity to spend time in the wards simply playing.

When I’m down there, I try to share my time and attention as fairly as possible, spending no more than 20 minutes with each child or engaging in as much group play as possible, especially with the ones who don’t seem to get visitors very often. I’d already been down there for about an hour, when I noticed Siyabonga, clinging to the pant leg of one of the doctors as she tried to complete her rounds with the medical students and registrars (or residents). He seemed to remember me from the last time I was in the wards, because with very little cajoling, I managed to transfer him into my arms and give the doctor some space to work. For some reason, today he seemed especially needy, clinging to my neck, my arms, my shirt…whatever he could wrap his hand around. I rocked him for about 15 minutes and he fell asleep, at which point, I tried to place him back in his crib. And that’s when this little one broke my heart into a million pieces. He woke up when he sensed being put down and started tearing up, then began crying as I repeated “I will see you tomorrow.” I gave in and let him hold me for another ten minutes after which I realized, I really needed to get back to the office. As I literally pried his hands off my neck, he burst out wailing. Thankfully a nurse came to my rescue and held his hand so he couldn’t run after me, then shooed me out, saying, “Go, go, I’ll hold him.” I didn’t need to be told twice; I nearly ran out of there before all my practiced efforts at keeping tears in my eye sockets gave out.

This child has no idea who I am; he’s met me once before and I sincerely doubt he remembers who I am. So what does this tell you? It means that despite all the physical pain he’s going through with his complicated disease picture, what he’s hurting most from is emotional loneliness. The way he burrowed his face in this stranger’s chest and dug his fingers into my neck spoke volumes to me about his unquenched thirst to be held. He just wanted to be held.

I desperately want to be a doctor. I want to be the one drawing blood or guiding tiny needles into tiny spaces between vertebrae in search for some spinal fluid. I want to diagnose and treat. But if all I take home from this experience is that some children just need to be held, then by God, I promise to never forget this lesson. I will be there to just hold my patients.

Damn it, I just lost the battle against my tears. I guess I’ll stop there since I can barely see the computer screen right now.

Journey to the Center of...Africa.

I recently had the opportunity to go on a tour of Eastern Africa for both work and leisure. There are three Doris Duke fellows scattered over Kenya and Tanzania and all three had invited me to come visit and see their work sites. However, I also had a long-standing invitation to visit a college friend who’s originally from Kenya and has been living in Nairobi since graduation. I don’t know when I’ll be in Africa next so I made the decision to take a week off, invest the nearly $1000 it cost to fly up to East Africa and go expand my horizons. It was one of the best investments I’ve made in this year abroad. That and car insurance, but that’s a story for a different post.

In planning this trip, I realized what with the time I was going to take off for family and friends’ visits, I could really only afford to take a week off work for this trip. I also quickly realized that I could only afford one ticket up there. Even though the flight up to Nairobi is only 3.5 hours, it costs upwards of $800! My theory is that this is probably due a lack of demand for intra-Africa air travel. Or maybe this is one more way in which I’m a spoiled American, in that I think one should be able to fly for 3 hours for 200 bucks or less. In any case, given the cost of airfare up there and my time constraints, I decided to spend half a week in Kenya and half in Tanzania. Crazy? I know. It was a whirlwind 10 days; I didn’t spend more than one night in any one place, except for Nairobi. That should be an explanation for why this trip is going to take two posts. This post will only cover Kenya.

Kenya. Even now, as I sit here in SOUTH AFRICA, I can’t believe I spent 5 days in Kenya. Every time I reflect about where I am this year, I have a thrill of disbelief. I began my trip in Nairobi. My friend, whom I’d last seen in cap & gown in June 2007, picked me up from the airport and took me to his flat where we reminisced over dinner. I should mention that dinner consisted of a chicken we’d bought just outside his flat, which he then cooked for me along with some fresh ugali. Ugali is cornmeal cooked in water until it reaches a dough-like consistency. It is the most common staple starch eaten in sub-Saharan Africa and is often molded into the shape of a utensil for scooping food and sauce. As my friend explained to me, you can serve someone a banquet hall’s worth of food in Kenya, but if there is no ugali, your guests will still ask you when the meal’s coming.

The next day was started with some shopping. I’d been told about the wonder of Maasai jewelry and wanted to bring some home with me. So who are the Maasai? The Maasai are a fierce group of people who still inhabit the areas around the Maasai Mara. The Maasai Mara is an enormous game reserve, and the continuation of the Tanzanian Serengeti; the name changes as you cross the border into Kenya. Even today, some Maasai choose to live in the wilderness, but you often see Maasai making a living in Nairobi. The women come to sell their famous jewelry and thatched goods in “Maasai markets” and the Maasai men are often employed as bouncers or guards. You see them posted outside expat mansions or trendy clubs dressed in their traditional garb. They are a tall, thin people but it’s easy to believe in their famous fierceness when you see them roaming around with staff in hand and large knife at the waist. They are known for being able to kill lions with nothing but these weapons. In any case, like I mentioned earlier, I was interested in their jewelry, so off we went to the Nairobi Maasai market. I spent the next two hours bartering my way through rows and rows of earrings, necklaces, bracelets and even Maasai shoes! Only when my bag was 2 kilos heavier did I finally come to my senses and stop shelling out Kenyan shillings.

