Pat Connick

The New Brunswick crew and the H-man are off for another adventure...off to northern Malawi to go to a museum. This involved renting a car, remembering to driveon the right hand side of the road,etc. I am going out to rural Africa again, but this time with two other doctors (Dr. Cheri and Dr. Peter [a neurologist from New Brunswick]). The weather here in Malawi is about 5 degrees cooler than out in the game park, and it certainly was easier to sleep. Someone just noticed that the anti-maralial medication is unstable after 4 days of temperatures over 25 degrees.  Oh well...what can you do.

Here's my ten best/worst things of Africa:

1. I have third world feet, as I have been wearing my sandals nonstop here....my feet will never get clean again.

2. sleeping under a malaria net just makes you feel warmer than what the room really is

3. having to take a pill every night so that you might not get malaria is annoying

4. bug spray at night after a shower makes you feel sticky

5. goat stew is very chewy

6. nsima (I spelled it wrong it a previous blog, so you probably never could find it on the internet), is not the North American equivalent to mashed potatoes (maize based product, every African person has it in their diet) is the one thing that I cannot eat anymore

7. few drinks are refrigerated, most are warmer than  room temperature

8. getting sick (vomiting and diarrhea) in a rural bathroom in Africa is not fun (I truly wanted to go home to Canada that night)

9.electricity will go out without any warning during suppertime (while you are trying to cook) (this is also after 6:00 pm and the sun has gone down, and the house is very dark)

10.toilet paper is extremely coarse and rough

Best Things:

1. safaris are amazing...anyone who comes to  Africa has to do one

2. African wines are relatively inexpensive and very good

3. eating supper by candlelight (when the power is out) is very magical when you are dining with friends

4. papayas and mangoes are very delicious...they grow around here on all of the trees, and you can just go outside and pick some fresh ones for breakfast

5. you do not have to shovel snow (just sweep ants)

6.African coffee is delicious

7. the sunrises and sunsets are beautiful here

8.you feel rich becuase you have to carry around a huge amount of money: a five hundred dollar is about $4 Cdn. 

9. being able to access the Internet infrequently actually forces you to make better use of your time; you cannot plan your life around the internet

10.Africa makes you appreciate the fact that you are a Canadian, with a Canadian health care system, and a Canadian  education.

So there it is...not very exciting, but something to send as I actually found the internet working this am, and I am still in the big city. 

Today is Sunday,and have just returned from a 4 day trip to Zambia where we were on a four day safari. We saw so many animals:giraffes, lions,lioness, baboons, zebras, bushback babies, hippos, snakes,elephants, etc. The weather was about 35 degrees...basically you took about 3 showers a day, and drip dried. We went out twice each day; we would go out every morning (toast and tea and 05:30) for several hours. Then we would return at about 0900 for breakfast. We would lie around in the heat (may consume a gin and tonic, for medicinal purposes only of course.....there is chloroquine in tonic water), and then we would have tea at 3:30, and back out to the park until 8:00 pm (the sun sets at 6:00 pm, so we would have spotlight to search the bushes for more wild life. We stayed in indivicual chalets...ours was the furthest from the lodge. Once the sun had set, it was mandatory that the staff escort you to your chalet...as the hippos and elephants come into the campsite anad you had to manuever past them. At nighttime you could hear the elephants and hippos walking past your chalet as they came in looking for grass and trees to eat. The chalets were quite rustic with thatch roofs. They all had white toads inside in various spots. It was necessary to check your bed and toilet seat before you proceeded to use them.

I am going back out to Ngodsi for the next three days with Dr. Cheri. On Tuesday, we will be doing an outreach clinic. This is when you go out a community and hold an outpatient clinic. We take a few nurses, and a big box of drugs. The community will often have built a big mud thatch about the size of a stable (with 6-8 stalls) with mud walls ( no windows). The one on Tuesday is the first for the community and we have no idea how many people will show up. The most that has ever shown up was 600 people, 250 people were turned away. The only instruments that you have are your stethoscope and perphaps a blood pressure cuff ( no lab, no X-ray, etc.)

