Finding pace

Sunday am, 28 Sept. 2008

It has been a week of achievements and an attendant sense of accomplishment; and, the realization that even with a lot of help from our circle of support, frustrations are inevitable and take an emotional toll that is both difficult to characterize and more significant than anticipated. And, it’s all small stuff in the scheme of things.

After looking more closely at a sum of money wired to our Botswana bank (Stanbic)
-two days after requested from the US,
-the sum of which wasn’t the same but close,
-the number for which wasn’t the same but was close,
-and after tracing it twice,
Stanbic decided that this really was ours 17days after reception, and after two more long days of negotiations by Lynne restored it to the original amount and agreed to pay lost interest. In the process we met some genuinely nice people and they now are on the cookie list. With a rapidly emerging middle class in Botswana services are more eager to attract business so that look of ambivalence that one sometimes gets in a developing nation is very rare here.

Oh, since we now have a bank account with some money in it we were able to get our car. A small high clearance, front wheel drive SUV’ish vehicle called a Hyundai Tucson. Mind you when it was picked up it had different tires than when we test drove it, oh well. Next week we should be able to move into our flat so things are moving apace to get settled and begin to nest a bit.

Yesterday Lynne and I took our house keeper, actually Rev. Jones’ housekeeper to her home as we had hosted a small dinner gathering on Friday and she wanted to stay and help. She lives in Mochudi, a large town about 45min to the NE from here. This was the first time we had a chance to experience semi-rural life in Bots. Picture Forest Grove or The Dalles and you get the idea. Most of the roads there are dirt and she and her grand-daughter Tsi-tsi live in a four room cinder block home with a metal roof and outdoor plumbing. Cooking is on a two burner gas camp stove or more often outside over an open fire with a three legged pot. The pace is “rural Kentucky”; things happen with lots of attendant visiting, sharing of stories, and laughter. It was our first more than superficial exposure to the non-Gabs Batswana in their home environment and was most enjoyable.

The terrain is very familiar here, think eastern Oregon with high desert and buttes. The flora and fauna are vastly different and refreshingly so. It is early spring and very dry. Despite that all the tress are in bloom with the bougainvillea in stunning display everywhere. We walk by plumeria, flowering acacia, trees and shrubs that I can’t identify and the fragrance is wonderful. Unfortunately trash burning in Gabs is a way of life so on calm days that can be the dominant odor.

Work on the wards has slowly found a pace where I can actually offer something of value. My side-kick over here, Nicola, leads his rounds with a measure of teaching and competence that is incredible. He finds and hands out papers to his team, including nurses and then has them comment on them the next day. Me, I just round and try to keep up with the brilliance around me. I find I offer logistic notions from the experience of many mistakes over my career. We will discuss pathophysiology of cases but never with the comprehensive approach that is Penn or Hopkins. With time will come balance, I hope. And if not, it’s still on me to find it. I am definitely living in the present, so each day gone seems like a year ago. I’ll be on the wards through December and then will start outreach. It will be interesting to see how/who I am by then.