After a driving tour of the city and some delicious nyoma choma for lunch (Swahili for roasted meat), it was time for my friend’s surprise for me: he’d somehow gotten tickets to Tusker Project Fame for us and a big group of his friends. According to him, Tusker is the Kenyan national beer and the official sponsor of Project Fame, which is the East African version of American Idol. So off we went to watch people hailing from all the East African countries belt out everything from traditional Swahili songs to Shania Twain. It was sort of awesome, even if one of the guards tried to confiscate our cameras when he caught us sneaking pictures.

We woke up early the next morning to catch one of the earliest matatus (or minibuses) out of the city. The day started with a terrifying 10 minutes where I inadvertently locked myself into a public bathroom without a phone or a way of telling anyone I was stuck. To be fair to myself, my thought was to be safe and prevent anyone from following this obvious tourist into the empty bathroom at the end of a deserted hallway. What I didn’t realize until too late (and in retrospect, how could I have known this, really?), was that the key that let me into the bathroom did not seem to be the one necessary to let me out. I had just finished washing my hands and smugly smiling to myself in the mirror for being such a street-smart world traveler when I came to the door and realized my predicament. Thankfully, it only took, oh about 7 minutes or so before a guard heard me banging at the door, yelling for help, and came to my rescue THROUGH A WINDOW. I swear my life is a soap opera sometimes.

In any case, after this slight hold-up, we were off to Nakuru. It is the fourth largest city in Kenya, but is most famous for being home to Lake Nakuru. Lake Nakuru is the second largest and thus second most visited game reserve in Kenya (second of course to the Maasai Mara). However, it is special in that it is also one of the largest bird sanctuaries in Africa and is known for the thousands of flamingoes and geese that inhabit it. My friend’s cousin picked us up in our very own safari jeep complete with detachable roof for improved viewing. And boy was the viewing good. If you’ve read previous blogs, you’ll know that this was my second game drive. The first one was great and really set the bar high for me in terms of the animals we got to see.

However, this one was just as phenomenal in its own way. About five minutes into our drive, we were quite literally surrounded by an entire herd of zebras. It was an auspicious sign, for the next five hours were amazing. We saw entire flocks of flamingoes and gaggles of geese. Where we’d seen isolated rhinos and bison at the Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa, here we saw herds.

At one point, we rounded the corner and came upon an entire colony of baboons. It was late afternoon, which seems to be the time when all the grooming occurs. I could have spent hours observing the baboons paired off, picking fleas off each other. It was almost like watching two women help each other with their hair or arranging each others' dresses. Maybe off-putting for those of you not into animal behavior and such, but incredibly fascinating to me.

Sadly, it was nearly dusk so our driver headed to the game reserve exit. After a full day’s game viewing and bathroom-escaping, I lay down in the back of our jeep for a quick nap. Ten minutes later, my friends woke me to say that as we were leaving, game reserve personnel had informed our driver that a leopard and lions had been spotted not far from the entrance and we were free to go back in if we wanted to. It was as if someone turned on our internal Energizer bunnies because off we went, all renewed. Our zeal was rewarded by the sight of a sleek leopard, followed by two enormous lions of Aslan proportions (if you get this reference, I will be so impressed), all literally chilling on tree branches. It was breathtaking if only because I never expected lions to climb trees. Presiding over a rock? Fine. Overlooking a savannah? Sure. But up in a tree in a semi-dense forest? Not at all what I expected. It was very, very cool.

We spent that night at my friend’s cousin’s house, where she and her family prepared us a true Kenyan feast. Absolutely delicious and I may or may not have had three helpings. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

The next morning, we took a second matatu to Kisumu, home to two Doris Duke fellows who’d met up with us in Nairobi and had been traveling with us since then. Kisumu is the third largest city in Kenya and as such, has its own airport. We spent the day exploring the city and their work sites, using the convenient tuk-tuks for transportation. Tuk-tuks are hard to describe, but they’re essentially 3-wheeled motorized vehicles with a metal body and canvas roofing and sides. You hail them like cabs in Kisumu. They fit three in the back and one driver in front which is actually more space than a coupe, but for some reason, I couldn’t get over how adorably cute they seemed. The men driving them seemed like grown-up boys playing with toy cars and I could barely take them seriously.

It wouldn’t have been a true tour of the city, however, without a memory-making meal. In this case it was a scrumptious tilapia lunch. Kisumu was built on the banks of Lake Victoria, which is brimming with some of the largest tilapia I’ve ever seen. At the restaurants on the banks, one can pick out the fish one wants and they clean and cook it up for you in typical fried or “wet-fried” style. Wet-fried means they fry it first, then stew it with onions, tomatoes and kale, one of the predominant crops in the area. Served with chapati (sort of like roti, which evidences the Indian migration to this part of Africa as well) and ugali of course, it was delicious. Don’t worry, I didn’t eat this baby pictured on the side all by myself—three of us shared it.

