Shucks, missed Prince Harry

http://jezebel.com/5987565/prince-harry-grins-his-way-through-a-visit-to-lesotho-wins-at-life/gallery/1

Children, everywhere!

On Monday, I went for a run near the cottage and 2 things happened:
1) I was not crazy out of breath like when I went for the same run the first week, which is awesome because I'm definitely hemo-concentrating!
2) I encountered a few kids, who decided to run with me on the way back. I was like the Pied Piper of Basotho children. People definitely stared and laughed, but it was cool. When they got back to Baylor I gave them a snack, which is why I think they came with me. It was super cute.

And today I asked Malealea (my awesome translator who emails me every morning to ask me how my night was and to assure me that we're going to have a great day) to take a few pictures with some of the patients aka cute babies. Little boys with tinea capitus just aren't quite as photogenic. 

Huffington Post's got nothing on this.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-schrader/lesotho-mysterious-mountain_b_2752019.html#slide=more282707

Pretty exciting that Lesotho's in mainstream media, kind of a lame article.

That time I was mauled by a lion! (cub)

Last weekend, Ashish and I went to Jo-burg, but first we had to prepare and present at a journal club on Fri, of which we were informed on Weds. It was a little bit of a bummer to end the week on a stressful note. We presented "Primary INH PPX against TB in HIV exposed children" by Mahdi et al in NEJM 2011. Just in case anyone is interested. It showed that children with and without HIV did not receive a benefit from INH ppx if they have never been exposed to TB, but that doens't really change the way things run at Baylor since everyone has been exposed to TB. I'm curious to see if my PPD converts when I get back!

 So after our presentation we immediately went to the airport, Ashish with all his things, and me just for the weekend. Here he looks longingly at King Moshoeshoe airport, bidding a sad farewell to the Mountain Kingdom.

Our trip to Joburg was easy, we rented a car, got some jams on the radio and headed to Zeitsies B+B, which turns out to be the most beautiful, friendly place in the world. Our bathtub is a good representation of the opulence with which we spent the weekend. Please note the bathrobes. I don't think I can stay in cheap hotels anymore...This trip has ruined me lol

Once we settled in,  it was only 2pm so we decided to start with the Apartheid museum. Here's the entrance way, in the whites only corridor. Our tickets randomly assigned us to be white or non-white, I was white. I had immense white guilt. 

This was a placard next to a very early human skull. 

The museum was very heavy, very dark and stressful. It lacked the emotional connection that Yad Vashem (Holocaust Museum in Israel) did though, and no one walking through was tearing, mostly people had looks of horror. I was definitely insufficiently education about Apartheid, and was really aghast that all this happened, and only officially ended in the 90s. It set the tone for a weekend where everyone white person I saw over 30 was suspect moral character in my mind. And every time I heard Afrikaans I felt complicit in great horrors. 

We met someone in the parking lot of the museum that suggested we go to Nelson Mandela square after the museum. So we wandered about a fancy mall and piazaa, and happily found the Peacemakers museum, dedicated to Nobel Peace Prize winners and esp the 4 from South Africa. This was the best possible contrast to the Apartheid museum, and gave us reason to hope again. 

We went back to our hotel for dinner, which was delicious and charming and lovely etc...There are 3 dogs who live there, which only added to the awesomeness. The owner, Elzabe Zeitsies used to be in theater, she may have also lived as a man for 12 years. Either way, she was a very opinionated woman who loves South Africa and was the perfect person to help us guide our weekend.

The next morning, after a delicious breakfast, we went on a Soweto tour with a friend of Elzabe's, Nicholas. Nicholas grew up in Soweto and was very passionate about his township, and offered us amazing insight into being black and young in Joburg today. We did Mandela house, walked outside Desmond Tutu's house...this is the only street in the world where 2 nobel winners have lived. I was pretty into Mandela house because 1) I read his autobiography in 7th grade, and his story still resides somewhere in my subconscious 2) he looks a little like Grandpa Eddie and that makes me fond of him. 

 This was a funny.

 This is Nicholas. He has dreads hidden underneath that hat, which he said he kept covered to prevent police profiling. We told him we thought dreads were great, and he eventually let them down for us. At the end of the day, we pounded it, and he called us real Africans, which was an honor.

Our next stop was the Hunter Pieterson museum, which is a memorial for the Bantu Education Act Shootings, which killed 600+ students and injured thousands in the 1970s when the police ended up shooting into a peaceful student march of 150,000. The Bantu education Act wanted to make Afrikaans the official language in Joburg schools which 1) is not the language these students know- they know Zulu and English 2) the main reason they need to know AFrikaans is if they are going to be house servants in white dutch homes.  Hunter Pieterson was a 13 yo boy who was among the first shot that day. That picture shows him in the arms of the neighbor that carried him back to his house, and his sister crying beside them. 

