Safrica Day 10

In what has become a near routine for our group, we all got off to a late start today. The majority of us rolled out of bed around a quarter to nine and the van arrived to take us to Atlantis at 9am. We barely had enough time to cram down our breakfast before we all piled into the van. It was especially a task because we needed to pack away Karysse’s luggage since she was heading off this evening.

When we got to the ADP office, we discovered that we would be heading out into new areas. Jenny and I were going to be working in Kerria, a school classroom that was being used as a medical assessment point while the school children were on winter holiday. We saw maybe about twenty kids before lunch and the rush pretty much dropped off after that. Not only did we have time for an excellent lunch, but also had the opportunity to walk around the area. We stumbled into a public gym and got to watch a small assembly program for the kids. They had a talent show and both Jenny and I were amazed to hear these kids sing.

After our lunch break, we went back to the classroom and decided to wait an hour to see if any more kids were going to show up. As fate would have it, none showed up so Jenny and I went to Protea Park to help Dominic and Santosh with the rest of their kids. I was of very little help because the first boy I saw wound up taking more time than most of the other kids. Lucky for me, and very much unfortunately for him, his testicle had not descended and he needed several more operations to fix that. I say lucky for me because this problem was the last topic of discussion during our case presentations with Dr. Peterson. By the time I was done with that case, Dominic, Santosh and Jenny had pretty much clean up every other case and we were ready to head back to the ADP office.

So, we packed up our things began driving. While I thought we were headed back to the office, we actually wound up at a youth center where members of the Africa Jam group were hosting an event for local children. Several members from our group had been there for quite some time already and everyone was utilizing this opportunity to relax. I figured this would be a great opportunity to catch up on the mountain of paperwork that I still needed to finish from earlier this morning. So, I sat in the corner and kept on writing away. I paused once and a while to look around my surroundings, I noticed that the kids here were much more forward with their interest in our presence. I say that because I noticed flashes strobing through the kids as they pleaded for their pictures to be taken. Kids surrounded each of us as they danced to the thumping music. Even several were running up to me as I sat in the corner. As the numbers of children steadily increased, I consigned myself to the fact that I would not be able to make as much headway on the paperwork as I thought and joined the others in one of our few moments to relax.

We made it back around 5pm and we fairly exhausted by that time. We had planned for a brief dinner at the school which was to be followed by a short presentation by Dr. Petersen on HIV/AIDS in the Atlantis community and South Africa. Since the dinner was planned to start at 6pm, we were given the opportunity to run to the school’s computer lab and try to get onto the internet. Most of us needed to check the status of our loan consolidation paperwork and others needed to send out e-mails to let everyone know we had arrived in South Africa and were still alive and well. This met with mixed success since all the lab computers we subject to firewalls and did not allow us to use any e-mail sites, including our school accounts. Eventually, we all relocated up to the ADP office and commandeered one of the office computers. All thirteen of us took our turn using that computer and managed to finish off most of our urgent business.

As the last few people returned from the computer, dinner was dished out and we all returned to the familiar setting of the conference room for Dr. Petersen’s AIDS talk. Although we all admitted to the possibility of forgetting many details from Biochemistry, it was comforting to be able to recall all of it based on his powerpoint presentation. As he surveyed the group for answers, we were able to intelligently discuss disease process and treatment options. He concluded his presentation with a very Elephant Man-esque patient parade. He brought up patients of different ages and discussed how they presented to him, how he treated them and their current progress through therapy. Most of us were discouraged that we really didn’t have much time to interact with the patients or have any sort of personal dialogue with them. The talk was otherwise really beneficial for us to dispel some of our misconceptions of how AIDS was being treated and viewed in South Africa. It was also good to see the current statistics for the epidemiology of the virus and how those numbers were changing. The entire talk was concluded with a short goodbye for Karysse as this was her last night with the group. Dr. Petersen presented her with a small gift we can only assume to be a CD of some sort. With that, we all piled back into the van and headed back to the hostel. When we arrived, we all had our opportunity to wish Karysse a safe journey back to the states before she was taken to the airport.

After being completely exhausted by the Africa Jam celebration and the AIDS talk, we all returned to our familiar positions by the fireplace. We pretty much all had been wiped out by the drive to and from Addo coupled by our long day. Rose, Santosh, Dominic and Elana, however, headed out with Ranier and Claudia to the Cape Town bars. They promised to be back early since tomorrow was another work day, but I’m still dealing with this cold I caught the last time I went out and I know tomorrow is going to be far busier than today was. Who knows when they are going to get back and how they will wake up in the morning, but I’m perfectly happy with my spot next to the roaring fire.