Count It!

Uhuru Peak: Summit of Mount Kilimanjaro

“K2”

14,000 Feet w/ Kenyan Plateau in Distance

Clouds Rollin’ In…

The Crew

Go Time…

And we’re off. Headed to Kili. Start climb on 3/29. Cross your fingers… 🙂

District Life (i.e. Tuck Tail and Run: Jen Dunbar Scolded Me for Not Blogging)

So. Turns out that district life is…well…not all that exciting (Seinfeld inflection)! I’ve taken a self-proclaimed blogging hiatus because, to be quite honest, things are pretty mundane around here. I’m currently sitting in one of the PEPFAR pre-fab offices at the rural hospital, watching the rain pour down and quickly turn the once-solid dirt path into a muddy disaster while patients scatter to and fro trying to stay dry. Ray Charles’ “America the Beautiful” just happens to be playing on my I-Tunes, and I can’t help but laugh at how cliché my nostalgia is in this moment. Unfortunately I’m waiting for Tanya, the stand-in pharmacist, to open up the TARV pharmacy (TARV = antiretroviral therapy) so that I can start my work for the day. She’s two and a half hours late. Welcome to Mozambique.

Side note: Tanya is totally “The TARV Nazi” and I’m counting down the hours until Senhor Juvencio, our regular pharmacist, returns from his trip to Quelimane. He, on the other hand, is a big ol’ shweety-pie and really helps to facilitate my research project. He’s got such a gentle and compassionate demeanor, and it is nice to see a solid representative of the healthcare community in a place where patient advocacy is so limited. But I digress.

What can I say about district life? It gets old quickly. You can only pick sticks out of your beans and bugs out of your rice so many times before it starts to lose its charm. On a positive note, Pola happens to have a blender at the house, so I was making some wicked fruit smoothies during the peak of pineapple season…which has now ended. I don’t have running water in the toilet, yet I have a blender. Give a little, take a little, I suppose. Every night, I take a tight-lipped shower with questionably murky brown water, only to rinse with a bucket of filter water and then cross my fingers that today isn’t the day that cholera sets in. I have this unsettling fear that one of these days, I’m going to get carried away, pull a Charlotte, and take a gulp in a moment of weakness. Hygiene has become a rather irrelevant matter altogether, and most mornings consist of me creating incentives for personal upkeep. For example, “If you brush your hair this morning, you can have a cheese sandwich for breakfast.” Today I went without breakfast. You do the math.

All in all, things are going relatively well with the project. I have roughly 140 of 200 baseline surveys done, and am hoping to finish the remainder in the next two or three weeks. The original plan was to be done with all baseline surveys before I left for Tanzania, so that my assistant, Victorino, would only be responsible for administering short follow-up interviews with return patients who were already enrolled. Unfortunately, work has been really slow the last several weeks, and I’m skeptical that progress will continue as scheduled. Patience truly is a virtue here, and every day brings challenges that blatantly oppose the cornerstone of the American work ethic—efficiency. It’s easy to become frustrated and judgmental when I have the luxury of knowing a better model, but I constantly have to remind myself that a majority of the people here are operating from a different context. They are limited by technology and are operating at the level to which they are accustomed. Granted, it doesn’t make it right, but at the same time, it doesn’t make them wrong for sticking to what they know. In my mind, all I can do is lead by example and hope that the people I’m working with meet me half-way. And that thought process, my friends, is how I avoid insanity.

Just call me Debbie Downer. I’m realizing that I’ve been a bit negative in this blog so far, so I think I’ll finish with a little anecdote in attempt to lighten the tone. Kate and I are leaving for Kilimanjaro in two weeks, and I have a pair of new Vasque boots that I still haven’t completely broken in. This past weekend, I thought it would be a good idea to get some use out of them, but the recent thunderstorms had made the roads too patchy and uneven to run on safely. Instead, I decided to run in place in the living room. Somewhere between the grapevine and knee-highs, I overdid it. I’ve had a charley horse in my left calf for four days. Whhannhh, wahhhhh…

