Wow, well the fun and games continue in the 'hectic' place of Cape Town!
Claire and Liz have now gone so a different social group has developed, not that i'm short of a friend or 25 in this place. One of the final picture of Claire and i on her "2nd" last night................long story so ill leave that for the road. (one with the pink scarf round us) We went out on Edward st, where most the SA people hang out not the tourists. Wow we had a great night and ended up on the beach at 3am, having a laugh.
The picture with Alex and i sticking out tongues out is from Claire '1st' leaving party, but the picture makes me laugh and i get on really well with Alex. She lives in NYC and volunteering at the Red Cross hospital, where we look forward to tea break to exchange our gossip.
The picture of Nina, Katrin (German girls, i now share a room with) and i dancing in a line was taken when we were having a silly moment, dancing to Queen, 'Crazy little thing called love' was so funny and reminded me of you Mum!
The two guy's on the picture are both called Craig, both paramedics, both really funny and we all exchange stories and stuff from the services. We represent USA, SA and UK so its quite interesting to see we all have in same dark humor and compare totally private health care USA, bit of both SA and the NHS of the UK.
I went out with the ambulance service here and i tell you what these guy's see in 2 days we see in a year at home. The first thing is the calls are all filtered really well so they only go out to real stuff, which is also matched to your skill level. Hence you use all you skills in a shift not just once per month. Trauma is high and the name of the game. Your very lucky if you can afford private health care as its in a different world to the state hospitals, but all the health care staff know there stuff, want to learn and are friendly, non of this 'oh i'm a doctor i don't talk to you LOWER staff!' if people can help they will and if they don't know they ask!
The first job i went out on was a body hit by a car on the motorway and the rest was trauma but an improvement on that as they were all alive! Picture at the top of the Ambulance Netcare (private service) at Blougburg where i went out with the crew, Mark and Craig. Had a good day and saw a lot, also did a bit of networking darling and could fix up a job, no problem!
Also the Red Cross hospital is going amazing, i feel so happy there, being emotional involved as well as the helping out in as many ways as possible.
We have meetings once a week on different topics and this week we talked about HIV/AIDS. Living with it, treatment and how people do not have the information and education available to understand how you can contract it or to prevent it. People seem to think if you have HIV/AIDS your going to die and this is not true. Also in SA if you tell your family you have it you are deserted and kicked out of all your social network. It is also the fact that the men can go off with any woman they like, whenever they like. If a woman does not let the man get his way they will be left with no food, shelter, family and often beaten. Its hard to explain with words on a page, to really feel the pain of this country you have to be here and see the corruption, politics, township living, lack of information and education.
In the talk a lady was there who told her story, out of respect for her im not going to post it, but lets just say it was 'life changing' and when she got up to leave i stood up and hugged her, breaking down in tears!
Powerful.
Anyhow, how are you all in the wet weather of the uk?
Well if it make you feel any better it been quite cold here too.
Oh yeh and i hired a car for my last two week here as the things i want to see now are further out of town. Been lucky so far my friends have had cars up to now. So hopefully see a bit of the garden route and plan a road trip or two.
Finally i made friend with a South African family, thought one of the paramedic so been sampling normal life here, it cool.
Better go but keep looking and contacting me as it's always good to hear from home.
Chow
