Ethembeni

The second clinical site I visited was Ethembeni (pronounced et-em-benny).

Ethembeni is located in the township of Mpophomeni, an extremely rural area. Many of the homes are simple mud huts, and the people living there walk everywhere they go.

There are tons of chickens and goats wandering around everywhere! Here's Brianna with one of the roosters that hangs out in the yard at Ethembeni.

There are 3 parts to this clinical site. First, the main Ethembeni building is a small hospice that can hold 4 patients. It's not a hospice like in the US, though. The patients are only there temporarily to get better, and they go back home after they've recuperated and gained their strength back.

We didn't spend much time with these patients when we were at the site. However, I was able to talk with one of them each day that I went. Her name is Zodwa. She is really sweet and told me all about her kids. During my most recent visit with her, she said she gets to go home next week! I'm very excited about her improvement. Here's a picture of us together.

The second part to Ethembeni is home visits, which is my favorite part! There are only 2 nurses working at the site, Sister Kathryn and Sister Louise. All the rest of the workers are volunteers. Some are from the church that runs the whole organization, and the others are Zulu women from the community. For the home visits, each Zulu volunteer gets paired up with either Sister Kathryn or one of the church members, and we students join one of the pairs.

We drive out to the patients' homes to visit them. Each Zulu vounteer is assigned to 8 patients. On Tuesdays, we go to all 8 homes and talk with the patients for a long time. On Thursdays, we only go to 4 homes, and we give them food that is donated from the church. We also have a short Bible study and prayer time. We then go to the other 4 houses the next week.

The home visits are really interesting because you never know what to expect! As I mentioned earlier, the area is very rural. The first day I went out on home visits, we went up in the hills where the houses are tiny huts made of mud and sticks. I couldn't believe that people actually live in them!

We had to drive on narrow, bumpy, dirt roads to get to some of the houses.

For one of them, we parked on the street, got all the food out of the truck,

and then hiked about a quarter mile along a narrow pathway through mud and thick bushes just to get to the house. It was quite the adventure!

We also visited a "child-headed household" that day, which means that both parents have died (most likely from HIV) and now the oldest child is left to take care of the younger ones. They were all at school when we visited, though. We found out from one of their neighbors that their house had been broken into early that morning, and most of their possessions had been stolen. I couldn't believe that someone would do that to a bunch of kids!

Another home that shocked me was basically a one-room log cabin. It had an outhouse a few feet away. There was one double bed, a tiny stove, and a small refridgerator in the house, plus a few things stacked up against the walls. That was it!! I couldn't believe that anyone could live with so little.

The adult wasn't home, but there were three young girls sitting on the floor, happily coloring and drawing. I was amazed that they could live in such a tiny, sparse place, yet still be so seemingly content. I will never have a right to complain about anything ever again after seeing how happy those girls were with so little.

Another home that was about the same size of this cabin, but was built by the government and so was much more structurally sound, had 15 kids living in it, all taken care of by one lady! The house had 2 double beds, a bunkbed, a table and chairs, and a small bathroom. The lady said that the kids sleep all over the beds, and on all the floor space as well. Wow.

We get to play with lots of kids during our home visits. At one home, the caregiver was an 80-year-old lady who was taking care of her 45-year-old mentally challenged daughter, her 22-year-old HIV & TB infected granddaughter, and two 5-year-old boys with way too much energy, one of them being her orphaned great-grandson, and the other was an abandoned neighbor. I couldn't believe the stamina of this granny!! I have no idea how she's still standing, let alone taking care of 4 people who are completely dependent on her for everything! The boys were at least able to entertain each other (and Chelsea and me) by playing together outside.

At another home, we met a 2-year-old girl who was so incredibly smart! She chatted nonstop throughout the visit. I found myself wondering what type of future she'll have. If she's able to get an education, then she will definitely do something incredible with her life.

On my most recent day at Ethembeni, one lady we visited served us hot mealies, which is just like corn on the cob. She was so generous in feeding us even though she had very little food to begin with. Another lady had a garden in her yard, and she excitedly picked some ripe peppers and gave them to us. These ladies barely have anything, yet they are still so generous and willing to share whatever they have.

I have learned so much just from visiting these people at their homes. Ethembeni has definitely had the biggest impact on me so far in the trip. I have no right to ever complain again because I have been so incredibly blessed. I just hope that I will always remember these lessons.

This post is getting too long, so I'll talk about the third part of Ethembeni, the family center, in a separate post.

Words of the day: "umama" (oo-mama) means "mom," "ubaba" (oo-bah-bah) means "dad," and "ugogo" (oo-go-go) means "grandma"

More Monkey Madness

I know I just posted about monkeys, but today was an exceptionally crazy monkey day. I just wanted to share a couple more stories about the monkeys with you.