My final day in Kenya was spent in Bondo, a tiny village about 40 kilometers outside Kisumu, and home to my friend and gracious host’s immediate family. Kisumu and a large area around it is mostly inhabited by members of the Luo tribe, and as such, my friend and his family belong to the Luo tribe. There are over 40 tribes or separate ethnic groups in Kenya, but the Luo happen to be the third largest tribe, comprising over 10% of the Kenyan population. Although they are concentrated around Lake Victoria, their homesteads extend into parts of Uganda and Tanzania, and some say even the Sudan, from whence its thought they originated.

My time in Bondo was very special. It was wonderful to meet my friend’s mother (pictured on the left), brother and cousins. His mother works as a schoolteacher and his brother is the pastor of a Christian church. They are a deeply religious family, which became obvious at once, for as soon as I arrived, they all held hands and offered up a prayer of thanksgiving for the honor of hosting such a special guest. (“Me???” I thought to myself incredulously.) Over the next 24 hours I was shocked on more than one occasion by the true warmth and emotion with which they opened their home to me. In true Luo tradition, they had killed and cooked a chicken for me upon my arrival and the next day, his mother allowed me to visit her classrooms and meet her students. They were all excited to see a mzungu in their village and desperate to have pictures taken of themselves; I gladly obliged. Mzungu is Swahili for white person and in this remote area, I was commonly greeted with excited cries of “Mzungu!!” I have to admit, it was pretty hilariously embarrassing, but I understood. To them, seeing someone with my skin color (which incidentally, is anything but white these days given the amount of sun I’ve been exposed to), is as point- and shriek-worthy as if someone green-colored walked down the streets of New York. Well, maybe New York is a bad example; you never know what you’ll find on our streets there. But you get the point, yes?

I apologize for the lengths of this post, but I’m motivated to record my memories so I’m going to push through. My first (and only) morning in Bondo, I was woken at 5 AM to milk my first cow, after which I got a tour of my friend’s homestead and their crops. They have a field full of corn, rows of the ever-present kale as well as an impressive greenhouse full of tomatoes, tomatoes which were ripe in time for my arrival. (I know because I ate three in a row when my friend showed me the heap of freshly picked ones. What can I say, I tend to eat my way through my travels.) After the tour came breakfast consisting of the milk I’d just helped milk (boiled of course) and bread with peanut butter. Kenyans love their peanut butter. It’s served next to the regular butter at every breakfast. Good thing I love peanut butter enough to lick it off a spoon, no bread necessary. After that was a walking tour of Bondo and then a boda-boda ride to see the home of Dr. Mama Sarah Obama. Yes, the same Obama family as our president. Mama Sarah Obama is President Barack Obama’s step grandmother. It was a connection intriguing enough for this easily star-struck girl to brave riding a boda-boda out to her home and the primary school that was re-named after Obama when he became senator. So what is a boda-boda? Well there are two kinds. The first is just a bicycle with a lightly padded seat attached behind the main seat. Just like the the tuk-tuks, you can hail them like taxis. I loved seeing men in suits riding behind boys in sandals, biking through town. Although I did ride one of these in Kisumu, this was not the type of boda-boda I had to ride in order to reach Obama’s family’s village. No, the one I rode was more of a….dirt bike. I’m not even sure why it’s called a boda boda when it’s really just a motorcycle, plain and simple. So. We can all laugh at my foolish decision to break my rule of never riding a motorcycle (much less without a helmet), because look at me! I survived…intact! Ok yes, I already got my ear figuratively pulled by some people, but in my defense, I can only say that a)we never went over 40 kph; b) they are the only way to reach certain villages in less than a day’s walking travel and c) I would have worn a helmet if they’d had one, I swear! So yes, perhaps not my safest decision, no I will never do something like that again, but yes I enjoyed every minute of it. It was invigorating and… absolutely enlivening… to ride through the beautiful Kenyan countryside on a gorgeous summer day. Even when the children ran to the side of the road, screaming “Mzungu” and pointing at me, all I could do was throw my head back and laugh. Laugh and live my life.

The next day I boarded a plane to Tanzania. To continue living my life.

San Givin

For those of you who thought the biggest challenge I’d taken on this year was getting on that plane back in September and leaving everyone I love for eight months, you were wrong. It wasn’t until last Thursday at noon that I faced my biggest fears: cooking a Thanksgiving dinner for 12 guests. To be completely accurate, this experience did not actually begin at noon on Thursday. For anyone who’s ever cooked a turkey—and a frozen one at that—you’ll know that it could not have possibly begun 8 hours before the guests were promised dinner.

So let’s start at the beginning. I gather that would be when my loudmouth self began blabbing to everyone I liked here that come November, I was going to invite everyone to my flat for a big dinner to celebrate an American holiday called “Thanksgiving.” “Just you wait!” my foolish self said. “You’ve never seen a Thanksgiving dinner like this one! You better come hungry!” So you see, I brought this on myself; I have no one to blame but me.

Given this self-incurred predicament, I decided to roll up my sleeves and get to it in the only way this 21^st century girl knows how to: by consulting my sacred source of knowledge….The Internet. I began my online research with a simple query: “How the heck do I cook a turkey?” As it turns out Google and YouTube ended up being my saving grace last week. Without Google, I wouldn’t have known that you need to budget about 1 lb of turkey per dinner guest, 1.3 lbs if you want to have enough for turkey sandwich leftovers the next day. Google also taught me that if you’re cooking a frozen turkey that weighs oh about 8-10 lbs, you need to budget at least 2 days of de-frosting. If you don’t have that kind of time, Google assured me that I shouldn’t worry. All I had to do was buy a fresh turkey. And in case I did happen to decide on a fresh turkey, then Google had a list of brining recipes all ready for me. So helpful, that Google.

