A Happy New Year

A Happy New Year

We spent New Year’s Eve having dinner with church friends and then attending a church service.  Going to church on New Year’s Eve was a first for both of us.  Apparently evening service on New Year’s Eve is common here and the church was packed full of families dressed in their Sunday best. We did not get to bed till 2 am, and then we were back again at 9 am for the regular Sunday morning service.  Not a bad way to start the New Year.

Our New Babies

Our cat Alien rang in the New Year by giving birth on January 2, 2012.  Mom and her 2 babies are healthy and doing well.   She has decided to solely breast feed because it is better for the physical and mental health of her babies.  I had prayed that she would have less than 3 kittens because life here is difficult for animals (and people), and it would be challenging for us to care for and find homes for a litter of 4 or 5 kittens.  God definitely answered my prayers; I didn’t know that cats could even have 2 kittens. 

1. Ginger & White Kitty

2. Black & White Kitty

What do we have in common with the Dalai Lama?

We are both victims of South African bureaucracy.  The local paper, The Mercury, ran a story on December 28^th announcing that the Dalai Lama would be receiving the Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Peace and Reconciliation on January 6^th in India – because he was not allowed in to South Africa (SA).  Originally the award ceremony was planned for October in SA.  (The Dalai Lama was also supposed to attend Desmond Tutu’s 80^th birthday that same visit.)  However, he could not enter the country because the government never processed his visa application.  After reading that article, I could not help but laugh.   It is both comical and tragic.  It highlights the inefficiency and lack of transparency of SA’s bureaucracy.  If the Dalai Lama, an internationally recognized political/religious figure whom SA invited to attend events in the country could not get his visa application approved, it is not surprising that 2 unknown doctors from the States are struggling to get their medical registration processed.  (You will all be happy to know, though, that the government has assembled a commission to investigate ‘the Dalai Lama incident’ – probably full of the same people who were responsible!)

How have you been spending your time?

Since we do not have a television, car, or reliable internet, the Americans out there probably think we are bored out of our minds or are going stir-crazy.  In actuality, we have been quite busy and entertained, in part because our friends regularly take us out and in part because we have chosen to take advantage of this “down” time.  Akbar and I were looking back and neither of us has had this much free time since we were 5 years old.  That is not to say that this waiting game is not stressful (it is—especially for 2 control freak physicians), but we are trying to be patient and make the most of this God-given time.

Alien and her babies (Day 2 of life)

We spend most of our days reading, caring for the local cat population, cleaning, and cooking. Fortunately, although we are around each other most of our waking hours, we are still enjoying our time together and having fun.  It may be delirium setting in from being “trapped” in a dangerous foreign country with no car, but we laugh together daily.  On Tuesday nights we accompany our friends to Bible study; on Sunday, church evolves into an all day event: first services, then lunch at our friends’ house followed by tea time, then a leisurely afternoon drive to the beach for Indian snacks or a shopping trip.  Another friend of ours from the hospital visits us almost daily on his lunch breaks, and hangs out with us on his post-call days; we’ve enjoyed numerous outings with him and his fiancée to the movies, the mall, and numerous restaurants around Durban.

Accomplishments the last 2 months: completing several books (medical, fictional, spiritual, and otherwise), deepening our relationship (with the help of a pre-marital counseling book and its probing questions), and watching all 3 Godfather movies for the first time (something we have wanted to do for years).  One book in particular stands out, in that we both enjoyed it immensely: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.  We both read all 600+ pages in just a few days.   It is a story about family, friends, Ethiopian political upheaval, and immigration, set in a medical back-drop.  We highly recommend it.  (When all else fails, we also try to keep up our medical education: journal-reading, books about South African medicine, HIV/TB, and hospital medicine.) 

Watching the ‘Godfather’ trilogy here was an interesting experience.  In a country where the crime seems random, violent, and haphazard, the glamour Hollywood casts over organized crime in America provides a stark contrast.  People tell us though, that there is organized crime here, with involvement in the international drug trade, car-jacking rings, and high profile thefts (once, an entire ATM machine was pulled out of the wall with a tow truck and driven away).  A favorite scapegoat here is ‘the Nigerian mafia.’ 

South African Fact:

SA’s population is 49 million as of July 2011.  Although SA is a relatively wealthy and resource-filled 2^nd world country, many of its national indicators are even worse than 3^rd world countries.  According to WHO statistics in 2006, life expectancy in SA is 48 years, worse than countries like Somalia (50 years) and Ethiopia (56.2 years).  Other 2^nd world countries like China and Brazil have life expectancies > 70 years old (CIA World Factbook).