My last blog will likely be on Wednesday as I will not have internet access until then. Harold and I leave for Nairobi on Thursday at noon, and we will be in London for 6 hours on Friday, before we leave for Canada. We hope to take the express train in from Heathrow to the British Museum for a few hours to kill some time. I have been thinking of the ten best things and ten worst things about Africa (aka David Letterman style), but I am having trouble with the 10 best list. The poverty here is overwhelming....very few people have very much. I found the first 10 days here pretty rough, and that may have been due to the fact that within the first 24 hours of being in Africa (for the first time ever),I was in rural Africa at an nongovernment clinic which served a population with a 20% incidence of AIDS. It is a bit of a shock to a 1st world person. I never felt that I was at risk of getting HIV. I did manage to get acutely ill with vomiting and diarrhea, which was over within hours. Very few of us on this trip have been sick. Am looking forward to returning home...I understand that there is snow in Calgary. I was so excited that I was able to get a drink with an ice cube in it...sometimes its the little things that count.

we are leaving this morning for Zambia...once we hit the border between Malawi and Zambia we will be travelling slowly as the roads are of not very good quality. I can see now that taking a significant other to a 3rd world country while I do volunteer tropical medicine work requires further research.  Will only say that I may have to go back to the drawing board to plan any more trips. I will leave it at that. I have read many of your blogs, etc., so will try to answer some of the questions. They have grocery stores here that are very similar to ours at home. There is just limited selection of food.  In the city of Malawi they have little strip malls which the usual assortment of stores. Out in Ngodsi, there were just mud shacks with thatch roofs selling 7-11 assortment of goods. The bottles of water or pop are never very cold. I have not seen an ice cube since we left Canada. Our food at the clinic was mainly N. American diet...sphagetti, sausages....and 3 times a weeks fish cooked Malawian style, and often goat dishes. The goats, chickens and cows just wander along the highway. Apparently one of the local employees just goes out on the highway and hits a goat with a car when the family is in the mood for a goat stew. You frequently have to honk the horn and slam on the brakes to avoid hitting them (one of the trunks in our fleet hit a chicken yesterday, but the chicken on last check was still flapping his wings).  The people are usually walking along the highway or are riding their bikes. I am surprised that there are not more accidents. The cars drive on the left side of the road, and it still feels wrong to me. There are frequent roadstops by policemen, for various reasons, we haven't figured it out. We always seem to make it thru', but so far we have been riding in a van with a big "Lifeline Malawi" plastered all over the side. I have not been travelling around with my passport....apparently we had to apply to enter to Zambia, and this required the filling out of forms, and passports numbers (I wasn't here for the organization of the trip).

The weather is always hot...and will likely be getting hotter. We sleep under mosquito nets every night, which means that you just get hotter.  The crew working at the clinic had already been out there 2 weeks by the time that I arrived. They were unable to sleep at all do to the extreme heat...so they forked out the money and bought 7 fans for $70 Cdn. each...those fans were on almost 24 hours/day.  The rains usually start in November, but it won't be any cooler, just more humid. The natives however, still put toques on their babies heads. One of the staff met one yesterday who was wearing a ski jacket.

The shopping in rural Africa is very interesting. There is a market every day that the locals have, but it is mainly just tomatoes, mangos, etc.  We never went during the week; we went to the Friday market when everyone has a stall.  You can buy knockoff Rolex watches, raw fish (flies on top of fish are free), batteries, spices, raw goat (no refreigeration). You just get swarmed with kids, who constantly say in clear English "give me money". It is not a very pleasant experience. I need to get off the internet now as Harold and gang are trying to organize a car rental to get up to the museum while I work next week.

Pat 

Finally, I have hooked back up with Harold. I spent 10 days in urban Africa and am now back with civilization. It is true that Harold was getting "cabin fever" in Ngodsi. The living quarters was a communal living arrangement (separate bedrooms, but shared diningroom. There was 2 cooks that cooked all of our meals,but other than going to work at the clinic during the day (no air conditioning, temp. about 34 or more  degrees), there was nothing else to do. If you went outside the compound you were virtually mobbed by the children begging for money. It was too hot to go out for a walk during the evening...the sun sets really early in the evening as we are so close to the equator, and you don't feel very safe going out at night. There is a brick wall built around the complex with barbed wire on top. The veranda of the building is screened in, and you look out over the famous Malawi Lake (which is full of parasites....which doesn't stop the locals from swimming in it). Several times there have been hippos on the lake, and last night two of them came out of the lake and walked up to the edge of the enclosure to eat some grass. They make quite a distinctive "hurrph" hippo sound. We were unable to actually see them in the dark, but one girl (who is a pathological liar), told us that she was able to pet them last night. She also told me that she had bought a strawberry milkshake in Malawi the other day....I know that this is also not true.

The clinic is very third world, trying to treat many people, with little trained staff, and meager supplies. I have worked a total of 9 days there, and am glad to be back in town. The poverty is unbelievable...I have yet to get my pictures developed. Perhaps Harold will download some pictures if he has time. It has been somewhat difficult to access the internet....as there was no service out at the rural clinic, and I did not have any transportation into town. There are internet cafes in town, but Harold had no way of getting to them, and it was too far to walk in the heat.

