Grant goes to Canada - January 21 to February 10, 2006
This page is in the process of being finished
Introduction
Johnny's side:
The animal life is changing all the time - when Grant went I vowed that I would have lunch in the Park and look at the animals then. I have done so on a lot of occasions and have found a good place to go that is near to the bridge and accessible and dry but not overlooked by passers-by and where there is somewhere I can walk about a bit and not be in danger nor shouted at. So I drive there as soon as possible after the morning session ends and start my packed lunch which was good whilst Pauline (Patsy’s mother) made it and now that Patsy (co-director at Wildlife Camp) is making it, it is good and large too. I generally give away the muffins or the cake to Jess and Mr Ngoma at the Park Gate rather than feed the obesity.
At the end of the road to Mbulungwa lagoon is a ramp that takes one down to the level of the lagoon and then on under various trees. As I drive along the road I can survey the whole area. On one occasion I saw hippos, zebra, puku, impala, warthogs, giraffe, egrets, geese and lilac breasted rollers, and an elephant or ten walked past. On another occasion there were at least twenty hippos all out eating in the lagoon for about twenty minutes and then they all disappeared. The last time I was there I saw one egret and that's all. And it's just as variable at home - for the last few days we have had an invasion of elephants both on our shore of the river and on the other on the Park side. They come to eat and bathe. It's the bathing that's fun - an elephant gambolling in the water is a ridiculous sight and hardly compares with a lamb running about in the meadows. There is a lot of acting and fooling about with the youngsters pushing and squirting the others and throwing themselves onto their sides with an amazing splash. They go out quite deep and then disappear under the water with only their trunks above and stay there for minutes on end. A bathing session lasts up to two hours and the hippos just have to move off.
There is the sweetest little suitcase of a hippo that is a bit upstream from the house, not the one that was there when grant was here but a really tiny thing, that comes out each night with its mother. It's really growing fast and is almost loveable. The giraffe are a real pest on the road into town and down to Flatdogs and hang about for ages till they deign to get off - their height does give them an advantage when wanting to look disparagingly down their noses. The weaver birds on the way to Kapani are getting on with their nest building in a very quiet methodical way in a thorn tree overhanging a pond - Philemon (waiter and trainee guide at Wildlife) tells me that they do this to keep snakes at bay. But he also tells me that they are the same weaver bird species that is building on the right side of the road just before hitting the T-junction but I am not sure he's correct as they are the noisiest birds in the park - constantly squeaking and complaining. When I am not in a hurry I will stop and try to identify them correctly. The birds are truly magical now - I think there are more and Philemon again tells me that is so and that the seed eaters are breeding now for the good times about to come. There are European storks that fly down to the water meadow in front of the house - about twenty or thirty at a time. I have seen a Widah (huge long dippy tail) and some really fancy red things that I can't identify.
The scenery changes day by day - I think Grant won't recognise the place when he gets back - apart from the winter thorns that still are bare. There are still trees with blossom and some lovely smells (though hippo scent marking does tend to dominate!). I have been to Nkwale Camp on two occasions and on both times I have been sure that the road is not the right one. The roads are not too bad because there has not been much rain nor traffic but we are still using the diversion to get to Wildlife. The car is not much good in mud once one is stuck as there is no diff-lock even in four wheel drive low gear. I got stuck in Fil's drive when I went around for dinner and ran off the gravel - pathetic! There are yellow-flowering bushes by the road to the camp and a beautiful Aquilegia type flower in the bush that I have cut and put in a glass along with some grasses.
