Last Sunday, a week ago, Lynne and I drove the 200K to Mahalapye to have a look at the hospital that might house a Family Medicine residency and the town. It is more dry there as it is closer to the Kalahari and has less topography than Gabs. And yet it is familiar, like our old home town of Hood River; quiet, kids everywhere, fewer fences topped by electric wire, fewer guards of property.
The hospital is huge, over-built, understaffed, and under-maintained like so many new things here. It has huge corridors, wide atria, and wards that are separated by empty space. Some doors are afar because they can't close, some have liquid leaking out from under them. I know the nursing staff to be dedicated and caring, and the administration to be very capable. We looked at each other and acknowledged "we could do this" principally because we would be some of the very few expats in the area. The FM program is not well defined as yet so we'll wait and see.
The week was punctuated by a national holiday, Thursday was Ascension Day, so we climbed the local hill and watched the sunrising above the Gabs floor. Then Nicola and I travelled to Lobatse to round on a child I have been following with Marasmus (malnutritition) while Lynne and Chawa had breakfast with other women of the profect. Lobatse is the oldest city of the country and had the only paved road when independance was granted in the mid 60's.
Friday I mentored at an outpost in Manyana a town of 1500 at the end of the road, SW of here. There I walked into the medical outpost (an outpost is staffed by a nurse with a once weekly visit by a doctor) to find a misplaced shipment of 12 huge cartons of condoms (!). Everyone was in stitches and when the Batswana laugh it is infectious. I was laughing in seconds and had no idea why until someone explained it. See, there are condom dispensers in every male toilet in every clinic, upscale restaurant, government building, everywhere. ALL are empty. For that matter so is the soap, toilet paper, and paper towel. Only the staff has access to these items and they are guarded with lock and key. It has become a hot political item here as the ministry feigns ignorance of the problem and the staff blames the ministry, and so it goes. So to have a shipment of more condoms than can be used by a town of 1500 oversexed men in a year arrive in Manyana was as hilarious as it was ironic.
The pace is slow and careful, the nurse is excellent and lives in a house under the only baobab tree in the south part of the country. We saw a man with MDR (multiple drug resistant) Tb and paid a home visit to inject him with his daily dose of med under the directly observed treatment program.
Leaving in the afternoon I realized I still have vestiges of this blamed ATF in me and was rather wiped for the week. Still, I'm a lucky guy AND we are coming back to the States, and the Great Northwest in 5 weeks!
