Plans Interrupted

I had an interesting morning today. Firstly, I went to sleep at around 10 pm, which is pretty early for me. And I must have forgotten to set my alarm, because my brother Luyanda came into my room asking me if I had had my breakfast yet, and I was still asleep. I thought that he must have come in before it went off, only to check the time and find I had 25 minutes until Roy arrived. I rushed to get ready, and then Roy was 15 minutes late anyways! Upon arrival at King Edwards this morning, we discovered that none of the doctors had shown up for rounds. None of the nurses knew why they hadn’t shown up, they were guessing a meeting, but no matter, that left us with nothing to do! Since we were at the hospital that is attached to the University, we stopped in to get on the computer. Our driver Roy couldn’t pick us up that early (we were there for about one hour before we called him), so we went to check back in the pediatric clinic to see if any doctors had shown up with no luck. So, we headed back to the computers for two long hours…we had absolutely nothing to do. Finally Roy was able to come and get us. He took us to a place that serves famous bunny chow, called Govender’s. Bunny Chow, as gross as it sounds, is a very popular curry dish here, one that we had to try while here. It was actually quite good! It’s curried meat of your choice (usually beef, chicken or mutton), with potatoes all in a homemade bread bowl. It was really spicy, but good. While at the restaurant, we asked for water, and were responded with "sorry, we don't have water, only coke". Both Miles and I looked at her with wide eyes and gaped mouths; I would have never dreamed of hearing this in my life. South Africa has done this to us a few times; surprised us so much that we have no words, just exchanged blank stares. When I arrived home, I found that Vusi, my host father’s mother, had come to visit for the day. Our maid Zotua was here today as well, and was busy in the kitchen cooking lunch for everyone. I was so tired and went to take a nap which ended up being two hours long. When I woke up, my hand was itchy, and dang it I had a huge mosquito bite right smack in the middle of my palm. I’m so mad!

My family made me eat when I woke up; they feed me so much here! I swear I’m going to be portly when I get back to the United States. They are really good cooks, but the food they continually eat is so much more dense than I am used to. Every night, we have some sort of meat, with tons of rice, usually potatoes or sweet potatoes, a salad, and then yogurt, custard and cream for ‘dessert’. The portions they give me are huge, on top of the very dense food. Auh! I’m trying to tell the boys to give me smaller portions because I can’t keep eating that much; it makes me sick, but I don’t want to appear rude to Zola. It has worked well so far (: They eat so healthy here too, which I had never thought about upon arriving. Each morning for breakfast they feed me whole grain cereal with 2% milk (like I said, everything is so dense!), and then dinner and lunch are the same type of things; rice with curried meat and potatoes, sometimes a salad and fruit and then yogurt occasionally with custard and cream. It kind of reminds me of Great Grandma Martinez’s house, always trying to feed me so much! Coke is also a huge thing here; they absolutely LOVE it! And juice! I have never seen so many types of juice at a grocery store in my life—juice takes up a whole row in the grocery store. It’s all fresh from the fruit off of the trees here, and very good. I keep trying to drink water, but they usually ask me why I’m not drinking juice, so I end up drinking it anyways. Deavon would be in heaven here; he loves juice.

I don’t think much else is happening here today—quite a few uneventful days! I’m ready for something exciting to happen. Hopefully tomorrow goes well at the hospital. Thursdays we have meetings with our medical director, Dr. Kahn, so we have that meeting right after the hospital. I missed it last week because Thursday Dr. Kahn wasn’t available to meet, so he pushed it up to Wednesday, and that was the day I stayed home sick. Miles has told me he is the quite the man; he runs many clinics all over Durban and Cape Town, and is apparently booked back to back every single day with meetings or appointments of some sort, so the meeting was very rushed. Miles said he didn’t get any words in the whole time; he just quickly jotted down notes as he spoke in order to keep up and remember what Dr. Kahn was barking at him. Sounds a little crazy! I’m almost at the end of week two already, and have been away from the United States for almost three! Time has quickly passed, which I am grateful for because I definitely miss home. But, I know that I need to take things as they come and enjoy my time here while I still have it. I’m sure the rest will fly by just as fast.