Hi everyone and thank you for all your messages and texts, its always great to read them and make home seem not so far away.
Ok, lets crack on........................
2nd July- 12th July,
Hospital report: been on Oncology ward at Red Cross Hospital for a while now and its nice to get to know the children but it also makes it harder in some ways. However i have now moved onto Palletive care which is more involved with babies, changing nappies, comforting, ensuring discharge bags are given out, monitoring babies alertness and giving special attention to babies who have no visitors or who are dyeing. Its though for me as you know i'm not too experienced in this area but hey, i'm doing it! Had a hard day today emotionally as a very badly facially deformed baby took a turn for the worse and i was asked if i didn't mind sitting and comforting the baby, until the parents arrived. The baby had cleff palate, an exposed eye totally on the left side (basically no skin covering the structure of the face) trachi, along with drips, pump drives and loads of equipment. The baby's breathing was slowing down and we didn't think he would stay alive until the parents arrived as it would take them about 3 hour to get from their home. They had not seen the baby in 2 weeks and when they left he was doing ok. They have to leave as they can not afford to stay and they will lose everything if they don't work or leave others at risk if they are not at home. Sad reality of being here. Due to the decreasing condition of the baby the Rev proceeded to Baptize to ensure it was done before it was too late. This was very had to witness and even though im not really religious you just hope it may comfort the baby or the family. Felt a bit numb after that. Then just to top the day off we had a meeting about social care and sexual assault on children!
Ok moving on.................................
As above on the 4th July Claire and i when down to Muzenburg for a surf lesson, it was such fun and we laughed all the time. I stood up and i have been down for 3 more lesson since as got a deal, not to be missed. The same day we were invited to a 4th July party by some American Med students, Claire had met at the hospital and i have meet one night before. They are all really nice and we took the mic out of them all the time for 'high 5's' and anything American do that we think is rubbish. Naturally we took union jack flags just to stamp our mark on the day of independance! It was a great party and the house was like out of the films, every room as a Jacuzzi bath, swimming pool etc, hence i had a bath and we have been back since. (we are not allowed baths at the lodge as it uses too much water) so it was great! Picture of Jason, Craig, Claire, Me, Andrass plus others who i carn't remember their names. There was about 50 people there!
8th July
Went on the tour of the Townships and Robbin Island, which was where Nelson Mandela was for a lot of his sentencing. Both were eye opening and seeing real places people live in some of the worse conditions you can imagine is hard, but you can understand why they take drug and drink. On the tour we went into a local pub, which is usually men only as the women seem to do everything while the men sit about getting drunk. Women look after the children, work, cook, dig, or do everything needed to maintain some living. There is a picture of the pub, but you drink the 5 day fermented beer out of an old dulux paint can and pass it around! The smell was horrible, this was mainly due to the fact that they cook sheep heads and eat them near by. There are some photo's of this. We then saw different type of housing and spoke to some of the children, who like to pose for photo's. Moving on next to a Church service in one of the town ships. It was really up lifting as it was a Gospal church, so lot of singing, clapping, dancing and welcoming us in to the service. I could have stayed there for the hole thing but we had to go to the Waterfront to catch the ferry to robin island.