One of my Google hits was a Youtube video of a chef from Whole Foods showing me how to actually roast a turkey step by step. That was enough to hook me and I spent the next couple hours (at the office….oops!) watching video after video about how to truss a turkey, lather it with butter, stuff it, roast it and carve it. I watched an elegantly dressed woman daintily sprinkle oil over her turkey and a big guy smear butter all over his turkey. I even watched a semi-disturbing video of some guys who stuffed a Cornish hen inside of a chicken, stuffed the chicken inside a turkey, then sewed this turkey into a roast pig and covered the pig in BACON. I love meat as much as the next carnivore, but like I said, mildly disturbing. (Or maybe what was disturbing was the fact that the video made me want to both gag and taste the damn thing.)

Armed with the knowledge acquired from cooking websites and how-to videos, I set out on Tuesday afternoon to do my food shopping. I first went to a bookstore that I’d discovered has a section dedicated to selling specialized cooking utensils. Nestled between the travel books and the historical fiction books, it is quite possibly the most randomly placed kitchenware I’ve ever seen. One minute you’re looking at Lonely Planet guides and the next you’re suddenly contemplating salad misters (Apparently it’s something like a spray bottle but designed for misting things with olive oil. I took this to mean that those of us who just plain drizzle olive oil on our salads are somehow inferior cooks.) My internet research had taught me three crucial lessons about cooking turkeys: 1) You need to truss turkeys in order to ensure even cooking. Truss is just a fancy word for tying a turkey’s legs together and tucking its wings under the body. If these parts are too far away from the body and breast, they run the risk of overcooking; 2) A meat thermometer is the only way to know whether a turkey is done; and 3) A turkey that hasn’t been brined should be basted. So I bought cooking twine, a meat thermometer and a completely unnecessary baster. (Why didn’t I realize I could just use a spoon to throw the turkey juices over itself? That’s really all basting is. But no, in Diana’s world the shopping is done first and the thinking second.)

I then made my way over to the first grocery store. I mention first, because I in fact ended up driving a circuit of FOUR grocery stores and supermarkets looking for fresh turkeys. No cigar. Absolutely none of the grocery stores in all of Durban seemed to carry fresh turkeys…they each had about 5 frozen birds, clearly catering to us Americans. So that solved the problem of finding a pot large enough to brine my fresh turkey in….frozen turkey it was. (I later asked my co-workers and all of them agreed with my findings; they’d never seen a fresh turkey for sale anywhere in Durban.)

I ran into a few more hitches at the store. First of all, I’d forgotten that the sweet potatoes sold in Durban are white on the inside and less sweet than the sweet potatoes I’m used to. Nevertheless, it’s not Thanksgiving for me without some sweet potato casserole so I crossed my fingers and threw them in my cart. Also, it turns out that besides fresh turkeys, the other thing one cannot find in ANY Durban food store is canned pumpkin for baking, oh say, PUMPKIN PIE. I had to sadly cross that off my list after my epic 4-store grocery run yielded nothing. I started wondering whether Durban itself was conspiring against Diana’s envisioned Thanksgiving dinner.

Thankfully, at this point, I was joined by a friend, another American girl who was interested in helping me pull off this cooking heist. She convinced me it would still be Thanksgiving with only apple and pear pies instead, and in any case there was no time for grumbling. We still had to buy all the vegetables for the side dishes and Durban supermarkets close at 7 PM remember? After scurrying around, we managed to get everything we needed and made plans to meet the next night after Zulu class to do some prep work.

Which is exactly what we spent three hours doing on Wednesday evening. She came over to my flat and we peeled, sliced, diced and marinated the night away. Around 11:30 PM, I nearly fell asleep on a head of garlic I’d been chopping and decided to call it a night.

Which brings us to the actual game day. (Ironically, it was a Thanksgiving sans football so I mean that purely symbolically.) I’d planned to leave work at noon, but by 11:45 I was so excited/anxious to start cooking, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore and slipped out. On the drive home, I was haunted by alternating visions of a still-completely frozen turkey and a completely burnt turkey. I started seriously questioning my decision to invite 12 people to come witness and possibly suffer through my first ever turkey-cooking experience. Aren’t I a researcher this year? Shouldn’t I have done a controlled trial say, a month ago or something?? By the time I got home, however, I’d given myself three pep talks and felt better. I turned on some soothing salsa music, changed out of my work clothes and dived in.

Remember that post where I let slip that I name inanimate objects? Well, I considered naming my turkey seeing as how I got so intimate with it, but decided against it at the last moment…I was going to slice it up and eat it in a few hours, after all. Not naming it, however, did not pre-empt me from talking to it…out loud… for the next 7 hours of cooking. “Alright Turkey, time to get lathered.” “Ugh, Turkey, you’re actually heavier than I expected!” “Ohmygod Turkey don’t fall!!!!” Note to self: turkeys turn into slippery little buggers after you’ve lathered them with oil and butter. In any case, I didn’t drop it, thank God. I did manage to truss it after only a couple of failed tries and stuffed it with some of my favorite veggies. (I’m not really a bread-based stuffing kind of gal so I’d opted to stuff my Turkey with garlic, onions, carrots and little bit of thyme.) When I finally placed it in my teeny oven, I sighed with relief, then realized that had taken my clumsy self waaay too long and it was time to get cracking on the sides.