When I woke up this morning and opened my curtain, there was a monkey sitting on my window sill looking inside my room! It was quite the surprise! He watched me for a minute, then jumped down to go play with two other monkeys that were wrestling in the grass.

I kept watching them for several minutes, even though I was supposed to be on my way to class. There was about 5 monkeys total just playing and having fun right outside my window! It was a great thing to wake up to.

A few hours later, we went outside to work in groups for our class. We had to do a drama about our experience in South Africa so far. We decided to do the skit outside because it was such a nice day. Part of the skit was about the monkeys and how they go into our classroom during class. While the skit was still going on, two girls suddenly noticed some monkeys sneaking into our classroom right at that very moment! It was so funny!

Some of the boys chased the monkeys out and we went back to the skit. When it was over and the teacher started talking again, my friend noticed that the door to her chalet was wide open, and there were some monkeys lurking around it. She started walking over there to close the door when we heard glass breaking inside the chalet!

Several people rushed down there to get the monkey out immediately. It took them a few minutes to get him out because he felt trapped and started to panic. After they got him out, they found that he had broken a glass container that had tea bags and sugar in it, but that was all the damage. It definitely made for an interesting class time!

Word of the Day: "inkawu" (een-ga-woo) means "monkey"

Monkeys

Being in South Africa, we've seen a lot of different animals than the ones in the US. The very first animals we noticed were a ton of monkeys!

They live on the AE campus, and they're as pesky, annoying, and dangerous as the bears at Quaker Meadow! Well, maybe not quite as dangerous as a bear, but they are dangerous.

It sounds funny to people in America, but the monkeys really are a big problem here in South Africa. They love to break into our rooms to steal our food, poop on our pillows, and just make a mess.

We have to keep our windows closed any time we're not in the room or else the monkeys WILL come in. One side of my window has a plastic screen over it, so I thought it would be safe to leave that side of the window open. I was wrong.

I was sitting in the hallway outside my room one day painting my toenails with the screen side of the window open, when I suddenly heard a noise inside my room. I quickly peeked my head inside and saw a monkey sitting on the top of our bunkbed, with another monkey climbing in the window. As soon as they saw me, the one inside climbed up to the top of the screen and paused, waiting to see if I was actually going to come inside and chase them off or not. I stood up and walked towards them, so the monkeys quickly squeezed out through the top of the screen and ran away. We've kept our window closed from then on.

Other girls in my chalet haven't been quite as fortunate. Monkeys have come into their room while they were in class, and they stole a lot of food out of one girl's care package! One time they took a bunch of chocolate, popcorn, and energy drinks!! I can't even imagine what a monkey high on an energy drink would be like! Another time they came into that same room and were eating the same girl's chocolate bar as she walked in. They dropped the half-eaten chocolate on the window sill as they made their escape.

The next day they broke into a different room in my chalet. They opened one girl's unopened package of gummy bears and ate all of them. When the girl walked in, she smelled the gummy bears, which made her want to eat some, so she was very upset to find the empty bag on her desk next to her laptop covered in monkey footprints.

Needless to say, the monkeys are menaces around campus. Not only do they steal from our bedrooms, but they also love to walk into the dining hall and steal sugar packets and fruit!

Monkey happily eating a stolen sugar packet

Monkey with a stolen banana

They also love to break into the trash cans outside our chalets and scatter trash EVERYWHERE! This is why they remind me of the bears at QM.

They hope to find food inside, which they are lucky enough to find quite often.

They also like to interrupt our nursing classes by climbing into the classroom through the windows! This has happened twice! It's a fun distraction for a second, but then we start to fear for our safety. We've kept the windows closed more recently.

The reason we're scared when the monkeys suddenly show up is because they often attack people. Most of us have had at least one encounter with the monkeys where we were close to being attacked.

I was almost attacked one morning on my way to breakfast. I was minding my own business about to walk up the stairs to the dining hall, when all of a sudden, a monkey appeared on the landing just inches away from my head! It crouched down and leaned towards me like it was about to jump on me, so I turned around and ran down the hill away from it. A sound from inside the dining hall scared the monkey away, so then I was free to walk inside and eat my breakfast unharmed. I hope to never come that close to a monkey attack again.

We've started keeping mace in our chalets so we can spray the monkeys if they come inside or try to attack someone. The staff of AE also have a paintball gun on campus for the purpose of shooting the monkeys.

In just one day, we went through 500 paintballs! And even after all this, the monkeys still haven't learned their lesson. Any day that the sun is out, we're guaranteed to see dozens of monkeys around campus.

