Goodbye... Hello!

On Thursday I met my new roommates-to-be: Caroline and Melanie from Switzerland. They are also physiotherapy students, from the sister school from Thim van der Laan in Utrecht. From this evening I could already tell we are going to have a lot of fun…

I have decided to shorten my stories (I hear a lot of people thinking: Thank God!!! right now, haha), because I have been doing a lot and there is just no time to write everything down. Besides, I don’t think you are waiting for another story about how I went out for dinner. So… the weekend I spent on Boulders Beach between the penguins and from there I drove around the Cape Peninsula and took Chapman’s Peak drive, an awesome road with the mountains on one side and the sea at the other. Quite a thrilling drive! On Sunday I went to the little market on Longstreet with Charlotte, there is so much to buy and so little luggage space…

I went to Two Oceans Aquarium on Monday. Quite similar to Sea Life in Scheveningen, just cheaper and looks better. Been there, done that… on Tuesday went to the pool with Charlotte and got sunburned! South Africa is not a country where you can forget to take your sunscreen with you.
On Wednesday I spent the day at the hospital, working on some administration and playing with the children since I’m not allowed to work when there’s no other physio there (liability). Thursday: ordinairy working day (although no day is ordinairy with the kids!). We said goodbye to Charlotte who was flying home that night. One by one people are coming and going, which I suppose is part of any study-/working time overseas.

On Friday the girls moved in and in the evening I took them to the little romantic square where Karien and her mother had taken me earlier for dinner. We had a very nice evening and went to bed after this because the next day we would go hiking up Table Mountain and we had to get up around 6.30. Although we are all typical women we were at the beginning point right on time and we even had to wait some time for the others to arrive. Eventually we did this with a group of twelve people: Brad and Megan, Luke, Chris, Wesley, Rob, Linda, Annaline, Heidi, Melanie, Caroline and me (sorry guys if I’m spelling any names incorrect!). First five are South African, Rob is from Ireland and studies at Enschede, Holland, Linda and Annaline are from Germany, Heidi is Dutch, Mel and Caro are from Switzerland as you know and then me from Holland. A really nice group with a lot of new people to meet! It is so funny to hear all the different languages through each other. It took us a little more than two hours to get to the reservoir that is at the top of Table Mountain. Although some people think it is just some easy stairs that you climb all the way up, this is not really true. It is rather difficult and sometimes dangerous and we even had to climb rocks and ladders. The reward however when we got there was magic. The reservoir looks strangely beautiful with it’s red water and blindingly white sand. We took a long break with some food and a lot of swimming (prohibited - what sign?? I didn’t see a sign! J) and chilling in the sun. But who goes up, also has to come down again and the cable car was no option because we had left the cars at the beginning of the hiking trail which is at the other side of the mountain. So we took another two hours of excentric quads and glutes exercise, mixed with some rhomboideii and latissimus dorsi testing. It took a lot of strength from all of us and I had a lot of flashbacks to the partial ruptures of both my ankles but all the twists I made on this trail were not serious enough to cause any damage again. When we got down again around 13.30 I think it must have been, the German girls decided to go home and take a break and we took off to Llandudno beach with Chris, Wesley and Rob. The plan was to go meet Brad and Megan and the others later for a game of poker and a night out after that. We stopped for short lunch in Hout Bay and then spent a very nice few hours at Llandudno. We climbed the rocks that you can see on previous pictures and discovered all these hidden caves that Chris knew. Then we even played some beach volley for an hour or so with a few other people before we took our last ‘bodysurf’ and went home to get some rest and a shower. We blew off the pokerplan and decided to chill a little bit before we would go out to Longstreet. Where we had a crazy fun night, to be short and simple! Pictures will say enough.
The guys crashed at our place and we got a few hours of sleep before heading off to Beleza for a great breakfast. We drove back home and said our goodbyes before all taking some downtime. The fog is coming in from the sea, so we might have a few colder days ahead. Which is ok, because the past week has been extremely hot and although I like it, it’s not really fun to work in and even I get tired of all the sunshine sometimes… Besides, I’m hoping for something that will force me a little bit to stay inside and do some good work for my studies and for the hospital the next few days before Kijn arrives, because when she’s here things will become crazy for three whole weeks!