My friend arrived a couple hours later, thankfully, and got to work on the pies. Together we somehow miraculously managed to finish everything by 7:30 PM, just in time for the arrival of the guests. Another friend had also arrived early and helped me bring in the patio table and rearrange the furniture in our flat such that by 8 PM, we had a long family style table, able to seat all of us, covered with food. We lit candles, poured wine and out came Turkey, all cooked and golden!

As we all held hands, lowered our heads and spoke one by one about what we were thankful for, I realized I was a lucky, lucky person. I miss everyone back home on pretty much a daily basis, which has often made this experience hard for me (despite my upbeat tone on this blog). But at the same time, I have already been blessed with good friends and surrogate families in this country. What more can I ask for in a year abroad?

Oh and for those of you wondering, South African sweet potato is just as tasty in a casserole if you’re liberal with the brown sugar and apparently, people liked Turkey because there were no leftovers left at all.

The Festival of Lights

Hello my faithful readers. I have to, once more, apologize for being a delinquent blogger…it’s just so hard to post when I’m out romping through Africa! :) But I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s been an incredibly fun, though hectic past month. A lot has happened and thus I’m going to split my stories into four posts. But don’t worry, these will come in quick succession, you won’t have to wait two weeks between these, I promise.

The first week of November, I celebrated Diwali with my adoptive family here. It was my first ever Diwali celebration. In fact, I’d never even heard about Diwali until a week prior to it occurring. However, it has quickly become one of my new favorite holidays and it’ll soon become clear why.

But first, a little historical didactics. (Sorry, did you really think I’d miss a chance to teach?) Diwali (pronounced “Divali”) is considered one of, if not the most, important festival of the year in Hinduism. The word itself comes from the Sanskrit phrase meaning “row of lamps.” The festival is meant to commemorate a story from ancient Hindu lore in which the people of Ayodhya celebrated the return of their king, Lord Rama and his triumph over the demon-king Ravana by illuminating their kingdom with oil lamps and firecrackers.

Today, Diwali is a family-centered holiday, much like Thanksgiving or Christmas. Families gather in their homes and light candles or the more traditional small clay lamps filled with oil to symbolize the triumph of good over evil. The celebration extends for several days and as such, there were fireworks for three days all over Durban, leading up to Friday the 5^th of November, the main Diwali night. To prepare for this night, families spend the previous evening and the morning of cooking and baking what can only be described as goodie platters piled high with sweets. (That or they buy pre-packaged goodie platters.) Then on the main Diwali night, people dress up in nice punjabis, light their candles and lamps, and circulate through family members,’ neighbors’ and friends’ homes eating and sharing goodie platters.

So what was my Diwali like? Well, Wednesday night was spent in Chatsworth with one of my friends’ families. Chatsworth, a town/community just outside Durban proper, is almost entirely populated by Indian families and as such was a good place to start my Diwali celebration. One of the fireworks stores near my friend’s home was staying open til 10 PM, playing live music and setting off thousands of rands’ worth of fireworks as a kick-off celebration. Large fireworks displays lit the street as kids danced around them. It was fun, though my motherly/doctorly instincts were activated on more than one occasion and I had to keep myself from pulling someone else’s child further away from the fireworks when they got too close for my comfort. (I included the picture so you can hopefully agree with my assessment of the entirely too near proximity of children to sparkling fire.)

Thursday night, I went over to Lee & Kevin’s house and helped them cook up a sweets storm and arrange the platters they were going to hand out the next day. (I should mention that my “help” consisted of tasting all the sweets and approving how delicious they were.) My favorite were definitely the pastries consisting of a Cadbury chocolate embedded in a sugar cookie-like little ball then sprinkled with glitter-like sugar. Tasty AND pretty!

Then Friday after work, I packed a bag with my newly tailored punjabi and matching accessories (hey, just because I’m in Africa doesn’t mean I don’t accessorize and color match my outfits as usual) and headed over to the Sewnarains’ house. There was something about eating delicious biriyani and home-cooked sweets in a house illuminated by candles and filled with laughter that was incredibly heart-warming. Also, any evening that involves dressing up usually makes me happy, but this time, as you can see from the picture below, I got to wear my first bindi! I loved it so much, it actually made me sad to take it off before bed.

The fireworks reminded me of the 4^th of July, which of course filled me with warm memories of this year’s fantastic display I got to view from a rooftop in Washington D.C. My outfit, complete with bindi, ended up being a fantastic substitute for my lack of costume on Halloween this year. And finally, the overwhelming amount of food and sweets I ate in the span of two days reminded me of Thanksgiving. I think that should make it clear why Diwali is now one of my favorite holidays. Although I am still very much a Catholic, I don’t see any reason why I can’t fill my future homes with candles once a year to celebrate the triumph of good over evil. Oh and of course, to eat plenty of sugar cookie-covered Cadbury chocolates.