Working Diligently in the TARV Pharmacy w/ Victorino

There’s No Code Blue in Africa…

I set off on a run today, just as the sun was starting to descend and the countryside was bathed in that really brilliant sunlight that comes with the late afternoon. With Paul Simon’s ‘Under African Skies’ playing in my CD player (don’t laugh…my I-Pod broke 3 months ago) and about 100 yards of red dirt road already behind me, I was just beginning to settle into my happy place when I noticed a crowd of people standing in front of the rural hospital. Assuming this crowd was just like the groups of locals that I see loitering in front of the market everyday, I quickly made my way past without making eye contact, in attempt to draw as little attention to myself as possible. As I passed, however, I noticed that there was a man’s body laying supine and motionless right next to the road. I made my way up to the body and asked one of the onlookers if the hospital staff was even aware of this man. Just then, I saw two technicians making their way out of the door with a fold-up stretcher, both quite cavalier in nature. No sense of urgency to the situation. No sense of obligation to the patient. At this point, one of them put his hand on the man’s chest, and bluntly stated, “Já morriu…” (he already died) to the woman who apparently came with the patient. This phrase was then echoed with an irritated tone, as if the technician was inconvenienced by the fact that the woman would bring a presumably dead man to the hospital. The nature of medical care is so vastly different here. I guess ignorance is bliss, in the sense that the majority of people here have never been exposed to the full capacity of Western medicine and therefore have come to accept mediocrity as the standard of care. Nonetheless, it makes it difficult as an outsider looking in, knowing that somebody should be there advocating for that patient and realizing the difference between life and death is a matter of geography. Unfortunately, there’s no Code Blue in Africa…

Inauguration

“To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.” It was at this part of the speech when I had the surreal recollection that I was in the middle of one of those very nations. Yes, I managed to watch the inauguration of President Obama all the way out in rural Africa in a town called Alto Molocue, which is located in the northern part of Zambézia Province. I’ve finally moved out into the districts where I’m surrounded by nothing but mud huts with thatch/tin roofs, and go figure…our place happens to have satellite television. Just as the speech was winding down, a dark blur, which I assumed was a bird, shot through the room and frantically flew in circles overhead. With eyes glued to the TV, I managed to ignore the little sucker for a good thirty seconds before my better judgment sank in.

Amy? When is the last time you saw a bird in Africa? That ain’t no bird…that’s a BAAATTTT!

Hendra. Ebola. Nipah. SARS. Just how many different viruses could this African winged rat be carrying? Immediately, my mind drifted back to the numerous summer nights as a kid when I used to stand at the bottom of our hill at dusk and swing at bats with my tennis racket. I know…this coming from the daughter of a veterinarian. Perhaps the virtue of compassion is less instinctual for some individuals than for others! Anyway, the main thing I recalled was that I used to give out a really high-pitched shriek in order to draw the bats in close enough to get a good swing.

Note: I never actually hit any of them, which makes the visual that much funnier.

That said, I figured screaming was not an appropriate first step to resolving the situation. With my heart pounding, I bolted for the hallway and slammed the door behind me. Luckily, Pola awoke from her nap and joined me just in time to formulate our great escape. After multiple failed attempts, which resulted in the two of us buckled over in laughter, we eventually threw open the hallway door and ran like the dickens through the kitchen and out the back door to where the guard was staying. We are such amateurs. Two minutes later the guard had already killed the bat with a broom and resumed cooking his dinner on the carvão (make-shift grill). Hey, it takes time to handle the great outdoors with grace and poise. I’m a work in progress…

Malaria

Kate 1: Amy 0

I win.

So I Went to Cape Town and Got Married…

So I went to Cape Town and got married. Okay, I’m kidding, dad. Just thought I’d see if I could get your blood pressure up before 6am, ol’ timer…just a fun little game I like to play. But I did go to Cape Town and buy a fake wedding ring so that the Mozambican men would stop asking me if I have a husband. By the way, I’ve gotten good at this. The answer is “yes” and he is, in no particular order:

• Tall, dark, and handsome.
• A lover of puppies, babies, and rainbows.
• A world traveler.
• A sailor of the seven seas…yep, named his catamaran after me.
• A scholar. No wait, a Nobel Laureate, in fact!
• A self-taught gourmet chef.
• An outdoors enthusiast. Climber of the seven summits…child’s play.
• An international activist combating crimes against humanity.
• An (insert blatant lie that uses big words and sounds impressive).

What’s the ring look like, you ask? It’s simple, yet elegant…not unlike myself. 🙂 Actually, it’s a flat band because I’m clumsy and don’t trust myself with a stone that has the potential to gouge an eye or one that will need polishing when it inevitably gets covered in the Quelimane dirt.