 This is a Soweto bunny chow sandwich. It is a large slice of a loaf of bread, hollowed out, filled with a pickled salsa, french fries, bologna, a russian sausage and cheese. IT's legit, Nicholas took us "into the walls" of Soweto. It also cost 15 rand (less than $2 USD)

 After Soweto we went to the Lion Park! Since we didn't have time to go on a real game drive, this is the next best thing. It's only 15 minutes out of Joburg, and there are lots of rehabbed and not, animals in this mini safari. Here's ostrich charging the car.

Here's a lion gettin' it on.

The zebras were really stunning. 

It also had Cub World, where you could interact with lion cubs that had been rejected from their prides. This is Ashish being wary of a cub.

See that top cub, the white one? I went to take a picture with it and it swiped at my leg in a playful way.

This is what happened. Ashish has an action shot of claws in my leg, I'll post it when we manage our picture exchange.

After getting some first aid, we went back to the cubs and finally got a good picture with them. 

We stalked this baby giraffe that was led into a pen for the night. It figured out how to stick its head out and we went over and fed it/pet it for a while. It loved me, I got to touch its horns and face...meanwhile it rejected multiple attempts by Ashish to feed it. I think it smelled his fear.

We also watched this adult giraffe jump the fence and wander into the parking lot. None of the staff was concerned though. On our drive out, we met out friend again, who stuck his nose in the car. Oh, hai there!

That night we went to Melville, which is a super hip neighborhood where we grabbed conveyer belt sushi. Afterwards we went back to the hotel and enjoyed the complimentary sherry in our rooms, looked out over Joburg's skyline and listened to some Taylor Swift. This is a view of the B/B's outdoor space the next morning. Our final destination was Arts on Main, a hipster food market that we may have been a little too full from our excellent brunch to enjoy.

And then we went to the airport, parted ways (SADNESS!), I made it back to the cottage without incident and met my new cottage mate, a second year peds resident from Loyala chicago.
And I think Ashish should be landing in Dallas just about now...
I can't believe it's 5 days until I fly out back home!

Some pictures from clinic this week

This Monday was Back to School Day at the clinic. All the staff wore their old school uniforms to work, and got kind of rowdy around 9am with a little song and march in and out of the clinic.

We were both feeling a little down on Monday, since we had a 9 hour drive the night before and 4 hours of sleep. I snatched up these super cute twins from the waiting room, and we had a few minutes of cuddle therapy in an empty room. 

Durbin adventure!

So our trip had a VERY rocky start, where we didn't know how we were getting to Durbin and were choosing between renting and borrowing the car we borrowed last weekend. Someone had suggested going to Ladybrand, SA to rent a car because it's cheaper, and then we found out that the car we borrowed wasn't registered in SA so we hired a taxi (a driver we know well, Pabalo) and went across the border to rent a car. That didn't exist. There were no cars for rental in all of Ladybrand, SA, and as far as most people are concerned there are no rental places there either. We persevered and found 2 places to rent, neither of which had any cars. But a very helpful agent in the second place we went called places in Maseru for us and we were informed there is in fact 1 car available in town, but it's a manual. And we need to get there in the hour. So across the border/customs again, and we made it to the rental place in time. During the drive over, our taxi driver taught Ashish how to drive a manual and we/he decided to take the plunge and go for the manual car. Which I think was brave. 

So at around 5 pm on Fri we started our journey to Durbin. The beginning was kind of rocky, a border official may have told Ashish to "Relax" and get out of the car so the official could drive it through customs for us (There's a lot of starting and stopping involved, passport checks etc)  but once we got onto the highway (the one lane in each direction high way) it was pretty smooth sailing. The first road on our trip (R26) goes through wheat and sunflower fields- sunflower fields are outrageously beautiful. (The trouble is Ashish and I both took pics this weekend, and only I have a cord for uploading, so his half of the pics will come after he's in the US) And then there was crazy weather, and really hard rain, and lightning bolts across the sky...and then this rainbow!

