Research and School

This week has gotten long. This has been the week that the school has finally started to pick up, but I am so out of practice at this point that it is hard to just dive into it. This week the proposal for my final project was due, as was a big project for my community health class. The workload here definitely picks up at the end. I am writing my community health paper about African masculinities and multiple concurrent partners as forwarding the Aids crisis. It is really interesting stuff, and there is a lot of really cool innovative research being done with it.

On a more stressful note, my final practicum is finally coming together, albeit slowly and painfully. I started out looking at a practicum in a TB ward, but the project advisors here, after approving my project every step of the way, 4 days before the proposal was due decided that it would be too dangerous and that I shouldn’t do it. Instead I am now going to be doing a practicum on emergency care in an ER. I am getting excited for it, but it has made this week pretty crazy in terms of doing a whole other set of research. It doesn’t help that this program doesn’t really have many research tools, a slow internet connection is about all that there is. I am expecting to do more research when I get on site thought, there is a full medical library at Ladysmith hospital where I will be working.

Other than school, life here goes on. I am living in the Windemere on the beach, which is beautiful. Only another week in Durban, then I am off to Ladysmith!

Sala Kashe

-Ben

Impedle and the Beach

My second round of rural homestays was pretty awesome. I went to Impendle, back in the Drakensburg Mountains. I stayed in a larger house with Karthik, our homestay mama, and our little sister who was about 5, who was mama’s grandchild. The first day we got there, we went to bed at about 7.30 when mama went to bed. The next morning we were woken up at 5AM by mama, who bustled into our room and gave us coffee. We had a huge farm breakfast of egg sandwiches and porridge, and headed out to start our day. We went and met our co-ordinator for the weekend. She was a hippie American lady in her late 20s who kind of came to South Africa about 7 years ago and never left. She took us to plant some trees at a school, thinking that it would be a great community building experience. We split into groups and I ended up at a high school, digging holes for peach trees while the students watched. I did some serious manual labor digging tree holes, and was rewarded with a nice set of blisters (they don’t use gloves here when using pickaxes).

The students did help when we started planting some veggie seedlings into the ground, which was nice. We then headed to a primary school and saw the students do a fantastic traditional dance routine. Afterwards we headed to lunch and saw some more dancers. We got back home at about 5 and I was so tired that I slept until dinner at 7.

The next day, we headed to a series of lectures at a local clinic. We heard from a community volunteer and the head nurse of the clinic, both talking about their work in the community. Afterwards we talked to a Sagoma (traditional healer) in her practice and heard about some of her work and what she treats in the community. She actually records the patients that she treats, and shares her logs with the nearby clinic. She also refers patients to the clinic, and was very adiment that traditional healers needed to work with western doctors and clinics.

We were then taken to some crafters in the area, which got uncomfortable. They toted out all of their wares and no one really wanted to buy anything or had much money on them, so we just kind of stood there and all looked at each other. They also had increased the prices drastically for our arrival. We then went to visit the commune where Sam (the hippie lady) lives. It was just like being home in Eugene for the afternoon.

I thought that Sams role in this community was very interesting. She had lived there for a while, and was attempting to do good in the community, but she didn’t really seem to have a great interaction with the community or important community members such as the inkosi (chief).

We came back to Durban on Thursday and moved into a set of flats right on the beach. The view is amazing, and the beach is fantastic. The weekend has been spent trying to figure out my study project for the next month, and finishing up other various assignments that are all due within the next few days.

On Sunday, however, I did get out to a wonderful market, where I walked around and looked around. I found some really nice wood carvings and some other cool stuff. This week should be pretty hectic, everything seems to be coming down to the wire school-wise.

Wish me luck!

Sala Kashe,

-Ben

Rural Areas Round 1

Hey all! I have just gotten back from my first rural homestay, in Imontekulu, which is about an hour north of Durban along the coast. I had a great homestay family that I got along with very well. I stayed with Mama Siyabonga, sister Mbali, Baba, and 4 younger siblings, two boys and two girls, the oldest of whom was about 12. The area we were in was pretty rural, there were fields of sugar cane as far as the eye could see.

We were there to follow community health workers, basically community members who are given a small monthly stipend and educate the community about TB/HIV as well as basic health and sanitation practices. The first day we got there we followed our sister as she went around to various houses and talked to people. They all seemed to be interested in the information that she was presenting, it was always kind of a to-do, with everyone gathering around and listening and asking questions. I was able to pick up bits and pieces of the conversations (they were all in Zulu) and the information was pretty standard, but given the hygene and dietary practices of many of the places we visited, was definitely needed.

