A rainy morning in Lusaka.
Outside my hotel window there is traffic noise, a cloudy sky, steady rain, wet pavements, a few piles of earth beside a hole someone has been digging. Not much different from Scunthorpe or Hull.
Then you see that someone is walking down the dual carriageway in between the two lines of traffic - selling papers, and that the trees are acacias and other exotic plants, and that none of the pedestrians is fat, and then you see that there are babies being carried on women's backs - and of course that all the people are africans- and you realise that you really have, after 1 short days travel, arrived in Southern Africa.
I know that i am now in a world where life is cheap, where a third of the patients that i will see in Kakumbi health clinic have HIV, where children will be dying regularly from easily curable diseases such as malaria and pneumonia, where the clinic will regularly run out of crucial drugs for epilepsy and diabetes, and where the ability to pay for transport to a hospital 4 hours away will make the difference between life and death. But, on the surface, the first impression is that everything is the same as England. The wifi works well, the card key in the hotel seems easier to use than in the UK, the immigration desk took electronic fingerprints for the paltry sum of $50, and the taxi drivers electronic passcard at the airport worked with no problem. Everyone is on their mobile as in the UK. And I have so far witnessed neither begging nor crime.
My hopes are that i will have an interesting and worthwhile stay during the next 3months. I will be on call 24/7 for the tourists and staff of the safari camps in the South Luangwa national park in South Eastern Zambia, not far from the border with Malawi. I expect that to be fairly routine, with the biggest issue being in cases which may need urgent specialist attention and where i will have make a decision and then do the admin for getting medevac done by air - mainly to Jo'burg. The tricky part of the job looks like being my role in helping out at the Kakumbi clinic where i will be trying to fit in with and help the local staff who are basically nurses who have done only a couple of years of training. Dealing with pretty sick people in a poorly resourced and probably dysfunctional setting with a group of African staff will be challenging and frustrating no doubt, but I hope it will also be worthwhile. Fingers crossed that I will be up to the challenge.
Outside my hotel window there is traffic noise, a cloudy sky, steady rain, wet pavements, a few piles of earth beside a hole someone has been digging. Not much different from Scunthorpe or Hull.
Then you see that someone is walking down the dual carriageway in between the two lines of traffic - selling papers, and that the trees are acacias and other exotic plants, and that none of the pedestrians is fat, and then you see that there are babies being carried on women's backs - and of course that all the people are africans- and you realise that you really have, after 1 short days travel, arrived in Southern Africa.
I know that i am now in a world where life is cheap, where a third of the patients that i will see in Kakumbi health clinic have HIV, where children will be dying regularly from easily curable diseases such as malaria and pneumonia, where the clinic will regularly run out of crucial drugs for epilepsy and diabetes, and where the ability to pay for transport to a hospital 4 hours away will make the difference between life and death. But, on the surface, the first impression is that everything is the same as England. The wifi works well, the card key in the hotel seems easier to use than in the UK, the immigration desk took electronic fingerprints for the paltry sum of $50, and the taxi drivers electronic passcard at the airport worked with no problem. Everyone is on their mobile as in the UK. And I have so far witnessed neither begging nor crime.
My hopes are that i will have an interesting and worthwhile stay during the next 3months. I will be on call 24/7 for the tourists and staff of the safari camps in the South Luangwa national park in South Eastern Zambia, not far from the border with Malawi. I expect that to be fairly routine, with the biggest issue being in cases which may need urgent specialist attention and where i will have make a decision and then do the admin for getting medevac done by air - mainly to Jo'burg. The tricky part of the job looks like being my role in helping out at the Kakumbi clinic where i will be trying to fit in with and help the local staff who are basically nurses who have done only a couple of years of training. Dealing with pretty sick people in a poorly resourced and probably dysfunctional setting with a group of African staff will be challenging and frustrating no doubt, but I hope it will also be worthwhile. Fingers crossed that I will be up to the challenge.
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