The Spectrum of Typicality

As my life fleshes out here, I find that I have to set aside time to write a post for this blog rather than just use one of the countless hours of free time. I hope this counts as an explanation for why weeks pass between posts.

The past few weeks, as the title suggests, have been both typical and atypical. At the office, I’ve been going through medical charts from the Philani clinic here at King Edwards Hospital. This clinic is dedicated to seeing children with HIV who are being started on anti-retroviral therapy (ART). Five days a week, children and their guardians have filled the plastic chairs in the waiting room by 8 AM waiting to be seen for their medications. For the laypeople who read my blog and are wondering how children get HIV, I’ll digress simply to explain that although there are the occasional disturbing cases of horizontal transmission of HIV to children, most cases result from vertical transmission, or transmission of the virus from infected mother to child during pregnancy, delivery or through breast milk. Unfortunately for me, my only interaction with these patients is the occasional “Sawubona, unjani?” [“Hello, How are you?] that I quietly say to families as I walk past them, my arms stacked high with charts. Because these days, my work is to go through these charts and weed out details about these children’s ART history. I only get to meet these children, really, on paper. For those of you who know what my favorite part about medical school has been, you’ll know that this leaves me….longing for more. I understand the importance of these research questions and of tracking the patterns of blood results and growth responses to treatment by going through 200 paper charts. And I am grateful, infinitely grateful to the Doris Duke Fellowship for allowing me to come here because the personal discoveries are innumerable and gosh golly, South Africans are fun! But computer literature searches and paper chart detective work…it’s just not what I’m meant for. When God made me, He didn’t have paper patients in mind.

Of course, I’m still being molded by my time here. Who knows what kind of tune I’ll be singing about research in six months’ time when I’ve gotten to work on my own project (which actually involves more human interaction). Maybe it’ll be more of a “research in my future” tune. But for now, my favorite moments at work boil down to two things: 1) when I get to join one of the doctors on their rounds of their patients and 2) the countless little interactions with my co-workers that make me smile and/or laugh. I work with amazing women who make me happy on a regular basis. As for the former, though the few flesh and blood patients I do get to see are usually incredibly sick, their ailment reminds me of why I’m here: to learn. But in any case, as you can see from my favorite work moments, I need to work with people in the future. If there was ever any doubt before (which there really wasn’t), I am most fulfilled around other people.

Anyways, so what’s been atypical you ask? Well, for starters, there’s the fact that I’ve been cooking my own Indian food and shopping at Indian fairs for my first punjabi. (Stay tuned for pictures of me wearing said punjabi.)

Oh and then there was my Halloween weekend. I commenced this hallowed holiday weekend by volunteering at a Peace Players International Event. Peace Players International (or PPI for short) is a non-profit organization that seeks to use basketball to deliver public health education about HIV and AIDS. This past Saturday, they had one of their biannual tournaments. Over 20 schools in the area sent teams of children between the ages of 7 and 18 to play in the tournament. However, in order to play, the kids first had to participate in team-building exercises and learn about HIV. How exactly does one teach a primary school-age child about a sexually transmitted disease? Well, listen and learn. I circulated through the groups, listening to exchanges such as the following:

“How are men and women physically different?”

“Their private parts.”

“ That’s right! And what is HIV?”

“ A disease?”

“That’s right! And how do you get HIV?”

“A romantic relationship?”

“ Yes! So what must you do to protect yourself from HIV?”

“Be careful with your boyfriend?” [Said by a little girl who looked not much older than 10 years old.]

“And what parts must you protect in this romantic relationship?”

“Your private parts!”

After being impressed with these simple, yet in my opinion, powerful exchanges, it was time to play some ball. For the next six hours, I sat with a clipboard and pencil in hand and dutifully recorded points and fouls. Often times one of the other volunteers had to gently remind me to record a basket because I was very easily distracted by the intensity with which these children played the game. The disparities even within Durban were painfully apparent. Some schools sent their children in matching uniforms and sneakers while other teams of children played barefoot in whatever clothes they had. It was a hot day and I was sweating myself, but I didn’t realize how steaming hot the black concrete court was until I walked a little girl over to the medics when I noticed her limping and tearing up. It turns out she hadn’t twisted her ankle or anything, her feet were just burning too much and she’d had enough.

Despite how my heart hurt in both good and bad ways during the day, it was a good day overall. I loved seeing the kids have fun in the setting of an educational event. I guess I also just love watching kids have fun period.

The rest of my Halloween day consisted of watching the Sharks become the champions of the Absa Currie Cup and braaing at my friend’s house. I believe a few explanations are in order. First, Durban is located in the province of Kwazulu-Natal and the Sharks are the Kwazulu-Natal rugby team so basically, I’ve become a Sharks fan overnight. Secondly, “Braai” is the Afrikaans word for “roasted meat” so yes, I spent my Halloween at a barbecue, cheering for my new rugby loves. There were plenty of drinks but no costumes. It was the first Halloween in my life with no costume so it felt a little strange, but lots of fun nevertheless.

So there you have it, how my life is both typical and atypical here. I miss America (even despite recent disappointing elections) but at the same time I do love my life here. It’s different yet similar, makes me long for home yet makes me feel at home in its own way.

