Sorry for the lack of updates in the past week or so… the combination of having a HUGE paper due plus long days of lectures in Durban wasn’t too exciting! Some highlights from the past week and half:
Our classes are basically split into two (besides Zulu)… CHS and our ISP. Our final CHS (community health seminar) paper was due on Tuesday, and none of us had really work done on it, so most of our past week was spent researching and writing the 25 page paper. We did have some time for fun though :)
Saturday we had the whole day free so some of my penthouse-mates and I decided to head to Gateway- ACTUALLY the largest mall in the southern hemisphere (apparently Pavilion, the mall we go to all the time that I thought was the largest is just a really huge mall…). We decided to be brave and take a minibus taxi there, and we definitely got some strange looks as white people never take them. A metered taxi would have cost us around R300 (about $40) each way, while the minibus only cost R8 (a little over $1!) so it definitely fit our limited budgets.
The ride there was pretty uneventful (luckily) and we got to Gateway without incident. It’s located in the neighbourhood of Umhlanga Rocks, a very wealthy suburb of Durban. KwaZulu-Natal license plates all start with the letter N followed by a one or two letter code for which city the car is registered in. The way our van driver, S’du, taught us to find the “rich people” was look for NUR… as in Natal-Umhlanga Rocks or Now U R Rich! There was definitely no shortage of BMWs and mansions around the mall…
The mall was definitely gigantic, and even though we didn’t do any shopping we had a great time. We got some lunch, checked out the world’s largest indoor climbing wall, and went right outside to the “Wave House”, basically a water park deal where they recreate surfing waves for surfers and body boarders to practice on (it was essentially a super-sized version of the ones you see on cruise ships). We ended up spending an hour or so just watching all the guys on the waves… some were REALLY good, others not so much.
The ride home was a little more eventful, as our minibus taxi broke down on the side of the highway and we had to transfer to another one, but we made it back safe just fine. That night, we headed out to the AmaZulu-Kaiser Chiefs game at Moses Mabhida Stadium. The Chiefs are one of the most popular teams in South Africa, so there were tons of people there and seeing a game under the lights was awesome. We decided that AmaZulu was kinda boring and not very good, so our allegiances switched over to the Chiefs pretty fast. Good thing too, because they won 2-0!
Sunday and Monday were spent paper writing, so Tuesday after we turned it in we decided to go out and celebrate our last night in the penthouse. We went to the harbor for the first time (the busiest port in Africa) and had some dinner right on the water. It was an awesome last night :)
We woke up really early on Wednesday to pack up, head to the house to drop off our extra baggage, and me, Sally and Shuang headed off to Eshowe! It was a pretty short drive, and we got to our B&B around 11. The woman who owns it is super nice, and she makes all of our meals for us. Theres two younger guys who live here year round, and they were both really welcoming and friendly. After we dropped our things off we headed to the hospital, about a 20 minute walk from our B&B. We didn’t mind though, because Eshowe is beautiful! It’s a little strange, because we haven’t been anywhere like this in South Africa yet. Durban is a large city, and all of our rural stays were out in the middle of nowhere, but Eshowe is somewhere in between. I love it though, and it’s kind of like a South Africa version of Hebron.
We met the Medical Manager, who was really nice, and gave us a tour of the hospital. It’s definitely different than American hospitals, but pretty similar to the hospitals we’ve visited so far here. We headed back around 4 and spent the evening relaxing.
This morning we got to the hospital in time for the 7:30 doctors meeting, and then I went up to the labour ward and essentially walked into a delivery! Unfortunately the chaos was a little confusing for everyone and I didn’t get to go in, but I will be seeing plenty in the next few weeks.
The rest of the day was spent talking to nurses and roaming around the hospital- we’re still trying to get a feel of where we should be going and what we should be doing. We headed home around 2:30 in a torrential downpour so now we’re just hanging out warming up and drying out. I’m definitely excited for the next few weeks!
This is the first time I’ll have super reliable internet since I’ve been here- which means lots of blog posts!
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