The Western Cape was phenomenal and I have absolutely fallen in love with the city of Cape Town. I can’t imagine a better destination to mark the half-way point of our travels. It provided the amenities of being back in the United States, which we have lacked for 5 months, without adding the burden of leaving family and friends again upon our departure. It truly is hard to believe that you are on the continent of Africa when staying in Cape Town, which is both promising and sad. Imagine San Diego meets Colorado meets Chicago meets Cape Cod. The city is nestled in between the unique backdrop of Table Mountain and Table Bay, which is an inlet of the Atlantic seaboard that houses the highly developed V&A Waterfront. It is completely nautical…the kind of place that makes you want to wear navies and reds with pearls or a striped sweater draped around your neck, all while sipping a fine wine on a balcony that overlooks the harbor and mumbling some asinine comment like “Mmyesss Kitty, the marmalade-incrusted prawn cakes are just simply divine.” I say this, only because Kate and I are guilty of all of the above.

We stayed in a little hostel called Abantu Lodge that was situated smack dab in the middle of Long Street, which is the tourist hub for restaurants and bars. The place was decent for hostel standards, but only had one bathroom, and this required us to wake early every morning in attempt to avoid the line. The location was key, however, as Cape Town has every kind of food you can imagine within a 10-block radius of our lodge and the prices are dirt cheap. It was my own personal heaven, needless to say. I believe we sampled Ethiopian, Mexican, Kurdish, Italian, and Indian, in addition to the multiple bouts of seafood and American classics. Not to mention the lattes, cappuccinos, milkshakes, and gelato in which we indulged. I am a big milk person, and I haven’t had real pasteurized milk since we left. At one point on the trip, I bought a liter of 2% and a package of malted milk balls at the grocery, ran 8 blocks back to the hostel before the milk had a chance to warm, and chugged it within minutes. Perhaps that was the highlight of my food experiences there.

Day 1 involved banana crapes on the waterfront for breakfast, followed by a bit of shopping and one of those cheesy “Big Red Bus” tours so we could get a layout of the city. The second day is when the fun really began, as it was Table Mountain day. We left the lodge around 8 am and did a bit of urban hiking up to the base of the mountain, at which point we began our ascent. Cable cars are for pansies! Oh, by the way…nothing tells you how utterly out of shape you are like trying to climb a mountain. The summit was at about 3000 ft, and about 300 ft into our climb, I decided it would be a good time for our first “picture break.” This was only to be followed by shorter and shorter intervals between pit stops. Something tells me I’m going to have to start doing some cardio before we try to tackle Kilimanjaro, at 19000 ft, in April. Kate went ahead of me and I decided to take my sweet time and enjoy the scenery along the way, while catching my breath. Unfortunately, I lost her at the summit and ended up trekking the plateau of the mountain in hopes that she was waiting on the other end at the point of highest elevation. She wasn’t. The good news is that I ran into a nice man who was hiking with his boys and he snapped some photos of me on the summit with my camera. I guess while I was sitting on one of the boulders overlooking the cape, he snapped some candid pictures of me with his own fancy-pants camera. Told me I looked like I was in my element. I agree! Hopefully I can get those shots from him sometime in the near future. I’ll post them if I do. I trekked back across the plateau and was preparing for a lonely decent, but managed to run into Kate at the gorge, just as she was beginning to descend too. Good timing. We finally made it back to our hostel around 5pm, albeit with lead legs and blisters, but man was it gorgeous on top.

Several days later, Kate and decided to go on a wine tour of the Stellenbosch vineyards that reside inland from the coast. Nothing says fun like downing a few glasses of wine by 10 am. In total we visited 4 wineries. As a general rule, Kate and I would inquisitively examine the latest pour, pucker our lips, swirl our wine glasses in front of our noses and take a whiff, only to make a snooty comment somewhere along the lines of “the snozberries taste like snozberries…” What can I say? It was the wine talking. On the way home, I may or may not have demanded that the tour guide subject her patrons to the lyrical masterpiece of “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by Fergie. What? Guilty pleasure. I blame the Viognier at the last winery. It was accompanied by the really good cheese, so I kept going back for more.