Culinary Nirvana

This post is going to be all about Indian food, so I think it’s appropriate to begin with a story about my very first life encounter with Indian food.

When I was about 14, my parents took me to my first Indian restaurant and a vegetarian one at that. The memory is still vivid because it was such a terrible experience. I have always loved food. When I was a really little kid, I remember not liking minestrone soup (too vegetabley) and my mother’s fish head broth (it’s a Colombian thing and yes, way too fishy). But besides that, I ate just about everything back then. Even brussels sprouts. Which explains why I was especially miserable that day more than ten years ago at that vegetarian Indian place when I found myself unable to eat anything. Everything tasted like fire to me and I remember sullenly eating piece after piece of what I later learned was naan.

If current Diana could speak to 14-year-old Diana, she would say, “What in the heck is wrong with you, you crazy lunatic? This is the food of the gods!” Because current Diana is madly in love with every Indian dish that she has been presented with in Little India, I mean Durban.

I knew I liked Indian food before coming here. Goodness knows there was a stretch of time during second year of medical school when my boyfriend and I ordered in chicken tikka masala at least once a week. But, I have never had Indian food in New York like I’m having here on a gloriously regular basis. I am consumed with thoughts of acquiring, eating and learning how to cook it. It’s a good thing I have some of the best culinary masters in Durban as my teachers. It doesn’t get more Durban Indian authentic than Saj’s mom’s house or Lee’s house.

Take last Tuesday for instance. I worked out extra hard at the gym in preparation, and then drove over to the Sewnarains’ where Lee and her husband had bought ingredients for a feast and were waiting to teach me how to make soy prawns masala. Now, before anyone makes a face at the thought of soy prawns, let me stop you right there. These faux shrimp come breaded and mixed with some sort of nut and are just absolutely delicious. In any case, for the next three hours, I watched them add beautifully colored spices and herbs to the pots and finally garnish with coriander (otherwise known to me as my beloved cilantro).

Thursday night brought chicken tikka. It’s different here, spicy and broiled in the oven instead of in the creamy sauce that I’m used to. Still delicious though, as you can see from my smiling face.

Then, Saturday, I sojourned to Merebank, a neighborhood just outside central Durban proper to learn how to cook crab curry from Sajeeda’s mother. As I extracted the tender crabmeat, I found myself slightly sniffly (all that chili powder was even clearing my sinuses!) but immensely proud of myself for being able to handle the spiciness of the meal. These feelings vanished instantly when Sajeeda and her mother took one look at the thin film of sweat I was developing as I ate and commented, “Hm. It’s a good thing we didn’t make it spicy.” (Sadly I forgot my camera that day so I did not get a picture of this tasty and spicy-only-to-me crab curry.)

My apparently weak palate notwithstanding, I am in total food bliss here. It is actually the perfect foodie experience: delicious food, some culinary education and wonderful company. It’s been almost counterproductive…I came with such great goals of finding recipes on the internet and cooking quietly at home. But now all I want to do is go over to my friends’ houses and have them cook for me. But don’t worry, I will soon be attempting some of these curry dishes at home. I even bought my first packet of masala powder already. We’ll see how I do this week. But for now, I will try to finagle myself into these Indian families’ homes as often as possible for the amazing food and company.

For those of you who wonder whether I'm betraying my roots, don't get me wrong. If a Colombian restaurant opened tomorrow somewhere near here and it meant traversing crocodile-infested white water rapids on a blind donkey, I’d be there for dinner at least twice a week. But this food is just so damn delicious, that I almost forget to miss my beloved buñuelos. (For those of you not in the know, buñuelos are large round balls of fried cheesy dough. Otherwise known as heaven on earth for this Colombiana.)

By the way, if anyone thought that my snazzy gym was going to turn me into a svelte version of myself, I have news for you. I refuse to turn down a single samoosa* this year so I truly believe I may be working out every day simply to not turn into a masala-filled marshmallow. This is not the year of being thin, as it turns out, it’s the year of the CURRY.

(*Still looks weird to me, but I promise you this is how they spell samosas here.)

Some of Africa's Fiercest

I apologize for the sort of dry last post. I know it’s been a little while since one with pictures, but it’s been a hectic week at work. Columbia’s version of an ethics committee approved my project and I finally submitted my application for approval from the South African ethics committee this past Wednesday. So now, I wait and pray to God that they don’t delay my approval here too long. In the meantime, there is a flurry of activity here at the office to work on another ethics application as well as collect as much data as possible to submit a preliminary abstract on a third study I’m helping with. Boring stuff so far, but I report it for all those out there who think I’m only playing here. See? Work. :)

Truth is, I’m making up for all the play and fun I had last week and weekend meeting some of Africa’s fiercest creatures. But let me start from the beginning. One week ago, eight other international Doris Duke fellows arrived in Durban for an international conference on HIV/AIDS Advanced Care taking place at one of Durban’s poshest hotels on the Golden Mile. For two days, we attended lectures on how to treat the sickest HIV/AIDS patients during the day and then explored Durban as a group. It was, in a word, awesome. Even the lectures. I realized that while I appreciate the end goals of research, going through charts and articles is not my passion. I miss patients. I miss the human touch and the human psyche, despite all its complications and difficulties. Hearing about how to take care of other human beings was a much-needed reminder of why I’m here. I was very much a lecture-phobe the first two years of med school, often choosing sleep over lectures, so I was almost shocked to realize how much these lectures re-affirmed my love of medicine.

