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"And what do you do?"

Dr Adam, my boss, is drawing to a close. It will soon be my turn to speak. I feel a little self-conscious – as far as I can tell the room is full of grisly seasoned medical managers and rural doctors with decades of experience. I’ve been here for 6 months. We are at the annual RuDASA conference – the Rural Doctors Association of South Africa. My boss and I have been asked to say a few words about “being recruited” by Tracey, the dynamic recruiter of the Rural Health Initiative.

I am suddenly aware that a photographer is aiming his lens at me for a profile shot. In my day-dreaming I fear I may have lost the look of rapt attention that an employee should always display when listening to his employer. My face rallies quickly – but not I fear, in time for the shutter.

I rabbit on for a few minutes about my “experience of being recruited.” How I was sitting at my desk in March 2006 attempting to write my PhD thesis and wondering at what point I wandered off the track of “what I wanted to do” to “what I ought to do” and how to get back. How stumbling onto the Rudasa website led me to the Rural Health Initiative site. How 4 minutes after I hit “send” the phone rang and the energetic and unmistakeably South African voice of Tracey Hudson demanded exactly when I was planning to come. How the same voice cajoled me through my sluggish efforts at filling in the necessary forms and bulldozed through my intermittent second thoughts.

I decide on balance not to tell them how, on meeting Tracey’s husband, I – Prince Philip like – asked, “What do you do?” He politely told me he was “in finance.” Only later did I discover that Andrew Hudson is a famous South African cricket legend. But hell, I would have asked the same thing of the entire English cricket team.

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