The working days were as usual, I am starting to get my routine here. Still I am a little bit sad when a patient leaves again, because most of the time it will be my favourite guy leaving. On Thursday I picked Kijn up from the airport, it was so good to see her! On Friday I held a short presentation at work about cerebral palsy for the nursing staff, which was fun. I have discovered that I like to do this very much (presentations and stuff) so that’s something to keep in mind. Saturday was for the foodmarket and for the bushcamp island at Rondevlei Nature Reserve. We were supposed to see the hippo’s that live there but unfortunately we only heard them! We had a lot of fun sleeping at the bushcamp anyway and on Sunday we took a drive around the Cape Peninsula, to Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope, along Chappies again to Hout Bay and we ended up at Clifton Beach.

Then on Wednesday evening we flew to Johannesburg where Rein picked us up (he is the father of a very good friend and lives in Jo’burg). Turned out he had booked us in a very nice guesthouse near his home! We spent Thursday in Soweto and Jo’burg centre and enjoyed a very nice braai in the evening at Rein’s and Ilse’s place. Friday morning early he dropped us of at the pick-up place for our Kruger safari. After a long but beautiful drive through Mpumalanga we arrived at our lodge just in time for lunch. We spent four days getting up very early, seeing the most amazing things, hearing the most amazing stories from the rangers that stayed over for dinner in our lodge and having a lot fun. These crazy and amazing days actually have me thinking of becoming a ranger one day myself… Everybody has to have a dream, right?

It’s been three weeks since my last story I think and I am feeling very tired right now. The time has come to really focus on my thesis right now and get a lot of paperwork done. This coming weekend we will do our last trip to Bloukrans Bridge where I am going to jump the highest bungeejump of the world. In the meantime, my mother has managed to open a bank account in order to finance my project for Maitland Cottage Home. As you know, I am writing my thesis about tuberculosis and the project will be to develop an information flyer for the parents of children suffering from this disease. They often end up with tuberculosis in their joints which has got a great deal to do with physio therapy of course! For this flyer I will also develop an exercise program that parents can do with their children to prevent them from getting too severe complaints and pain of their joints and the surrounding (often tightening) muscles. Interesting to know might be that tuberculosis is the nr. 2 death cause in South Africa… I will need money for the developing, printing and distribution of these flyers. The money that is left over after this will be donated to the physiotherapy department of Maitland Cottage Home, since there is no separate budget for them and the physio’s often end up paying for their materials themselves… Just to give an example of things that we actually need: good wheelchairs, good walking frames, therapeutical materials like balls, weights, orthopaedic shoes, and so on. As you can imagine, the wheelchairs alone are already a huge problem because they are so expensive.

So this is what I want to do: I will try to film all the ridiculous adventurous things I am going to do here, like the bungeejump. That will actually be the first action. I want to ask you to sponsor me for every meter that I jump, which is 216 meters in total. This means you can multiply the amount of money you want to give per meter by 216 and you already know what you will be paying… IF I jump of course! In return we will try to film this event and put the movie online. So if you, your friends and your family want to sponsor me, please put your name and the amount you want to pay per meter in a reaction to this story so that everybody can see who is helping me out here. I am hoping to see many responds of course! After I have put the movie online I will be requesting everybody to pay their sponsor amount. If you don’t need to see me jumping for money and want to donate money anyway, you can transfer the amount of your choice to account number 1394.59.111, name: I.L. Brand-Allema inzake Maitland Cottage Kaapstad, adress: Balkbrug.

Last but not least: I’ve opened a Facebook site as well. I don’t always have a lot of time to put the pictures online but when I do, there’s way more to see than there is on here due to limited picture space. Go to www.facebook.com and search for Heleen Brand, or heleen_brand@hotmail.com .

Pictures will follow a.s.a.p.!