Hmm, what else was a highlight? Oh, of course! How could I forget the sexy skipper? Kate and I went out to Hout Bay to do a bit of shark diving. I have always had a fascination with the ocean and sharks, in particular. This was the one thing on my agenda that I would have been disappointed to miss out on, because I can’t think of a better place to go cage diving with Great Whites than off the coast of South Africa. Much to my chagrin, the morning got off to a great start when Skipper Lance, the studly young dive master made his way outside to brief us on the basics of cage diving and told us that he would be the one working the shark today. I think my favorite part was when he got very serious and in his South African accent, exclaimed “Ladies and gentlemen, I mean it when I say you are not to have your hands or feet outside of the cage. If I catch anyone doing this, I will turn the boat around and come back to shore. The day will be over, because I don’t play games.” Haha, grrrrr! I don’t play games either Sexy Skipper Lance! 🙂 Just after we dropped anchor about 10 km from the port, we managed to see a whale, which is very rare this time of year. About 20 minutes after that, a baby Great White about 1.5-2 meters made it’s way up to the boat and the first 4 people who were suited up got to jump in the cage to check him out. Unfortunately, Kate and I raised our hands to volunteer first, but 4 others had beaten us to it, so we suited up after these guys got out of the water. We waited around for a couple of hours hoping for another shark, but this time of year is the low season, and we weren’t lucky enough to get another. I was a bit bummed, but as justification, it gives me an excuse to come back sometime in June or July during the high season. I spent the rest of the time hanging out in my wetsuit and creepily staring at the skipper as he threw out the chum again and again. It never got old! Good times.

No trip to South Africa would be complete without a visit to Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years, alongside a number of other anti-apartheid activists. Our tour guide on the trip was excellent, and having been a prisoner himself, he spoke poignantly about his past experiences there and the significance of particular landmarks. Interestingly, the individual kennels where they housed the dogs were larger than Mandela’s 2m x 2m holding cell.

Alright, I need to cut this blog off, because I’m going to start losing interest if I ramble on any longer. Overall, Cape Town was incredible, and I highly recommend it to anybody looking for a getaway. It’s a sure bet. As much as I hated to leave, I have Kilimanjaro planning to look forward to back in Moz, and that, my friends, is terribly exciting! Until next time…

Table Mountain

Table Mountain

 

Feliz Natal!

Ahhhh, yes. It’s Christmas time in Africa. The mangos are ripe, the bats are roosting, and the armed guards are out in full force patrolling the major banks. Nothing says “Happy Holidays” like a man in army-green toting an AK-47 in the 90-degree heat. Am I right or am I right? Warms the soul, I tell you.

Kate has been baking like a crazy woman lately. I think she’s in a hypomanic phase. Perhaps cyclothymic disorder? Kidding, Kitty…I was just reading the psychiatry section of my First Aid Step 2 book, so it seemed fitting. Seriously though, I think somebody laced her coffee. At one point, our table had chocolate chip cookies, oreo/brownie cookies, pineapple upside-down cake, banana bread, and apple pie just waiting to be devoured. Not to mention the quiche and monkey bread that we had for Christmas brunch. I asked Santa to bring me portion control this year…he didn’t deliver.

Spending the holidays away from friends and family back home has been interesting to say the least. I’ve come to find that such a task requires the simple strategy of mental and emotional diversion. Thus, I’ve managed to get by alright by avoiding all nostalgic thoughts of Christmas and instead, indulging in the cinematic genius of a little show called ‘Lost.’ Yep. I managed to watch all of season one in 5 days, and I must admit…I’m hooked! Let’s be honest. Who needs family when I can watch Charlie from ‘Party of Five’ run around the beach all day with his shirt off? Umm, sold. Anywho, Kate and I thought it might be nice to create an e-Christmas card for everyone back home. Here are a few sample pics. Enjoy…