I was less shocked to find that the international fellows were a lot of fun! In a way, we’re very like-minded. We all feel the itch to travel and explore, but also the itch to work with some of the world’s sickest. And thankfully, also the itch to eat, drink and dance! On Friday, we went to a Sharks game, the Rugby team for the Kwazulu-Natal province. As it turns out, I’m a rugby fan! Who knew! It was so fierce…these men who played a confusing combination of soccer and football with little more than light shoulder padding. That night, I vowed two things to myself: 1) Take a cab to the next rugby game so you can partake of the beer-drinking and 2) Learn the rules of rugby. Can’t wait to go to more games to begin fulfilling these two vows.

Then Saturday, six of us woke up at 6 AM (never mind we’d been out past midnight on Friday night) to drive 3 hours north to Hluluwe Umfolozi Park, a game reserve near St. Lucia. Our day began with a lazy two-hour ferry cruise through the St. Lucia estuary to look at hippos, crocodiles and the exotic mélange of birds and eagles that live in this estuary. Now, some of you may not know this, but some of my happiest moments in life are on boats. I simply love being on the water with the wind in my hair, so this ferry ride alone was well worth the 3-hour drive. What I’m sure will come as a surprise to NO ONE is that my favorite part of the ferry ride was watching the baby hippos ride their mothers’ backs. SO CUTE. I had to resist the urge to jump in the water and swim over to scratch their chubby little bellies. (It was not actually such a hard urge to resist given the crocodile-infested water and the fact that mother hippos separated from their young are anything but cute.)

After this lovely boat ride, we attempted to find a typical Zululand lunch in the small town near the park but after countless townspeople directed us to the numerous Americanized fast food establishments, insisting it was the only food available (KFC, for instance, is weirdly huge here…there’s a store every 10 kms, I swear), we finally settled on a pizza lunch. After lunch, we drove our rented car directly into the game reserve and thus began our “Where is Waldo, I mean endangered large wild animal?” game. There were six of us in a minibus-type vehicle and after 10 minutes of driving without seeing an animal, as good medical students, we assigned each other quadrants of window space to concentrate on. It only took five minutes before someone shouted, “Giraffe! Stop! Stop!” As the first animals we saw that day, I’ve decided to commemorate them here.

But after that, it felt like we were catching glimpses of South Africa’s “Big Five” every few kilometers. The “Big Five” refers to five of South Africa’s greatest wild animals: lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and rhino. During the next three hours of driving through the game reserve, we were able to see four of these five, sometimes at adrenaline-raising close ranges. At one point, we turned a curve in the road and found ourselves literally 50 feet from an elephant just casually chewing some reeds. Then at the top of another hill, we came upon not one, not two but FIVE lions just chilling on the side of the road. (We kept our windows closed for this one.)

Another bend in the road brought us next to a rhino about 300 meters away. This is the one that really made my pulse climb. It seemed to be grazing peacefully when we first caught sight of it. However, as soon as it noticed our car parked and five human beings hanging out of their respective window snapping pictures like crazy madmen, it slowly lowered its enormous sharp horn to the ground and stood there, looking at us sideways. I instantly remembered their famously short tempers and started wondering whether at the very least our driver should be ready to throw the car into first gear in case this thing decided to charge us. But no, thankfully, it just stood there, like a fearsome sentinel, warning us to not get any closer. Soon it became clear why, as a smaller rhino (perhaps its mate?) came into the clearing and continued eating nonchalantly.

As we drove home that night, I realized why it is that I’ve always felt I could not truly enjoy zoos. I love animals and used to love the trips to the zoo when I was younger. But this, this is what it’s supposed to be like if we as humans want the privilege of observing animals. If we want to trespass their habitats and invade their space, then at least it should be an open space, limited only by the natural boundaries of prey and predator, food and water.

I mentioned that this was the weekend I met some of Africa’s fiercest. I meant that in reference to three entities. I’ve already told you all about two of these: those crazy rugby players and the gorgeous Big Five creatures. However, after spending five days with the other international fellows, I believe they deserve to be included. Living in Durban makes me the fellow with the most urban experience, the most access to the pleasures and comforts of modern life. Hearing the experiences of the other fellows, spending their eight, nine and ten months in some of the most rural and poor areas of Africa, supplanted any feelings of fierceness I had about myself. They have also traveled to a new faraway land with a strange language and culture and a not entirely safe society to live in. They have also left everyone they loved (well except for the guy who brought his fiancée—a freelance writer—with him to Botswana…so jealous!). But, where I have nice gyms, malls, beaches and restaurants, they have none of this. It was humbling and encouraging for me to meet these fierce men and women. I’ve decided to try to stop complaining about the lack of fast-speed internet in my flat or any of the other small frustrations. This is Africa, after all. What was I expecting? As I read in a manual written by previous research fellows who’d spent time in Durban, “Africa is not for sissies.” I’ve never thought of myself as a sissy and I’m definitely not going to start being one now. Well, let’s be real. I’m going to try to not be one too often.