Grant and Johnny’s Christmas and New Year and what came next!
Written Jan 27, 2007.
Christmas was lovely with haunting carols on the Luangwa bridge which leads into the South Luangwa National Game Park with drink and canapés, friends old and new and the sun setting as we sang. This year the river swirled darkly beneath us bearing mud and water bound for the Indian Ocean. We over-ate in grand style at Christmas but behaved well at New Year - (Hogmanay does need the dark and the cold to seem real) - and Johnny worked like a slave in between Christmas and New Year.
That’s when the cracks really started to open up at the clinic; before Christmas they were papered over and there was a semblance of good behaviour but it did not last. The boss played hooky and took off for a prayer meeting in Lusaka (odd that prayer - the power of which has always seemed a little hypothetical to me - should take precedence over doing a day’s work looking after “God’s people”!), the nurse on night duty worked at night and the other was on leave! So it was me and the dispenser/cleaner seeing the patients with a student translating and dispensing and me checking to see if any gross errors were made. Not good! And it has got no better except that we have made a plan of how to cope - one week with just Nurse Christine and me (and the student and the janitor/dispenser; next week with Annie (she’s pretty and that’s about all) and me and the student etc with no night duty being done at all as it is impossible to have someone working the night hours but then with that same member of staff recovering from working those hours, and still run a service. So, out of a complement of seven persons two work: one is pregnant and on sick leave, one is transferring to another district leaving her husband behind, the husband is also on staff but he hardly ever turns up to work, the cleaner-dispenser-maid of all work and best person of the lot of them is transferred to another station and Mr Ngoma does as best he can. It’s not sustainable; it provides a lousy service, it is resented by the staff and the public. And I don’t think it funny either. If it hadn’t been for the student who has volunteered to come to help me in exchange for half an hour’s teaching a day, I would also have been useless as there is always the language problem and no one else to translate.
The illnesses mount up - malaria and AIDS have a terrible toll - simple skin diseases cause vile abscesses so quickly - there seems to be so much unnecessary suffering and we have had no drug-delivery since the kit that came in November - we even have no antimalarials!! - and we don’t even have any gauze bandages - isn’t that criminal! What a tale of woe but that is the reality of illness and the health service in this country, There should be anti-malarials free from WHO in the “Roll Back Malaria” campaign but where are they? Why are they available to be bought in any tin-pot little shop but not for free in the clinics? - draw your own conclusions from that and the grubbier you think the better.
But there is good news too - Grant has been an absolute terrier and has got the clinic renovation project at the point when it is ready to start. Lots of plans have been drawn and redrawn and now we have all of the stipulations of the Health Department included (wheelchair access, separate facilities for women in labour that are visually separate from the clinic), the staff wishes (a separate toilet, outside lighting and security) and “ours” (a roof that doesn’t leak, rooms that have a purpose and a building that can be cleaned and then maintained clean and functional). The plans are on the net in Grant’s website. Grant goes to Chipata on Wednesday (31 Jan, 2007) to buy the materials and will come back the next day or Friday loaded with wood, corrugated iron sheets and nails and wash-hand basins - quite a change of occupation for a harpsichord builder!
We were going to be going to Chipata ourselves for this long weekend but the truck that I use for work is not up to it - we had misunderstood this terribly and were planning to go up to the very last minute when we had to cancel it. So we have had a weekend at home - lovely! I have slept more than I thought possible, read books and written letters that I just haven’t had time to do on the other days (nor the inclination to be honest after a hard, hot, sticky day’s work - see above!) On Friday we went out on a game drive with the guide at Kapani, the lodge where we are during the wet season whilst Flatdogs is closed. It was wonderful. Not that we saw an awful lot - it was great to be free, off-duty with no mobile ‘phone and no radio - we saw seven lions at scaryingly close quarters, zebras, giraffe, impala, phuku, warthog, cranes, mongoose, civets, jennets, hyenas, and elephants. That counts as a quiet night in the park!
Visits to the South Luangwa National Game Park
A game drive is a wonderful thing - we go out in an open-topped Landrover with ranks of seats raised above the back, a guide and a spotter, a cool-box of drinks, canapés, table and table-cloth and take four hours to go hardly any distance in stately style looking at whatever comes along and being informed about it by the guide. And the guides are incredibly well informed and knowledgeable and are seldom not able to come up with a plausible answer to even the most banal of questions. One gets the feeling that they love the animals, trees and plants and I think that the best of them does just that. Compared with going out by oneself it is another experience entirely - when we go out ourselves we tend to stick to smooth and reliable roads on which we will not get bogged down nor lost, when we see things we fumble for an identification or an explanation of behaviours that perplex. Going out by ourselves was what we did last weekend and we parked under a tree in the prettiest part we know and I read a book - Grant has been asked to put that picture up on the web too.
A great way to spend a Sunday!
It’s been a very wet year and the water level of the Luangwa River and the nearby lagoons is as high now in January as it was in March last year. The farmers have had enough rain and now need days of heat to dry up the fields and bring the crops on - I hope it happens. I gather that the difference that we see between this year and last is nothing very special but it would be a disaster if this pattern had anything to do with global warming and became established. We saw the BBC news this weekend for the first time since arriving seven weeks and it was reassuringly the same, not any better but not any different. That’s why I mention global warming as the Trade Talks in Davos were lead item in the news last night.
We had a visit from my brother Michael just after the New Year and had a good time with a lot of contact in the village and Michael commented that he left the area with a more of an intense impression of the human life than that of the the animals and nature - we have just the same experience of life here - the elephants and hippos that come by at night and make such a noise and uproot the plants along the pathway are background to the day-by-day involvement with people - that’s when the privilege of being here is felt.
A visit to Gaston's, William Phiri's and Roger's village
People here are no better nor worse off than elsewhere - life is harder and survival is more precarious than anything that one could imagine back at home - but people are immensely good-natured and philosophical and pragmatic and not many are beaten by the harshness. I have a fair number of people coming to see me with palpitations (and nothing to show for it), strange pains and weariness. I think these are probably psychosomatic symptoms of nothing more than hardship because they are often of only a fortnight’s duration and then they disappear. I am trying hard to look after our own psychological health and so far we are winning - I hope you are all reassured. More the next time I get a chance to get onto the computer - till then best wishes and A Happy New Year to all.
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