We quit at about 11, after about 3 hours of walking, because it got too hot, and then we went with Baba to go pick up the children at school. We picked up what felt like the entire neighborhood in the back of the truck, and then headed back home. The roads were so bad that we could only go about 8 miles an hour, but it was fun to talk to Baba and see the countryside. We got back and ate. We ate obscene amounts of food there, probably about 5 square meals per day plus tea and snacks.

There was no power or running water, so we hauled water in the afternoon in Baba’s truck. We went into town to another of Baba’s daughter’s house for dinner, and to watch Generations!

We also followed Mama on her rounds, which was a little more intense. We visited a lot more houses, and Mama checked prescriptions and talked to people about TB/HIV/AIDS. It got ridiculously hot out, and we called it a day at about 11. After lunch I went exploring the neighborhood with my little brothers, they showed me the cane fields, and where the cows are pastured, and where the store was. It was interesting to see where and how a good deal of the population here lives. Today I am headed to a different rural area up north, to talk to Sangoma’s (traditional medical practitioners) and see a more mountainous rural area. Wish me luck!

Sala Kashe

-Ben

Shaka Zulu Day and Life at Cato Manor

Hey all! It has been a while since the last post, but the days here are just flying by. Last Thursday was a fun day, it was Heritage Day to celebrate SA heritage. The holiday pre-Appartide was called Shaka Day, and it falls on the day that Shaka Zulu, the most famous Zulu king, died. We went to the beach for the holiday, which was cold and windy. All of the families went and so we had a huge Braai by the beach in the cold. It was still fun though, and I was able to meet a lot of the other student’s homestay families.

On Friday we had some interesting health lectures, and Friday night we went to the shebeen and hung out around our houses.

Saturday, I ran errands with my neighbor. We went to a really interesting market with some beautiful woodwork and pottery, and from there to a mall and a bulk foods store so that he could do his shopping. My neighbor is one of very few men around cato, and has an adorable little boy. He is about 3-4 and we all call him “boy”. He is like my Mama’s grandchild, always running around our house, and my brothers love to play with him. He calls me Bhudti cnami, which is “little brother” in Zulu. (I am the little brother because my brother Brian is older than I am, so he is “big brother”.

I had a great time cruising around with my neighbor, it is nice to just ride around a city and see the sites from a car window sometimes. After I got back, I went with some friends to Gateway, the largest mall in the southern hemisphere. It was pretty huge, I was never sure quite where we were. I went with some of my friends from the neighborhood and a couple of their nephews, who were about 7. We went to an arcade with them and watched them ride bumper-cars, which I hadn’t done in a long while.

When we got back to Cato, I ended up hanging out outside some ones house, chilling with the locals. I met some interesting people, including a bunch of students from Jo-berg who were visiting relatives.

Sunday I got invited by my bhuti Brian to an expo that he was working at in town. I went and it was like an open trade show, with all kinds of businesses and industry representatives in a huge convention center. It was fun, but after a couple of hours I tried to use the public transit system to get home. It was quite the adventure, I got a little bit lost and when I finally got onto the correct minibus, it promptly pulled out from the curb and ran smack into another minibus! Our driver got out and decided that our bus wasn’t damaged too badly, then got back in and took of. The other bus was pretty smashed up though. It was interesting, because what would have been a long involved process with insurance and exchanging information in the States took like 3 minutes here, because the driver didn’t want to loose our fare.

The rest of this week has just gone plugging along. It is a fairly long week, just in terms of seat time. I get to class at 7.30 and don’t get home until about 6, so it is just a lot of seat time. None of the material is extremely challenging, but it I do kind of get a little bit of cabin fever from being inside for so long.

This weekend should be exciting, we are headed to the Drakensbergs to hike and camp, and then we head to our rural homestays for the better part of two weeks. The Drakensbergs have some of the oldest cave art in the world, so I am really exited to get out and into the countryside and get a little bit of scenery in.

I have also tentatively decided on a research topic for my Independent Study Project. I think that I am going to look at barriers to accessing treatment among Zulu men in a rural area. I am a little bit torn between that and doing a Practicum in a rural TB clinic. I am withholding judgment until I have seen the rural areas, but as of now that is the direction that I am going.

Hope you are all well,

Sala Kashe,

-Ben