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.