Socially life is good - I've been to dinner with Derek and Sarah and Debs came too. She is very amusing. If we do manage to go on a walking safari I would like to go with her. Derek and Sarah are a beacon of decency and innovation in this rather odd society. I went for dinner with Fil and Pam Guhrs (ex Vic, nee Carr) came too. As an artist she's a free spirit. Fil, whose father was Paul Steinitz, was very pleased to get the gift of the Russell Collection CD. Pam had never heard music quite so chromatic as one of the pieces and sat transfixed. I've been on two occasions to Nkwale - once for sundowners when I got horribly lost (mainly due to uncertainty that I was truly on the correct road but also due to the enormous numbers of elephants that night. I got trumpeted at on two occasions by an elephant hiding behind a tree - a grey elephant in the dusk is truly invisible especially when one is trying not to get stuck in the mud) and the other time for a Sunday lunch-cum-poker party. The food and nibbles are always good there but it's all a bit unreal and old world and colonial. And I have been to dinner at Patsy's and Herman's for a leg of lamb and lots of other goodies. There seems to be the habit of taking ones own supplies of drinks to these do's - at P and H's that's what one drank, at Jo's it went into the general pool. I will lay in stocks but I do find that the stocks of beer do go down in a disconcerting manner in the evenings - I am now limiting myself to one Mozi when alone per day. We can pay the bar bill with a credit card - that's a relief.
Yesterday there was an accident at the airport - a 'plane carrying fourteen workers landed before the runway. I was at the clinic when I was called - about nine thirty. I had seen the really ill in-patients so I abandoned the place to Christine and drove like mad up the road to the airport. I couldn't get through on the radio as I drove like a madman to tell them to do various degrees of sorting and to ask to be met. At the airport everything was really quiet but a passenger told me the accident was accessible through the road that we took to go to Immigration. So down I drove - name taken and directed to the scene - 'plane still in the bush, fire out, spectators and mourners a real pest and a nice man in charge - no point in staying there when there were ten really seriously injured persons already evacuated. So back up to the base to the medical rooms - ten persons in varying degrees of shock awaiting me in a buzz of noise and little confusion - Gid Carr (because she was at the grinding mill) and Pam were already there so in my inimitable bossy way I took over - commandeered Pam to do the scribing and labelling, Gid to get things done when I left and got a bearer to bag-carry and deliver drips, dressings and drugs to the beds as appropriate while I did the triage. The first few were shocked and faking their injuries - well perhaps they were stoical enough but they had no injuries that would have caused unconsciousness and did not have vital signs consistent with the supposed degree of illness. When the girl with an amputated right arm was found to have it stuffed down her dress one smelled a rat. THEN ONE SMELLED THE PRESENCE OF TOMATO KETCHUP AND OF BEANS IN TOMATO SAUCE (when ground and applied to the scalp they do make a very good likeness of scrambled brains) - it was an exercise! So I got into the swing of things now - bossing Immigration officials about, telling people to check the patients five minutely etc etc. Most people kept it up quite well for the two hours concerned. Two nurses came from Kamoto Hospital - about 20Km - they were so convinced that seeing the drips and the orders by the beds they actually inserted cannulae into two actors. I stopped them from using my precious morphine that I had laid out for use as if it were really given - it did show that it was quite realistic, and it showed me that the meagre supplies of drugs such as morphine that is mine is not enough for an event such as this. To-day there was a de-briefing session to which I went. It is a Zambian Airports and an international requirement that there is a drill at least every two years - this is the first since the airport became international. I think they did very well. The actors were superb - one crowd was detailed to be bystanders and mourners - they were really problematic to the police who did not know how to handle them, one fainted and had to be resuscitated in the triage room. As part of the job in St Andrews we had to do this sort of drill and it is, of course, part of Police Surgeon work - if there is no other medic or if skills to keep people alive are needed our duties lie with the living first but if there is a plethora of that sort of help we have to take charge of the dead - I was once at an accident where there were three bodies with heads but seven arms! - YUK !!
I think it has stood the LSA in good stead having had a good response and a good exercise - I now have to write my observations about the incident and the medical problems as I see them for the LSA medical committee and the next doctor.
The clinic has had its ups and downs - the downs are due to terrible derelictions of duties such as when not remembering an overnight dose of quinine to be given to an extremely ill boy with cerebral malaria whom Cecilia admitted despite the boy being far too ill for us and despite his transfer to Kamoto having been discussed I found her doing some obscure administrative chore when the boy was almost gasping his last next door - "oh I forgot and Mr Tembo came to tell me that I had not remembered" - so she knew - not good enough and I said so. That boy had an amazing mother - an ordinary peasant woman, a female version of Mr Banda of the baskets fame, who had been on a nursing course, who had taken it in and applied it to what was in front of her. He lived because of her and not because of the nurses. Another instance was when I had arranged for the transfer of a child to Kamoto - again severe malaria - Annie couldn't be bothered to give her the permission and letter to go there - I don't know whether she lived - Annie was also told that it was not good enough and had incurred my displeasure. But on the positive side we have done a lot of good and got a lot of people better - the malaria is terrible at present.
