Home Sweet

So I have been home about a month and a half now, and am heartsick, I miss South Africa so much. My re-integration has gone in phases: at first I was completely overwhelmed and hid out in my friend's apartment in Boston, calling it a "flat", forgetting the Boston subway system, and freezing from the summer-to-winter switch. I reconnected with good friends, and faced the reality of joblessness in America head on. And ventured out of the flat bit by bit.

California felt good. Felt familiar. I have eaten Mexican food to my heart's content and enjoyed all my favorite drinks at all my favorite coffee shops. Yes, the materialism suffocates and the ignorance exasperates at times; As T.S. Eliot says, "We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

Being with the Gaddini fam made me never want to leave again, and yet I still feel the relentless tugging to go back overseas. "Chronic dissatisfaction" declares Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Perhaps I have a case of that? I've resolved to writing all the things I want to do, and all the places I want to live, on tiny slips of paper and dropping them in a box to hold them until I can get to them. That way I know they aren't going anywhere.

At any rate, I continue to explore my options, and slow myself down, remaining thankful for what I have today, and the ability to just pick up the phone and call my sister whenever I want.

Thanksgiving!

As sometimes happens, my birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year and I relished the fact that I was in a country that had no knowledge the latter and thus was able to focus entirely on the former. I spent the week cooking and baking (and am now suffering exhaustion as a result) but can proudly brag about cooking an entire Thanksgiving dinner myself -- and off crutches. An array of lovely friends joined me in celebrating and eating, making my 26th birthday a unique and memorable birthday -- one of the best, truly.

A week and a half to go, and nothing seems to be dying down in terms of my work here. The principal at the school where I have been delivering SV prevention declared a crisis in Grade R (Kindergarten) as the youngsters are "sexually active" and asked us to come in and help this week. Apparently some, or most, of the 52 kiddies are molesting each other while in the classroom, out on the playground, just about anywhere and no one noticed until now.

I also have to wrap up the evaluations on the programs I worked on, which will mean hours of tedious number crunching. Despite the mundanity, this week is the staff end-of-the-year party, complete with DJ and dancing. It is sure to provide unparalleled entertainment as some of the best dancers I have ever seen will take to the dance floor. The clinic is celebrating World AIDS Day is on Friday, and an outside speaker and choir are coming in to perform.

At the tail end of my immobilization (which is gladly over!) I voraciously read through a few notable books. One of them, When A Crocodile Eats the Sun, is written by the author of the quote that inspired my blog in the first place, Zimbabwean ex-pat Peter Godwin. It has truly all come full circle! Here are a few other quotes from the same book, the first one for anyone who has worked in the field of international aid:

"It's always instructive to observe the life cycle of the First World aid-worker. A wary enthusiasm blooms into an almost messianic sense of what might be possible. Then, as they bump up against the local cultural limits of acceptable change, comes the inevitable disappointment, which can harden into cynicism and even racism, until they are no better than the reside whites they have initially disparaged."

AND -- because now, at the end of my time here, I have developed an affinity and endearment toward South Africa:

"I feel like weeping. Weeping at the way Africa does this to you. Just as you're about to dismiss it and walk away, it delivers something so unexpected, so tender. One minute you're scared shitless, the next you're choked with affection."

Understanding

I am approaching 5 weeks until departure, and that has given me a new appreciation for my time left here, as well as excitement to see family and friends again.

A strange coincidence occurred last week, which is not actually that out of the norm, but it left a distinct mark on me. First, I received a phone call from a social worker who was calling on behalf of a frantic mother. The woman's son (age 14) had tested positive for HIV twice, and yet his father refused to take him to the doctor, preferring a sangoma (traditional medicine) instead. The sangoma declared the boy was possessed of an evil spirit and prescribed remedies to exorcise the spirit. Months later, the boy's health was rapidly declining and yet the father still refused Western medicine. I transferred the call to our Social Welfare Manager, Penny, as I felt utterly unsure what to do. The next day Penny told me she phoned the mother again to solidify a plan, and the boy had already died. The gravity sunk in: her frantic phone call the day before was her desperate last attempt to save him.

Later on in the week we learned that one of our own staff members passed away. We had a memorial service on-site and gathered to honor her memory. She was a smiley, energetic, happy 25 year-old and yet AIDS ravaged her body as well. We learned that she had been too afraid to test for HIV until she was in the hospital, immobilized by TB, and it was already too late. How can someone who works at a HIV clinic not know?, I asked myself. And it wasn't until arguing with a Afrikaner at a braii (South African bbq) this weekend that I realized the answer.

She did know. She knew about HIV/AIDS, about risks and safe sex and symptoms, and yet she still succumbed to the fear and stigma that prevents so many people from testing. I think it is far too easy to attribute the HIV epidemic to general lack of education. All I have to do is look to the 200 children I educate every Friday to realize that their knowledge of HIV exceeds most American's.

