Molweni from Isilimela!

I really was intending this post to come earlier, but thanks to the beauty of South African time, I really didn’t know where in the world I would be going for my three week long independent study project until a few days before I left. If you have been keeping up on my Zulu lessons, you would observe quite astutely that the greeting above is indeed in a different language. Let me introduce Xhosa, a sister language of Zulu spoken here on the Eastern Cape that thankfully sounds quite familiar. Through trial and error during my first week of work at Isilimela Hospital, I have learned to say hello, how are you, I’m fine, where are you going, guava, lie down, running, goodnight, and a grab bag of other less-than-useless phrases.

But to explain why I am attempting to speak Xhosa at all, let’s start from the beginning. With every SIT study abroad program, the final month is allotted for independent study, culminating in a paper. For some people, this study is purely based on books and experts, while for others like myself, this study involves getting your hands dirty for a few weeks before returning to the Dirty Durbs (Durban if you’re not up on the slang) to write up a report on your experiences. I decided back in November with the help of a Miami professor that I would apply the principles of Empowerment Evaluation (one of those lefty, feel-good products of community psychology) to the infant feeding counseling arm of a prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV program. And while prenatal care in this country is almost solely devoted to PMTCT, finding a site was easier said than done. I thought I was going to be everywhere from Durban to cozied up with the border of Lesotho.



Luckily the good people of Isilimela came to our rescue. (The plural possessive in that last sentence refers to my classmate, workmate, and bedmate Ranju.) The kind Dr. Ugwu not only welcomed us into the hospital, but also arranged a place for us to stay in the nurse’s quarters for several weeks (after which we will move to the Kraal backpacker’s hostel right up the road on the beach). The hospital is 17 kilometers from a paved road and a few kilometers from a stunning beach that (we have discovered) is very popular for the four day Easter holiday that we are currently enjoying.



While it is easy to focus on what the hospital does not have (an ambulance, enough doctors to perform surgery, accommodation for many more much-needed staff, all of the right sized syringes, the measles vaccine for 2 more weeks, the resources to keep charted records on patients, a lab, a clinic with proper doors for all its exam rooms etc.), the hospital is rich in its dedication to treat all patients coming through its doors with hospitality and the utmost care possible. One nurse that I shadowed in the Gateway Clinic (a primary care clinic behind the hospital) had been serving the hospital for nearly two decades and was a wealth of information, not only on how to address client complaints, but on how to pay attention to what they may not mention as a complaint.



Everyone seems to be like a family. The nurses share their tea, steamed bread, and chicken feet (I didn’t venture into that one yet) and we were invited to walk with one woman to her house, walk along the beach with her daughter, and then be walked back home with bellies full from yummy pap and curry. Ranju and I are continually amazed by how beautiful it is around here, a beauty that is certainly augmented by the number of guava trees that are just getting ripe! (Yesterday, after coming back from a walk I just had to scale a tree and hang on the branch to make two beautiful guavas pickable.)



I’m not sure how often I will be on the internet, as I am currently in Port St. John’s (an hour’s truck ride away), but I still have cell service and may be able to check my email every week or so. Also, next weekend, Ranju and I decided we will hop on over to Coffee Bay for some relaxation, hiking, and possible surfing lessons (or possibly not on the latter), so I will try to get on the internet some time then. That said, everything here is going great. This week, I was mainly focusing on networking and understanding PMTCT and infant feeding from different angles. Next week, I plan on having more focused discussions with the nurses and doctors that I have worked with so that we can do a group evaluation of the program, looking for ways to make the program more sustainable and effective.