Still no water at the clinic but we manage - it's Paul's job to pursue it but if he does or doesn't I don't know. We were absolutely mobbed at an Under Fives clinic on Wednesday. Christine coped with Friday by herself all morning but I was back for the afternoon (and finished very late) and again to-day Christine was on her own Regina having been summoned to Chipata on Thursday morning for Thursday's meetings. Again we didn't finish till late but it was all so good willed and fun that I didn't mind. It would have been different with others there. Cecilia is off having been on night-duty last week and is away at a funeral in Lusaka - whether she will be back in time on Monday is anybody's guess. Martha is better and another woman now that she is so - it was drug resistant malaria - worrying.
I went to Kamoto about ten days ago - it was a lovely run. The road goes through flat countryside first that is significantly more fertile than here or maybe productivity is better because of no hippos and no elephants. Then it goes over a range of hills and down again - I was anticipating that it would go up and stay up. The other side of the hill is also different in crops and appearance - better than here. Mamwe, the town in which Kamoto is placed is Nowhere'sville, almost as ugly as Mfuwe. We went to the District Offices to see the boss and collect supplies that are not part of the normal kit and then we went on to Kamoto Hospital which is about a couple of Km out of town. It is lovely - bankrolled by the Reformed Church in Holland but part of the Zambian health care system - I can see how Dr Tshibumbu copes - it functions without him as there is an order and pride in the place. It is still basic but it's a credit. I had had a lot of hints from Cecilia that a trip would be a good thing and I resisted. It really is not our job to prop up a rotten drug delivery system by "private" activity. But then I got nagged by the Admin staff to go and see Dr Tshibumbu so I went. I thought it would be a good chance to have a day to talk with Cecilia about her strengths and weaknesses and to see how I could help etc - a trip in a car is a great opportunity to have a captive conversation. Maybe she was scared of that, maybe it was just for the ride or maybe there was a legitimate reason for it but Paul came too. That ruined it till I decided that whatever his presence did in discomfort to me it could be seen as support for Cecilia so I went for the jugular after all. I think Cecelia has no insight at all to her behaviour and its effect on others. I also came to the Machiavellian conclusion that if I were a spineless administrator, as there is good evidence - two of the nurses at Kakumbi Clinic are over establishment and have been transferred to the neighbouring clinic which is designated to be the larger centre but they have refused to go and so they stay at Kakumbi and the government continues to pay them; one of the inspecting team that came to Kamoto was at the Administrative centre and drunk at nine in the morning. I gather he is an habitual drunk and is not sacked - spineless! No hope for getting rid of Cecilia and Paul unless they steal or leave to go to greater things - they are unpromotable, they show no talent that would qualify them for a better job and the harm they do is in some respects mitigated by the likes of me and the rest by donations and support from the lodges. In conversation with Jo Pope she tells me that since Cecilia arrived the development of services has stopped and she has given up working with them/her.
The weather has been really odd with tremendous heat in the afternoons and humid too - every morning is a bit overcast and the clouds gather and nothing happens and the nights don't get cool till about one o'clock - I sleep with the fan despite the noise as it allows me to get under the sheet to escape the mosquitoes. They have been really bad but I have discovered a spray of pyrethrum that one uses in the net and in the room before going to bed and it helps a bit. Got bitten by a bloody tsetse fly that had hitched a lift on a ZAWA truck that brought a patient to the clinic - got it though before it injected anything nasty.
Grant's side:
This has been an epic saga. It has occupied a great deal of Grant's time during this week - to be finished sometime!
Go back to the main page of Grant and Johnny's trip to Zambia
Go back to the main page of Grant's Personal Pages