Fear, stigma and cultural practices -- which we can all relate to -- are the deeper layers that fuel a complex epidemic.

Good news/bad news

Above Left: Jacaranda trees fill the streets right now leaving a carpet of purple across the city.
Above Right: This is the public transport system in SA, taxis crammed full of people that stop at undesignated locations.

L: Patey and I with an image of my glorious cast and crutches.

I went to the doctor last week and he took off Cast #1, said I don't need a skin graft (good news) and that there is no way I would be able to travel in December (bad news) and then put on Cast #2. I go back on Monday to get this one taken off, the stitches out and a third cast put on. Argh.

More specifically, when I asked him about traveling he replied, "I don't think you understand the magnitude of this injury." I was about to respond when I started to swoon due to the sight of my massacred ankle and had to lie down.

Last week I returned to work for 2 half-days and I must say, I have never been so happy to be back. Being around people was good for my spirit, and forced me to take a hiatus from my pity party. It is hard to feel sorry for yourself when you have an unemployed, HIV-positive mother who has just been dumped by her boyfriend sitting across from you. I also picked up on an uniquely South African response to injury; almost every co-worker I came across gave me a minute of sympathy and then responded "But you'll be okay." Hearing this about ten times in one day alone had a significant affect on my outlook and I begin to feel pretty optimistic about my prognosis.

The patients at the clinic have responded similarly -- peeking into my office to inquire about my accident and wishing me a quick recovery. Tomorrow I am venturing back to the combined school for sexual violence prevention tomorrow having missed two weeks, and while I am nervous that the under-resourced facilities won't accommodate crutches, I am really looking forward to engaging in work that has been one of my highlights over the past year.

Speaking of which ... I finally bought my ticket home! I leave Joburg on 08 December, in time for World AIDS Day and the clinic's infamous Christmas party, complete with DJ and dancing this year (which I will do everything possible to participate in). Hard to believe that my time here is coming to a close in less than 7 weeks. But for now, I am focusing on the present, and enjoying my favorite things here albeit a bit slower.

Monotony

I made it through the weekend -- miraculously -- and managed to sleep quite a bit thanks to the generosity of Schedule 3 prescription medicine. I had quite a few visitors, and each one provided respite from both physical and emotional pain (As an aside: there is never a good time for a broken heart, but one of the worst times must be when you are laid up with a cast and unable to move. Lacking all of the usual conveniences of distraction, one is driven to contemplate, more than necessary, the said heartbreak in excess. And come up with quite a beautiful litany on the parallels of simultaneous physical and emotional healing).

There was Patey with her excessive chatter and ability to beat me in Scrabble on her first try, Jan with kindness and gentleness, Ros with wit, humor (and pizza!), and Brendan with chocolate cake and shared dreams of living overseas. I am lucky indeed to have a diverse group of friends in my current country-of-residence. And lucky to have a faithful core back home call me around the clock (even if my sister can never really grasp the 9 hour time difference).

I am reading a few books under the current circumstances, one of which is titled Factory Girls, and explores the migrant factory community in modern China. I was inspired to read this book after a perplexing client at the clinic whose story continues to confound me. She is a forty-something Chinese woman who speaks no English and arrived over a month ago with her 14 year-old daughter for antenatal care. One of the nurses called me in to assess the situation, as the story relayed via the daughter seemed sketchy. I called my friend Patey (who is fluent in Taiwanese, Mandarin, French and English) and she offered to come over and translate as she wasn't doing anything at the moment. So Patey, the woman, her daughter and I crowded into my office to discuss her situation. The details were vague, but through translation we gathered that she, her husband and daughter had come out to South Africa under the promise of a job only to be deserted six months into the gig. Except her husband wasn't deserted; no, he left along with the boss, taking her passport and identity documents and leaving a three month pregnant woman and her daughter completely stranded. The situation looked bleak. And to make matters more difficult, the woman was intent on waiting for the husband to return, even though she hadn't heard from him in several months. The plot thickened when I learned that she was living with a Kenyan woman who "worked nearby". I ran the story by a few colleagues who thought it reeked of prostitution, but I am not sure ...

Then, a few days before her follow-up appointment at the clinic, the Chinese woman phoned Patey and begged her to come to her house to tell her the real story of what happened. Patey demurred, feeling uncomfortable by the vagueness of it all, and the woman persisted. She refused to meet Patey at the clinic, or at a neutral locale, insisting that Patey come to her house to discuss the situation. Patey resisted and the woman kept her follow-up appointment at the clinic. When I saw her the week before my accident, her daughter had learned a little more English and we were able to communicate via the daughter and her hand-held electronic translator. The situation has not changed much; the woman was 9 months pregnant by then and feared returning to China because of the one-child policy. She had heard nothing from her husband or the employer, and her options remained grim. I asked her to contact me after she had her baby and Patey and I would meet with her to make a plan, which will probably include contacting the Chinese embassy because without proper documentation, her and her daughter have no future in South Africa.

