You don't call, you don't write

Hey team --

Not sure if anyone still gets notices from this blog (or even if that's how some of you are following it), but if you are, I wanted to share some of the pictures I recently got from Bro Alfred, our main contact with the Missionaries of the Poor in Kampala. The new Busega Children's Home that we spent a day working at is completed and he passed along pictures from the opening celebrations. There are also pictures from a visit from the founder of Missionaries of the Poor, Fr. Ho Lung (he sticks out as the Asian guy amidst the Africans). You'll also see some of the newer Brothers "graduating" from the beige to the blue sash, meaning they have become professed Brothers. Finally, there's some pictures from the Good Shepherd Home where we spent most of our time with the Brothers working with the residents and feeding the school children, both of whom you see. The little guy with two stumps where his arms should be (playing the harmonica in one photo) is the same one I talked about in my post from Kampala who cried if anyone tried to feed him....he just wanted a long-handled spoon so he could feed himself.

The new home (red roof) looks great and it was really incredible to see familiar faces from our time there looking well and happy!

Finally, after much debate and writing a million essays in my mind, I've decided to put some of my thoughts about medical school to paper (as it were in the digital age). Some of you had asked/encouraged me to do so after reading this blog, so I thought I'd share that with you: sharonmed.blogspot.com.

Link to the Busega pictures:

Busega pics

Photos!

Selected photos from the trip are located here because Facebook is annoying:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sharon.r.weeks/AfricaEdited?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ70qOuTndn-DQ#

The continent is perpetually backlit, so we apologize in advance.

Enjoy!

End of the Road

Day 50 - Wednesday July 14th, Atlantic, Atlanta, DC

We survived our 16.5 hour flight, direct from Joburg to Atlanta, and landed back in the land of humidity and Southern accents around 8am. Both felt like the nectar of the gods. We hurried through immigration and customs just as fast as we could and rushed across the 63528 terminals at ATL in an attempt to make our 9:35 connection to Dulles. We arrived at the gate around 9:27 to find the door closed and no Delta attendant at the gate. There was a rebooking area nearby where we were informed to rebook our flight. Having expected them to hold the plane for us and the several other passengers on our flight trying to make the same connection, and exhausted by having traveled for about 24 hours at this point, I got on the rebooking phone very prepared to give some poor hourly employee a piece of my mind.

I was informed, as if I should be really excited by Delta efficiency, that we'd already been rebooked to the 1:33pm flight to Dulles. That's all well and good, but I was curious as to why I paid a ridiculous amount of money for two tickets (we'll decline saying just how much out of modesty and the fact that the memory might just cause me to regurgitate my lunch all over the keyboard. But let's just say we were certainly victims of extreme price increases for the World Cup) and they were incapable of holding the plane for 5 minutes. The kind lady informed me that ATC will cancel the flight if the gate door isn't closed 15 minutes before departure time. Now I'm no expert on the matter, and perhaps ATL, as busy as it is, has different policies, but I've certainly been on other flights where the connection comes in late and they hold the plane for 10 minutes or so...or longer. Not to mention the random other delays we've all experienced that have resulted in temporary delaying of the closing of the gate door....none of which has ever resulted in flight cancellation. I informed not-so-kind lady of these previous experiences and politely inquired as to why Delta's policies were so much more idiotic. She simply repeated her pack of lies as I became increasingly agitated. Luckily I at least got the satisfaction of ending the conversation with "well thank you for you help; this will most certainly be my last flight on Delta. Goodbye."

With a ton of time to kill, we eased ourselves back into America by promptly hitting Ben & Jerry's, Starbucks, and the Sports Scene where we had chili nachos and chili burgers. I think we both lost some weight in the past two months and it's important that we don't return home looking thin. That's just un-American. Everyone knows this.

The final flight back was uneventful, although we were entertained by a guy who'd just spent a few months in Ghana and told us all about West Africa. And oil spills.

Brian's mom and brother met us at the airport and even brought America-themed leis for us, which did a lot to ameliorate my distress at missing the Fourth of July. 

It's great to be back -- we're glad to get to catch the second half of summer, and shower with hot water and use a towel afterwards, and use our smartphones when we get lost (I know, so spoiled), and have conversations in English that are not hindered by very heavy accents or limited vocabulary. In short, it's good to be home.

We also loaded all the pictures we took (754 of them) onto my computer and hopefully I'll get organized soon to edit and post the interesting ones either here or somewhere else. (I'll post a link here if I decide on elsewhere).

Thanks for following along! (if there's anyone actually out there...my mother says there is, but I'm pretty sure she has to say that because she's my mother -- hi Ma!)

Coming to America

Day 49 - Tuesday July 13th, Joburg and the Atlantic Ocean

We got up today, packed up our stuff, said goodbye to our middle-aged (and adorable) Venezuelan roommates, and checked out of the Ball n Kicka hostel for the third and final time.

We had to carry our stuff around all day and wanted to pick up a few more things, so didn't have a lot planned. We headed to what turned out to be the rich people mall in the northern suburb of Sandton. I don't think I've ever seen so many high end jewelry stores in one place. We picked up a couple gifts and tried to get our VAT refund. After close to 2 hours in line, we decided we weren't going to get seen before the place closed and so just headed to the airport early, arriving five hours before our plane was to depart. After dinner, we figured we might as well check in since we had nothing better to do. It was a good thing we did since between two hours in line to check in and another two in the VAT refund line (we better buy the sweetest thing available with those 20 bucks), we just had a few minutes to kill before boarding (and only then because the flight got delayed almost an hour). We decided we'd basically been in line from 1-9pm. An exciting way to end the trip, to be sure. Especially since these were lines South African style, which means every rule you thought applied to lines was wrong.