So we drove onwards, realizing that this car didn't have a GPS and we didn't bring our guidebook (oops) and it was too late to get a map. We stopped at a KFC in Bethlehem (there were a few jokes about wandering in the night to Bethlehem..) and got directions to go towards "Harrassment" aka Harrismith NOT Clarence. And onwards we drove, until we reached Durbin. Then we wrongly followed signs for the south coast and ended up wandering a beach town kind of early in the morning trying to get a hotel. And then got back into the car, got into central Durbin, and got rejected from all the hotels we saw..which was a blessing, since most of them had hourly rates. But then, finally, HALLELUJAH, we found the posh side of town and walked into this hotel, sopping wet and asked for a room and they told us they only have a suite left, is that ok? And yes, it was. So we found a home base at the Balmoral hotel, on the beach/boardwalk of Durbin. We also booked a safari trip (Ashish was done driving...) which in the morning was changed to Zulu and wildlife (which would go to a closer game park) for some reason I don't remember. Our tour guide was an Indian man (did you know Durbin has like 7 million Indian people?) who's grandmother is Gandhi's daughter, and he gave us a good narrated tour of Durbin as we drove out of town.

So the first place we went was Phe'Zulu, kind of a Disney land with Zulu flavor. We watched a dance/show, then walked through a crocodile and snake park. I made friends with a snake! It's actually kind of old hat now, after all the Indonesian animal parks, but still very cool.

Afterwards, our guide told us that our game park was rained out, and the animals weren't going to be out anyway since it's rainy. To soften the blow though, he took us to where all the taxi drivers eat, and we had some good grill, polenta and sides.

In an attempt to make up for the loss of half our tour, we went to Pietermaritzberg to see the train station where Gandhi was kicked off the train, which set off the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and ultimately the movement against castes in India. THe train station is really just a train station with a few plaques, but this statue is in town and is pretty awesome.

 After Pietermaritzberg, we drove back into town and saw a large Hindu temple (which had a large Hindu wedding in it!) and went to the Victoria street market, kind of a bazaar. Ashish got this baller shirt there. 

That pretty much summed up our guided tour. We went back to the hotel, changed then went to the beach. The beach at Durbin was great!! The boardwalk was huge, there's a carnival outside our hotel and the water is the perfect temperature. I could have stayed in it all day. This afternoon, I was kept out of the water for quite a while to take pictures with lots of South Africans who kept coming over and asking to take pictures with me. Here's a less flattering picture, pre-swim suit, on the beach.

I eventually slipped away from my newfound celebrity to join Ashish in the water and bopped in the waves for a while before going back to the room to rinse off, then go off in the hunt for Indian take out. Along the way we bough some art on the street (sorry David, a little more art to hang?) and ice cream at shop rite. We spent the rest of the night from 6pm onwards eating food and watching hotel TV because EVERYONE, local and not, told us it gets dangerous at night for tourists and we should just stay off the streets. We had only slept 3 hours the night before, so this was a pretty easy burden to bear.

The next morning, we woke up early and spent a few hours on the beach, swimming and watching surfers. Then we had another delicious breakfast at the hotel, and went out on the boardwalk to explore. We rented longboards, which last about 20 minutes until we switched them out for bikes. Then we were really going, and went down to the end of the boardwalk on one side, which was also where the soccer stadium is.

This is one of those fun signs with the distances to around the world. Mostly I want everyone to get how beautiful it was here, and the palm trees look extra picturesque here.

On one end of the stadium, we were sweaty so the fountain seemed like a good idea. 

Inside the stadium on our tour. It's very impressive. Our good stadium pics are on Ashish's camera. You can bungee jump off the top of the stadium into the field, which I thought about for a hot second. If anyone wants to come back and do it together with me (someone I'm traveling with is not so keen on heights) I would do it. We watched someone jump, and it makes me stomach writhe just thinking about it.

After the stadium, we biked to the other end of the boardwalk (it's about 5km I think) and saw U-Shaka marine world, which is a water park, dolphinarium, tourist trap. It looks like a lot of fun, but it was so crowded with white people (who could be locals...we are in SA) but we happily biked past, returned our rentals and rewarded ourselves with some ice cream.

We walked around town after that, where I was really happy to be traveling with a guy. The men there were a bit leery, and stared a little too long for our comfort. But we saw downtown, and the markets and I was pulled into a street show and laughed at by what felt like hundreds of Africans. We started our way back around 4:30 pm, But this time we had 4 cds, bought for 10 R each (about 1.25$) of what we thought were 90s hip hop and boy bands. In fact they are covers of said songs...which were executed to varying degrees of success. It did make the drive back in radio free SA a lot more fun though. We got back around 1am, stumbled back to our cottage and got ready for another week of clinic.

Alive!

Internet has been shotty in the cottage, but we survived our weekend trip to South Africa. We made it to Durbin, and schedule a safari drive that was canceled 2/2 weather and animals hiding from rain. We had an awesome awesome time in Durbin though, which will be thoroughly covered tomorrow, with pictures!