Word of the Day: "qaphela" means "beware" or "danger." Q is the third and final click for you to learn. It's the one you would typically imagine when you think of clicks in a language. You make the sound by suctioning your tongue off the roof of your mouth. Qaphela sounds like "tk-a-pel-ah"

Mason's Clinic

One of the reasons I was so excited to come to South Africa with APU was that I'd get to do clinical hours here for my nursing degree. I've always been interested in international health care and the differences between American nursing and nursing in other countries.

My missions trip last year to Haiti and the DR gave me a taste of what nursing and medical care is like in developing countries. Now, South Africa is allowing me to experience nursing in yet another country that is completely different from the US. I hope that I'll be able to use all that I'm learning and seeing in these different cultures to be a better, more culturally-aware nurse in the future.

We've been doing clinicals two days a week for a month now here in South Africa, and so we've logged 65.5 hours so far. We need a total of 78 hours for our time here, so were almost done! (And that means that I have A LOT of catching up to do on my blog!) The 6 of us nursing students rotate between 4 different clinical sites, with 1 to 3 students at each site at a time. The sites vary greatly in their size, purpose, and function, but they're all very interesting and great places to learn. Right now I'm going to tell you about the first site that I went to, Mason's Clinic.

Mason's Clinic is located east of AE in the rural hills above Haniville. The area is extremely poor, and there are tons of crude shacks built hastily on the hills.

The streets in the area have no street signs or markers, so you have to just memorize the way to get there based on landmarks. There are a lot of goats and cows wandering around in the area outside the clinic since it's in such a rural neighborhood.

I spent two days at Mason's with 2 other students, Brianna and Lauren. The first day I was with Sister Mhlongo (the nurses are called "sisters" in South Africa, which is based off the British nursing system). The patients that came to her had general, acute illnesses or problems. The patient would come in and sit down in a chair, and Sister Mhlongo would talk to him or her in isiZulu to find out what the problem was. She would then translate for me and explain to me what we could do for the patient. Next, she would choose the appropriate medication to give the patient and let me fill out the label and dosage. She also let me explain to the patient how to take the meds, since most of them spoke a little English. Then that patient would leave and the next one would walk in right away.

Patients don't have appointments at these clinics. They just show up early in the morning and wait in line half of the day until the nurse can see them. They usually spend at least 4 or 5 hours just waiting. I've had a really hard time understanding this system since it seems so unfair to the patients. The clinics in Haiti were exactly the same way, and it didn't seem fair to me then either.

In the afternoon, I sat in with Sister Carson and Brianna. They were simply handing out HIV meds to the patients or relatives of patients that came to collect them. This happens every Thursday. We then got picked up at 3pm.

On my second day at Mason's, I visited several different areas of the clinic. It's a really small facility made up of an old house and a modular building. (The modular is in the background of this picture of some kids at the clinic.)

There are 3 main sections to the clinic: acute illnesses (where I was the first day), HIV, and TB/chronic illnesses. On Tuesdays, there is also an antenatal room where pregnant women can go for check-ups.

I started out in the HIV section with Sister Gasa. We did basically the same thing as I did with Sister Mhlongo- assess the patients and find out what their chief complaint is, then give them meds to fix it. Nurses in clinics here are allowed to function like doctors. They can diagnose and prescribe meds, whereas in the US, only Nurse Practitioners can do this.

After tea time, I joined Sister Carson, my favorite nurse at Mason's. She is a wonderful teacher and loves to give us hands-on experience. (This is Sister Carson with another student, Chelsea.)

Notice the shoulder epaulets that Sister Carson is wearing. These indicate that she is a nurse. RNs wear maroon ones, the equivalent of LVNs wear white ones, and nurse aids don't wear any at all. The different bars indicate what specialty training she has received. Black is general nursing, green is community, and yellow is maternity. You'll also notice that she's not wearing scrubs (she usually wears a skirt, not pants). Nurses just wear a collared white shirt and a blue skirt or pants. That's their uniform.

Sister Carson was doing the antenatal section that day. I love anything to do with babies and maternity, so I wanted to see what she was doing. She let us feel for the baby inside the womb, measure the size of the patient's belly, and listen to the baby's heartbeat with a simple plastic cone. It was very fun!

The afternoon was very slow because there weren't many patients left to be seen. Most of the nurses and counselors were just sitting around chatting or braiding each other's hair, so I learned how to braid cornrows by watching them! We finally got picked up at 3, an hour earlier than we were supposed to leave.

I really enjoyed Mason's Clinic. It reminded me so much of the clinics in Haiti and the DR that I felt homesick for those places and the rest of my missions team. Working at Mason's also made me realize that I need to work a lot harder at learning to speak isiZulu!

