Talking about fear...

So the first day was okay, I walked around a bit, did some shopping and went to the internet café. On Friday, Adriaan picked me up to go meet everybody at the hospital. This is in a very nice area with lots of trees, plants and flowers everywhere you look. The hospital itself looks nice because it has been fixed up for the past five years thanks to the foundation in Holland. But still there’s enough to be done and so Adriaan and his foundation will continue to raise funds. Anyway, I met the secretary, miss Fiona Kunz, who is responsible for a lot of things in the hospital. I also met one of the surgeons and I met the ward sisters. Besides the sisters, who are educated, there are also a lot of nurses. They take care of all the daily things and are mostly voluntary.
The hospital welcomes a 1000 patients every year, and 500 of them will be treated surgical. The children in the hospital are aged from 0 till about 15 years. There is a baby ward, a boys ward and a girls ward. They have to be separated because the boys here of age from 10 years old and up are not as innocent as the boys in Holland by that age. Four days of the week there will be surgeries. On Friday, there is a club foot clinic which means a lot of children from outside the hospital come to have their plaster changed and to be checked by the doctors. I am looking forward to this first Friday already because I have never witnessed this before. Plaster is still a usual way to correct club feet. Still it is known that a large part of the feet treated in this way will never be corrected for the full 100% (read that somewhere just before leaving). Most of them will also receive surgery later on.

Adriaan brought me home again and a few minutes later Pieter came to pick me up to collect my beetle. It was about a 30-40 minute drive to Brackenfell, where the company is. I was given one of the ‘new’ beetles, which means I have one of the three beetles (out of over 500) with two side mirrors in stead of one. We made a test drive and soon after that I was on my way back to CPT. Unfortunately, within a few minutes on the highway, I heard a few bangs and I had to stop at the side of the road already. I phoned the company and they came to help me out. In the end it was decided to take the beetle back to the company to have it checked out and Pieter drove me back to CPT. So I spent my afternoon on the highway pretty much, which was ok though because the weather is still very nice and a lot of people were honking, waving and asking if I was ok. This shows to me a kindness that we seem to have lost in Holland somehow.

In the evening, Leo texted me what to do for dinner, We both needed a quiet evening, the others had left the same afternoon for a three-day-festival somewhere right outside CPT. She cooked dinner and we were just about to put the DVD in the DVD player when suddenly the lights flickered once or twice and just seconds after that we were in the dark. And not only the two of us, the whole of CPT got cut off power. This has been a problem for some time already and it seems to be getting worse. It is believed that it is not just a shortage of power but that there are also political and economical sides to this. Jo’burg has already been cut off too a while ago and in the past few weeks different parts of CPT had been in the dark for a few hours. I am actually quite curious if this has been in the news in Holland already… We stayed up scaring each other with stories and all the assumptions about the noises we were hearing but around two o’ clock we just couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer, so we decided to just go to bed and hope for the best. Our phones didn’t even have reception anymore so we did feel a bit awkward but when you need to sleep, you need to sleep… Next morning everything was back to normal. As for the scary stories, I am not going to share them with you people because it’s already a lot for me to comprehend, let alone have somebody understand who lives in comfy, safe Holland.

On Saturday we went to the foodmarket in Woodstock, which is to be compared to Borough’s Market in London. What a lovely morning we spent there! So many nice and beautiful things in the little shop, most things handmade, and the foodmarket itself was unbelievable. Everything fresh, mostly organic, all handmade, and it tasted soooooo good. I think my father would love to stroll around here for a day, as would my brother! Leo had other appointments for the afternoon so I spent it just being lazy and walking around our neighbourhood a bit. Sunday went by in about the same way, and after a really nice chat with Leo before going to bed I tugged in because this Monday I was going to start my job at MCH.