I did a bit of research on my own, and found that there is a huge undercover human smuggling ring operating in South Africa -- specifically with Chinese laborers. They are lured out under the promise of work and after arriving in country are abandoned, as the employer runs off with the money he made in the work transaction. And yet I wonder: why did the husband leave his pregnant wife? Knowing very little of Chinese policy, I cannot appropriately advise this woman on what to do, other than take the strengths-based approach and encourage her own intuition and insight. A disconcerting situation, all around.

Tonight I am off to a friend's house for dinner, following a desperate text message I sent around 10pm last night begging her to take me out of the house! All book/movie/online reading recommendations are much appreciated at this point, as are personal updates.

Cooking lessons

I finished a book this morning called "29 Gifts" -- sentimental, easy reading but uplifting when you are in physical pain, as the author earnestly seeks gratitude while living with MS. I have been thinking all day on what I have to be grateful for, and who I can "gift", despite my limited interaction with human beings.

And yet, I can't help but wonder "why now?" Things were just starting to feel comfortable and almost easy in South Africa. I had exciting new opportunities; an offer to make healthy Mexican food at an outdoor organic market, the initiative to head up the Spanish conversation group, feeling really strong in my yoga practice, and a renewed energy at work. Schools had even started up again, and I was preparing for Sex Ed Part II to commence. (Did I mention the Part I lesson, which included 11 year-old girls asking me if it was okay to sleep with someone to prove they 'loved' them?)

All of the aforementioned activities have been put on indefinite hold and I am left with a gnawing restlessness. I understand the importance of slowing down and mindfulness -- don't get me wrong -- but why does it have to be forced upon me? And why now?

My best friend Heather and I have been scheming to take our annual friend-vacation together in December on my way back home, and I wonder how a half-leg cast will factor into the equation. I have decided to wait to purchase my final ticket home until I hear from the orthopedic surgeon next Thursday and find out if I need more surgery (please, God, no!).

In South Africa, especially the northern suburbs, populated by pockets the mostly-white-and-affluent, many people have live-in maids. In fact, many houses have domestic quarters, where gardeners and maids live full time. As ashamed as I feel admitting it, the lovely family I live with also have a maid named Mary, and for the past 6 months I have enjoyed the luxury of having my breakfast waiting for me, my clothes washed, ironed and folded daily and all the cleaning done for me. The past 5 days have afforded me the unforeseen opportunity of spending quite a bit of time with Mary. We have cooked together (me sitting with leg propped instructing and tasting, her doing the actual work) and while I feel incredibly privileged and uncomfortable being served in this way, I remain immensely grateful for her, my constant companion during long days at home. Now I am off to oversee another cooking lesson, as I prepare for a few friends and competitive game of Monopoly tonight.

PS: Two pictures, featuring: 1) Adorable kittens that have made me change my stubborn mind about cats and 2) Titled: An Image Never to be Seen Again.

My life as a (temporary) cripple

It is only fitting, I suppose, that my experience in South Africa, heavily focused on health care, would include a trip to the hospital as a patient. And so, the rounding-out of this experience occurred last Saturday as I was thrown from a horse and landed headfirst.

My forehead is still sore, 5 days later, from the impact of the helmet on my head as I hit the ground. This is a pain that I am immensely grateful for.

It all started with an "easy" ride about 45 minutes away with Lisa, Jean and Colin's daughter, who is a lovely, 22-year-old hippie. About ten minutes in, my horse got spooked, for reasons still unknown, and I went flying overboard. When I landed I looked down at my left leg and saw the sole of my tennis shoe facing me. The fact that my ankle was performing such an extraordinary angle caused immediate concern and Lisa phoned Jean to come.

Luckily, in addition to being a pretty remarkable person, Jean is a medical doctor and the obscenities that escaped her mouth upon seeing my ankle trigged me to begin whimpering in fear.

We raced to the hospital, which, as I mentioned, was 45 minutes away, with Jean and I holding my dangling ankle the entire way. The emergency room staff immediately put me on oxygen, as I was going into shock, and inserted an IV and morphine (pure delight). Then, two huge buff black men entered the room and the nurse told me they had to re-set my ankle. Many drugs later, I was admitted to surgery and came out to my South African "family" Jean, Colin, Lisa and my dear Canadian friend Patey.

I spent the night in the hospital and went home fully drugged up and with a half-leg cast. The past 4 days have been a lot of lying around, reading, listening to French-language CDs (might as well learn a new language, right?) and staring out windows thinking 'how did this happen?'

Today was the first summer thunderstorm, which I was grateful for. Oh, and the last minute thoughtful of a friend who came over to make me sushi. Such are the small pleasures, but I figure a little thankfulness can't hurt at the moment.