Skip to main content

It's not all work, work, work.

I am away in the UK for a couple of weeks. Flicking back through these entries (and boy, some of them are long-winded - did you really read them or did you "skip to the end"?) I fear I may have misled you. My life in South Africa is not, as the balance of my writing might imply, one of entirely selfless dedication to others. This country is after all, one of the most beautiful and varied in the world. If you were sitting with me in the lounge I would whip out my laptop and inflict upon you the 25,000 photos I appear to have taken on my weekend jaunts. Instead (and I no doubt hear you cry "mercifully") I give you half a dozen highlights. Until a fortnight. Sala kahle.

Approaching the Drakensberg.


In the Drakensberg mountains with Dr Tom (centre) and Dan, an elective student (right).


Hippos in the St Lucia Wetlands National Park.


The Umngeni Valley Nature Reserve - looking down from the crags to the river. Excuse the knees - photographic composition dogma required a foreground.


Crossing the swing bridges in the Mkuze Game Park Fig Forest.


A herd of antelopey things - impala I think but I don't know and you don't care. Mkuze Game Reserve.


Ostriches having sex at the Umfolozi River Lodge. Not beautiful but certainly varied. The accomodation for humans was apparently better than this.

Comments

non-dla said…
Hello, very interesting web page. I'm just finishing my F2 in UK and am interested in working in SA. Just wondered if you wouldn't mind my asking how much postgrad experience you had before going to SA?
9 July 2007 at 18:32
Ed Moran said…
I had a fair degree of postgrad experience but there are many UK docs working in SA with less - including some with 2 or 3 years. With the new training system I am sure there will be many more as there will no longer be the freedom to be an SHO for 2 or 3 years after hous jobs. Happy to speak to you about it. Go to the Rural Health Initiative web page (www.rhi.org.za) and email Tracey Hudson who can give you my phone number (or else let me know your email address).

Ed
9 July 2007 at 18:36
non-dla said…
Thanks for your reply. I've been in touch with Tracey who's been very helpful. However, the phone number that she's given me doesn't seem to work so I think it will have to be email. My address is nondla@googlemail.com

Noni
12 July 2007 at 22:31
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Abscess

The phone rings. I am lying on the sofa in the dark squinting at the laptop screen: someone has lent me series 1 of Spooks. I struggle up and bump across the room to the phone. “Hello?” “Moran!?” “Yebo.” “How are you?” “I am fine.” “I am fine too.” And then those four dreaded words. “Please hold for maternity.” The line goes dead for a second and then a midwife comes on the line. “Moran?” “Yes.” “How are you?” “I am fine. “I am fine too. I have a 22 year old primip. She is in labour but I cannot do a PV. She has a Bartholin’s abscess.” I ask a few intelligent questions and then, pausing only check what exactly a Bartholin’s abscess is (an abscess of the Bartholin’s gland apparently) I head for maternity. On arriving I am taken to the woman concerned and, yes, sure enough there is a large abscess in the position that I imagine a Bartholin’s gland might sit if I knew exactly what it was. “I cannot do a PV to check the cervix because it is too painful.” The abscess blocks the way. “Right.
1 comment
Read more

10 years on

The door flies open. Lele peers in. "You must come out here and see. They are doing a play!" I finish up my case file annotation and come to the doorway. The waiting area is in chaos. A gang of school children are manhandling a couple of marimba's to the space in front of the consulting rooms, a team of nurses and counsellors are creating a stage area. Patients look on mutely. Some with interest, others - presumably feeling proportionately less well - without. "What is going on?" I ask. "It is 10 years since the clinic started. 10 years since MSF first started the HIV treatment programme and proved that it could be done in Africa. So the staff are celebrating. They are doing a show or something." The sister in charge of the clinic has moved to the front of the crowd of patients. She calls for silence and then gives a short introduction. Lele translates for me. "She is saying that this is a very important day. 10 years ago people were dying. And 10
3 comments
Read more

Ceza Hospital

I am woken with a jolt. The 4-wheel drive has left the tarmac and we are on dirt road. I look ahead into the hills – the road wends its way high up into the distance. “How far?” I ask Amos, our driver. “About 40km.” I settle back and watch as the settlements become less and less pseudo-bungalows and more and more mud rondavels. The road to Ceza It was about a month ago that our medical manager first mentioned that we had been asked to help out at Ceza Hospital – a remote rural hospital about 2 hours away. Its medical staff (only 8 at the best of times) had been steadily departing and only one remained. He was leaving at the end of May and they were desperate. Desperate enough to accept help from us. As I said – a month ago – but it was only last Thursday that I found myself agreeing to go. Two of the others had been that week. I phoned them to ask what it was like. “There are no words to describe it,” said Nomfundo, “speak to Dr Kekana.” Dr Kekana comes on the line and after humming an
3 comments
Read more