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Fútbol Friday

I forgot just how much soccer makes me feel alive! For 15 years of my childhood, I lived and breathed soccer and was blessed to travel around the country playing with about 15 of my closest friends. In the past few years, however, as life has picked up the pace and leisure time has become more limited, I’ve really gotten away from the game. I’ve missed it. Today I played a pick-up game with a men’s team in Quelimane, and it was amazing. There are a couple of Americans that we have befriended here who are doing local missionary work, and our friend Matt invited me to play with the team that his pastor runs. The guys couldn’t have been nicer to me. When I got to the field and the pastor told them that I would be joining for today’s game, many of the guys sheepishly started smiling at each other with a tinge of skepticism, bashful as to how they should approach me. I can only imagine how funny I looked out there…running around huffin’-n’-puffin’ out of shape, sweating bullets, and catching a sunburn under my 45 spf while my blond ponytail bounced up and down among a sea of physically pristine African men. But it didn’t matter. It was such a rush being out on the field again and I was so grateful for the opportunity. On a side note, I wrapped my navy blue bandana around my head like a headband, just so I could look a bit more hardcore…uh, I mean so I could keep the sweat out of my eyes. 🙂 I tell you what. Soccer on The Continent is the way the game is suppose to be played. It’s so simplistic in nature, stripped down to the bare essentials such that it reminds you of how you played when you were a kid. The field we used was a patchwork of dirt, rock, and grass (both long and short) with rickety goal posts hunkering over, sans nets. Some players wore cleats and some went without shoes altogether. One guy’s shoe split right down the middle just before kick-off, so he casually laughed, strolled over to the sideline, and strapped on a pair of combat boots instead. No problem. It really is about the love of the game here, and it was infectious when I was out there with them. I didn’t end up scoring any goals during the 40 minutes I played, but I did manage to fire off about 4-5 shots, so I felt like I had made a decent showing. At half time, after losing about one quarter of my body weight in water, I got a phone call from my mom back in the States and decided it was a good time to leave so that I could go set up the webcam to chat with her. Before I left, one of the guys came up to me with a big smile on his face and told me that I was “uma estrela” (a star). I’m sure he was just blowing smoke up my ass, but none-the-less, I took the compliment and blushed like a schoolgirl, and trotted off with my pride intact!

A December to Remember, If I Would Blog More!

Alright, so I’m a horrible blogger. I realize that I’ve given my audience nothing to read about this past month, other than a silly little anecdote about a mulocu who likes to count. Truth of the matter is that December has been rather boring. Other than cutting out paper snowflakes and decorating the dependencia with various cheap Chinese Christmas apparel, not a lot has been going on. Good news is…that’s all about to change!! Allow me to share with you my agenda for the next month:

1. Tomorrow we bring Christmas to Africa. Yep, that’s right! In honor of Kate’s late grandmother, Bushie, the Groh family generously donated over $2000 for the purchase of over 400 mosquito nets to be distributed among the 6 districts in which FGH operates. Tomorrow, those nets will finally make their way out of the boxes and into the hands of needy children who are part of the CCR (Crianças Com Risco = “Children with Risk”) program in Namacurra, which includes HIV-positive children and children of HIV-positive parents. We are so excited. I may or may not have already fashioned a Santa hat out of recycled printer paper and a red plastic bag…what? No judging.
2. We are house-sitting for Troy while he goes back home to The States for the holidays. The significance of this is multi-fold. One, we get to stay in his beautiful house which is actually homey in contrast to our dependencia, an edifice which bares a strong resemblance to solitary confinement. I am currently sitting here typing this blog at his kitchen table, an amenity which I haven’t had in 4 months. Two, we have 24-hour access to internet and satellite television. I check the TV-guide every hour to see if there are any reruns of ‘The Hills’ airing and I’ve already watched two episodes of ‘Oprah.’ Three, we have access to his stove. Can anyone say “apple pie?” Four, we have access to his rooftop terrace. Now, can anyone say “cocktail hour?” Five, he has brand new bathrooms with big porcelain bathtubs. I’m taking a hot bubble bath as soon as I sign off…despite the fact that it is 90 degrees outside.
3. We have Christmas plans. We’ll be spending Christmas Eve day and Christmas at the Zalala beach house. We have no car to take us there, so we’ve decided to opt for a hiking adventure. I’m estimating that it will take about 7-10 hours, but what the heck. I need to break in my boots for Kilimanjaro. To top that off, we’ll be jet-setting to Cape Town, South Africa from 12/28 to 1/8 for a little R and R. Word has it that Cape Town is a phenomenal place to spend New Year’s Eve!! There will be stories…indeed, there will be stories.
4. I’m headed to Molocue! I finally have a project assistant, Victoreno, and when I get back from Cape Town, I’ll be headed up north to meet him in the rural district of Alto Molocue. I’ll be living in Molocue from mid-Jan to mid-March while we interview 200+ HIV-positive patients about what they feel are the biggest barriers to being adherent to antiretroviral regimens. If you want to say an extra little prayer for me come January 15^th, I’d be much obliged! I’ll even give you a template… “Dear Lord, Please don’t let Amy blow it. Amen.”

On that note, I think it’s time for a bubble bath. Perhaps I’ll try to make it a New Year’s resolution to blog on a more consistent basis. In doing so, you can be guaranteed that I will absolutely blog regularly for approximately one and a half weeks. After that, all bets are off…