 Last weekend we went on a safari with all of the people from the clinic (all Canadians, mostly nurses). It was an excellent time. We will be going to another one tomorrow in Zambia (for four days). It will be nice to get out and see some of the uniqueness of Africa. We will be travelling with 3 other Canadians (friends of my Cdn. doctor,who got me started on this whole adventure).

Have tried to do some souvenir shopping, but never remember having been hassled to such a degree by the vendors. They try every tactic to get you to buy from them. They are very desperate people; few have running water or telephones. They have to pay 50 quacha to be seen at the clinic...this is equivalent  to about 40cents....some of them cannot even afford this. If you tell them that they have to go to the closest hospital for further testing (i.e. for a chest X-ray to rule out TB),many of them do not go as they cannot afford to go. This is unfortunate, as they about 20 per cent of them are HIV positive, and are at risk for having TB. The HIV drugs and TB drugs are free for the patients, but they have to have proven disease....if they cannot access the clinic or the hospital, the diagnosis cannot be done. Am going to be on the road tomorrow for about 6 hours...hopefully I will be able to email you again from then. I am well....there is little risk to my health (I am too well nourished, and I am not doing any surgical procedures).  It will be nice to spend some quality time with the H-man over the next few days. He was actually found wandering around the compound with a fist full of quachas trying to hitch a ride back to town...before he hitched a ride back to town with a bunch of the health care workers. He was trying to find some fastfood...as least that's what he said. He is not fond of goat stew and ensima (look that dish up on the internet, looks like cream of wheat mashed potatoes, and has a very bland flavour).

Bye for now

Pat 

PS I don't like goat stew either (very tough). I don't like ensima....but the gravy in the stew was very good. 

 Hello,

My name is H-man. I am Pat's friend. Pat is unavailable to write blogs at this time and has asked me to post this message to let everyone know that she is still alive (at least she was yesterday when I last saw her). Pat and I spent the last week in a very isolated rural area where there is not a single method of communication with the outside world, it is 40 degrees and there is nothing to eat. Pat was able to maintain her spirits as she enjoys practicing tropical medicine at the clinic. I was not so fortunate and Pat found me wandering around incoherent in a field with a fist full of money. Apparently,I was so bored and dispondent I was looking for someone with a gun so I could pay them to shoot me (just to get it over with). Pat and I agreed that I should try to get back into town, not that it's much better, so I could contact the outside world.

Pat will join up with me on Wednesday night and will attempt to post a blog at that time.

We are fine. Africa is another world.

Finally got off the plane today.  It is 31 degrees this afternoon....it is now 6:00 and it has cooled down to 29 degrees. We left are Calgary Friday night....and got into London at 0800 on Saturday. We took the tube to downtown London, and walked along the Thames, to try to kill some time and get some exercise.  We arrived in Malawi this afternoon after another long overnight flight from London to Nairobi.  It is good to get off of the plane. Harold got in trouble right away at the Malawi airport. I suggested that he take a picutre of the Kenya airline plane (we were sitting on a bus, waiting to go to Custom's. He snapped a picutre, and had barely put his camera away, when security told him that he was not allowed to take any pictures of buildings. They demanded that he "clean" his camera, so he had to bting up the picture on the camera and erase it while security was watching him.  Later we noticed that there was red carpet laid out at the airport and that a large crowd of people had gathered with choirs, and musicians. There was a special plane waiting to be boarded at the end of the red carpet. Apparently, their president was leaving the country, and there was a specail ceremony to send him off.  People come out to see him off...they get paid for it...every little bit helps here as the average person who is a labourer makes $40/day, and you are considered at the poverty line if your income is less than $1/day. Apparently, you are not really poor if you make more than one dollar/day.

It is summer here, and will apparently be getting hotter over the next few weeks. The sun goes down at 6:00 and everyone goes to bed fairly early. There is no TV in our host's house, but they usually have internet service in the evening and all of the weekend.  We drove around Malawi today, and saw some of the people. Ramadan is going to end tomorrow or the next day (depending on the sunrise). So tomorrow, and maybe the next day after will be a holiday (to celectrate the end of the fasting).

The house that we are staying in with our hosts, is large....it used to be a tobacco company's house, and they rent it out. It is surrounded by a large clay wall, and there is a guard on duty 24 hours a day, with a locked entrance. The area that we are staying in is upscale, similar to an older middle class area in Calgary. If feels very safe, but no one goes out the evening because of the mosquitoes, the lack of street lights, and the fear of being out alone.

Pat

I am not sure how easy it will be to post blogs while I am away.  Harold is trying to figure out how to get onto my blog site. I have so much to teach him, and so little time.