Phrase of the Day: "Igama lami uBethany" (ee-gah-ma la-mee ooh-[your name]) means "My name is Bethany"

Downtown Pietermaritzburg

After visiting the lions, we drove through downtown Pietermaritzburg. There are a lot of pretty brick buildings, but overall, the city looked a little run-down. I was pretty surprised.

We drove past several statues of important people, but the most interesting one was a statue of Gandhi.

We found out why there's a statue of him in the city when we stopped at the train station.

On June 17, 1893, Gandhi got on a train at this very station. He had purchased a first-class ticket, but he wasn't allowed to take his seat since he wasn't white. He refused to go to a lower class, so they kicked him off the train. This experience is what started his passion for active non-violence.

I don't know very much about Gandhi, but I do know that he was very influential and is highly respected. It was a crazy feeling to be on the same train platform that he had once been on. I never imagined that I would even be in the same place that he had once been, let alone in the very place that changed the course of his life!

We found out a few days later that Gandhi's family had been scattering his ashes in Durban that very same day that we were at the train station because it was the anniversary of his death. I felt even more amazed at this coincidence! Now I want to find out a lot more about Gandhi's life and what he did after he left South Africa.

Word of the Day: "Nxese" means "sorry" X is another click. This one is the same as the noise you would make if you were calling a horse. Nxese is pronounced nt-es-ay.

Lion Park

After the Birds of Prey, we went straight to the Lion Park. I was really excited to drive through the park, where wild lions roam free. We had heard that the last 2 semesters who went in had lions attack their cars! I really hoped that that would happen for us too. It would be such a neat thing to see!

Needless to say, I was very disappointed when I found out that we weren't going to drive through the park. The two big vans that we have are being rented, and if lions did attack us and scratched or damaged the rented vehicles, then we would have to pay a lot of money. To be on the safe side, our CLCs decided that we wouldn't drive in.

The guards at the entrance gate did let us get out of our cars and walk up to the fence though! It was so much fun, and probably better than driving through in cars!


The guards let us stand right next to the fence, and when the female lions saw us, they slowly started slinking up to the fence. It was so neat to see them walk like that!


After they came to the fence, the males decided that they would come see what all the fuss was about. We had about 4 males and 5 or 6 females come right up to the fence. They walked back and forth in front of us as if just as excited to see us as we were to see them!


It was such an amazing feeling to be literally inches away from lions! I crouched down so that I was at eye level with them. They were such beautiful creatures!



They seemed so gentle and harmless because all they were doing was walking back and forth, just being friendly.


One of the males yawned right in front of me, just like my cat at home does. He had much bigger teeth though!


I really wanted to touch one, but I was scared. When I saw the guy next to me stick his fingers through the fence and touch one without the lions noticing, I decided that it was safe for me to do it too, so I did. I stroked her back after she passed by me, and she didn't even notice. She was so soft and smooth, just like my dogs!


I took a lot of pictures and videos of the lions. It was definitely my favorite moment in South Africa so far. I don't think I'll ever forget how powerful, terrifying, and yet beautiful, the lions were.

Word of the day: "ingonyama" (een-gohn-yah-ma) means "lion"

Birds of Prey

Our first weekend field trip was on Saturday, January 30. It was a four-part trip. First, we went to a Birds of Prey sanctuary. Second, we went to a lion park. Third, we drove through downtown Pietermaritzburg and stopped at the train station. Then, on our way back to AE, we drove to the top of a hill and stopped at a beautiful lookout where we could see all of Pietermaritzburg and the surrounding area. It was a long, exciting day! Right now, though, I'm just going to talk about the birds.

The Birds of Prey Sanctuary houses about 50 different species of vicious birds. (South Africa has over 80 species of birds of prey total!) Most of them have been injured in the wild and are simply recovering at the sanctuary.

We got to walk around the grounds and look at all the birds for a while. There were owls, hawks, falcons, eagles, storks, and vultures, just to name a few.




After walking around, there was a show for us to watch. They brought out 5 different birds and let them fly around in front of us. The lady running the show was really funny and told us a lot of interesting information about each type of bird. She demonstrated some of them catching food in the air, and one bird walked around by our feet and found food that had been hidden between people's shoes! It was quite interesting.





We then ate our packed lunches at some picnic tables, and afterwards, we watched the vultures eat their lunch. It was a crazy thing to watch!

The vultures were so mean and picked on each other. They kept nipping at each other's necks while waiting for the food. One even flipped another over on its back by the neck! It was so crazy!


When the food finally did come, they all fought over each other's pieces and played tug of war with every piece until all the food was gone. Then they were perfectly civil with each other since they weren't hungry any more. I had never seen anything like it before.

After watching the vultures, we packed up and headed off to our next adventure, the lion park!

Phrase of the day: "Ubani igama lahko?" (oo-bon-ee ee-gah-ma lock-o) means "What is your name?"