I don't know that we're excited to leave as we've had a great time, but I think we've both reached a level of frustration with some African-isms that we'll be happy to be leaving behind. One of the top  two is certainly the feeling of being hassled all the time - I think Brian mentioned in a previous post about feeling like people viewed him as a walking dollar sign and I feel like that kind of experience has only become more common. The second is the whole culture of negotiation that just doesn't fit well with an American's sensibilities about how monetary transactions should work. While some people relish bargaining at the market, it gets annoying when every time you take a cab you have to have a confrontation as you attempt to figure out just how high a white person price the cab driver has quoted you. (An aside - a white South African before the game in PE angrily, and profanely, demanded the "African price" for a pack of cigarettes at a convenience store). Coming to the airport today, the cabbie was insisting on 450 rand (about 60 USD). The fact that he settled for 300 Rand (about 40 USD) after a few minutes of arguing (and presumably was still profiting at that price) really underscored how ridiculous his first offer was. When you have experiences like that at least daily, you start to feel like everyone's out to rip you off, which isn't an awesome way to go through life. There's other small cultural differences that just begin to wear you down after a while.

On the plus side for South Africa, the World Cup really was well done and I think went a long way to dispelling fears that an African host country couldn't pull it off. I think there's rightfully a lot of pride in all of Africa about how well it went. (A counter argument to that is that given SA's limited infrastructure and remote location, the tournament was inaccessible to the masses of the world because of the relative high expenses compared to other Cups. Obviously there's no real stats on this, but anecdotal evidence has suggested that a lot less foreigners came to this Cup without tickets in hand, thus cutting down on untamed crowds outside stadiums, etc.. on the flip side, it was also a Cup that was very accessible to a lot of South Africans, who had special, cheaper, tickets exclusively available to them. Not sure where I'm going here; pretty sure I've just entered rambling territory. Exiting now.)

I've had a great time experiencing the World Cup; it's easy to see how people get addicted and go to Cup after Cup. We've spoken with people from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Ghana, Nigeria, Portugal, Spain, England, Sweden, Norway, Russia, France, Germany, Slovenia, Algeria, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Korea, Australia, Tazmania, and I'm sure others I'm forgetting right now. We've had meals in Spanish and taxi rides in French. We got to cheer on America not once, but twice, in very very exciting games. We've cursed referees, opposing players, and the fashion sense of the Dutch with the best of them. We saw close to every game live and eight in person (okay, seven for me, but it's the thought that counts). We've taken Greyhound SA more times than we care to remember, tested out the Cape Town matatus and Joburg buses, and gone to games in five different stadiums. We saw two oceans as well as springboks, zebras, baboons, ostriches, penguins, dassies, and all kinds of birds (ask Brian, he loves the birds). So despite any difficulties and annoyances we might have run into, I think South Africa treated us to a pretty good time.

Table Mountain fotografia

This is how exciting waiting in line for the Table Mountain cablecar is. From left to right: Martin, us, Trish, and some random Dutch guy who wanted to be in all our pictures.

http://www.beenthere.tv/ViewImage.aspx?SiteID=28&Date=2010-7-6-4-11-9-PM&ImageID=173889

World Cup final: the morning after

End of a soccer era

Day 46-48, Sat-Mon July 10-12, Johannesburg

Our bus ride back to Joburg was a record-setting 20+ hours long for both of us. It was less painful than our other rides, either because the seats were more comfortable or because we're just getting better at this, but I think we're both quite content to have ended our relationship with Greyhound South Africa. Thanks guys, it hasn't been that fun.

Saturday we got back to Joburg late afternoon and walked back to the hostel, threw our stuff down, and raced off to make our tour at the SAB World of Beer. This tour explained the history OD beer starting from ancient times and was filled with an unbelievable number of comically narrated videos and over-the-top scenary. We tasted traditional African beer made from sorgham, pellets of hops, various malts (yes, those last two were are odd and gross as they sound), and finally two SAB beers. It was well worth the 3 dollar entrance fee, if only for how epically silly it was at times (and two beers helped as well).

Exhausted from the ride, we called it an early night to ensure we would be prepared for the final the next day. 

Sunday, the day of the final, was another beautiful one
After failing to find the local Catholic church (It wasn't where Google maps said it was), and failing to find a spot to eat that was open and wasn't McDonald's, we settled into the courtyard sun of the hostel to get our read on.

The Argentinians had other plans an were grilling, drinking, and dancing up a storm. We were lucky enough to be invited to join and had an incredibly awesome afternoon of Argentine asada  and fellowship. I made the comment that my favorite thing about South Africa was the Argentinians and I think I might stand by that remark. We've had the great opportunity to meet quite a number of great people from our very first day in SA and it's definitely been one of the best parts of being in a host country for the World Cup.

We took a taxi with an American and some French folks to a viewing area to watch the final (the Argentines were headed to the stadium to try to sneak in to the match). There were thousands and thousands of people there and it was crazy..and really fun.

We ended up coming back to the hostel before the end of the game and watched the end there. It was pretty exciting and Iniesta was my favorite Spanish player, so I was happy he got the winning goal.

Monday we had a leisurely day reading, eating, and doing laundry (very exciting). Watching the post World Cup press conference was a good chance to reflect on the tournament. It's hard to overstate, I think, how proud Africans, and specifically South Africans, are to be hosts to this tournament. Nelson Mandela is worshipped here and this Cup is considered by many part of his legacy. The FIFA secretary noted that Desmond Tutu was dancing for joy during the opening SA game and had only seen him dancing previously when voting for the first time in 1994. Yesterday was the 47th anniversary of the arrests of the Rivonia trialists (the trial where Mandela was sent to prison) and the day of the first  World Cup final on African soil. Whether these parallels and comparisons of landmarks are appropriate or not is up for debate, but they give you an idea of how this tournament is viewed here.