non turkey day

Thanksgiving in Swaziland did not involve any turkey for me this year. I worked in the hospital in Piggs Peak, Swaziland. I am very much enjoying my time there. The staff, doctors, nurses etc that I work with are fantastic. They are competent, friendly and accepting of our presence. For now, I have been doing a little bit of everything in an effort to orient to the hospital and clinics there. I have been rounding on the maternity ward – seeing women in labor and post-partum, counseling on maternal and pediatric HIV, seeing patients in antenatal care and the out patient department. Starting in January, I will mainly be seeing pregnant HIV positive women in antenatal care and then following up with them when they deliver on the ward and seeing them and their babies in the clinic after delivery. Many women live far away and never make it to the hospital for their delivery and thus often do not get the recommended treatment for prevention of mother to child transmission. Bridging that gap will be one of my primary objectives. I will part of a program implementing new World Health Organization guidelines. I anticipate many logistical bumps in the road but have confidence that a lot can be done.

In other news, a couple of weekends ago we took a trip to the coast of South Africa about 5 hours southeast of here in a place called Sodwana Bay. It is a beautiful, fairly undeveloped, warm-water bay area which is a haven for an incredibly diverse population of sea creatures. Scuba diving was quite nice with so many things to see. The guide book says the reef there is second only to the great barrier reef in Australia in biodiversity. I went scuba diving while there and really enjoyed it. There were many things I had seen before but many I had not. We saw large grouper, snapper, lion fish, pineapple fish, eels, parrot fish, crabs, trigger fish etc. We also saw a hump back whale from the shore. Frequent in the area that I did not see are also leather back turtles, whale shark (not dangerous mom!) which can be 40 feet long, ragged tooth shark (also not dangerous mom!), large rays and many more interesting things. I am looking forward to going back!

Finally, we are in our last week of escrow on the sale of our house. It is not final yet but if all goes smoothly will be final on Nov 30th. Keep your fingers crossed for us! Angela has been packing up, selling the car, arranging travel etc. We are hoping she will make it here for Christmas as I have some time off and we hope to do some sight seeing. I have not felt fully here yet without Angela. I haven’t hung things on the wall, had people over to my house much or felt fully settled yet. Besides, I know she will like to look at the local handicrafts and help in the decoration of our house. They have amazing wood carvings, paintings, bamboo furniture, floor mats made out of dried grass etc. Our place will morph after Angela arrives.

Everyone is welcome for a visit here. It is a lovely place with great game parks, mountains, ocean nearby and a great climate. Its just quite far away! We are expecting some visitors in February that I am totally psyched about. It looks like Gigi, Michelle and Doug will be coming (hopefully wearing wigs) and then separately Kevin and Jolaine are planning a trip. It will really be an energizer to have such great friends visit.

Missing everyone. Happy birthday to my nephew Ben! He would love to see all the animals I have seen here.

Dan