Michelle took me on a stroll throughout the hospital to show me the way they work. First of all, we need to check new admissions and discharges. Then we prior the patients, because there is just not enough physical therapists to treat everybody. Most of the patients will suffer from some kind of disease (congenital or not congenital) but there’s also a few that have been in accidents and fractured something. There are not too many cerebral palsy patients in here, but of course there is also an orthopaedic side to CP so there is the occasional patient. Patients who are in the hospital for just one or a few days, will mostly not be treated by us. Criteria for these kids to be discharged are about the same as on every orthopaedic ward in Holland: flexion of the knee for at least 90°, a normal extension of the knee, being able to walk with crutches in a safe way and the same goes for walking the stairs with crutches. The kids are not allowed to hang on to their crutches for the whole day: they can only practise when we are there to help and watch them. Average rehabilition time is about a month: a lot of children will come back for another procedure or for follow-up. Considering physiotherapy we try to keep them as long as possible since there is often no possibility for follow-up therapy once they go home. It is very hard to find community therapists and regardless of finding a therapist who will treat these children for free, there is still the problem of the family not willing or being able to corporate in this matter. On Tuesday, the prof(essor Hoffman)) does his rounds or ‘rondjie’ in Afrikaans. He will check on every patient and decide about the following treatment. I got a few patients assigned to me and I tried to get some information about possible projects. Turns out the therapy garden that I thought had already been built is not there yet. This might be a nice idea to pick up, but there is just as well the fact that the surgeons never really believed in the positive effects of physiotherapy until now, because of all the effort Michelle and Jeanine are putting into the hospital. It might also be interesting to make it my task to convince them with research and stuff but it’s just that my hands are a bit tied in that matter. I don’t have unlimited access to the internet and it’s not really handy to go search for information in an internetcafe because that would become quite expensive in the end with all the printing and stuff. Either way, I am definitely convinced already of the urge of fundraising for whichever project I’m going to choose so you’d better get yourselves ready for me asking for money :).

When I was on my way home in a Rikki’s cab two gentleman got in with me and told me there was another powercut. And unfortunately it was still there when I got home, so I went to the little place around the corner to get a light lunch and not too long after that I received a call that my beetle was on the way. I will try my first run today, will have to take it slow with all these slopes and the hot sun burning! (and yes, I got burnt… well at least I won’t forget to put on sunscreen anymore lol).

Another fear factor is the prof. Today we did rounds. There were three other surgeons, the ward sisters went along, Jeanine also dropped by so we were with quite a large group of people. The prof examined all the patients and decided on the following interventions. To see by their faces and the reactions, even the surgeons felt like medical students again when they were asked questions. Other than that, the prof is a very nice man and he is supposed be brilliant. I guess brilliant comes with lack of communication skills in certain situaties in many people. Still, there were also plenty of jokes and I think it’s almost impossible not to like and most importantly, respect the prof. I saw a few patients today and got to go home again around 13.00. This afternoon will be spent in the pool with Leo and Charlotte. The beetle by the way did stutter some times when just started but other than that I think it will serve me good in the coming four months! The plans for this week are not too big, but I hope to be able to walk with Leo and maybe some others to Lion’s Head and watch the sun set over the sea from there. It is time to go and see more of Cape Town and get out of beautiful but comfy Bantry Bay. Other than that I will watch a few surgeries and treat my patients. So far it is so much fun to practice with these kids, because you can insert a certain amount of play in your treatment. In the end you do everything to get them to smile!

On Wednesday we went to the Lokshin Suppaclub, which sounds like a fancy club like it is in Holland but in Cape Town it’s a project of three South Africans who grew up in the townships. They love to cook and want to share their way of living with the world if possible, so three evenings a week they invite people to come over for dinner. It was really great to just dig in and eat with your hands haha! After dinner they did a sketch to show what is becoming a bigger and bigger problem: the huge gap between two generations. One who wants to hold on to traditions and heritage, and one who wants to forget about that and only live life to the modern standards. They wanted to create an opportunity to discuss this and life in general. We had three girls and a couple from the U.S., two French people, two from the U.K, two from Muizenberg which is near to Cape Town. There was a guy from Cape Town who also grew up in a township and then ofcourse there were our hosts. It is almost impossible to describe this experience, we had a great night discussing and talking and we said goodbye as good friends: we gave each other a hug that although I have spent a lot of time with ‘huggers’ over the past few years, was kind of new to me. This night we slept with the windows open and I haven’t been thinking about what could happen for one minute… Funny how a few kind people can change your mindset!

I’ve been here for a week now and the main thing on my mind is the contradictions you see, hear, feel and experience everywhere you go. There will definitely be more on that in following messages.. for now: thanks for reading, and stay tuned.