Comings and goings

Beatrice's leaving party in full swing













On Joost's bridge with David and Gavin







20th January 2007

Chas’ nephew and his friend have arrived in Zambia this week, and we have travelled into Lusaka to meet them. We have shown them the sights of the capital city, but now today we are driving back to Mpanshya in the pouring rain. Dave and Gav are riding in the back of the van, sandwiched between half a dozen sacks of mealie meal, a couple of women complaining loudly to each other in Nyanja, and a baby, just to ensure that they have an real Zambian travel experience. It all gets slightly too authentic when we are driving back along the dirt road to the hospital and encounter a lorry stuck in the mud there. It is blocking most the road. One of the local minibuses has attempted to drive around it and is now stationary in a ditch, with no immediate prospect of moving forward. Some of the passengers are sitting around in the drizzle looking glum, others are trying to push the bus out of the hole. Eventually it rolls backwards, clearing a space for us to drive through. We get out and watch as Chas drives ahead, the vehicle lurching horribly as it ploughs through the ditch. For a moment I think we are going to get bogged down too, but Chas is of farming ancestry, and has clearly inherited some kind of tractor-handling gene. The Landcruiser emerges at the other side spattered with filth, and we run to catch it up, with the stranded minibus passengers in hot pursuit. The overloaded vehicle then proceeds slowly up the road, or rather, where we think the road might be, as it is now submerged under rapidly flowing water. Dave, sitting beside me in front says “This is the real Africa”.

21st January 2007

Beatrice is leaving Mpanshya tomorrow after three years of running the home based care service. It has been a long goodbye – there was a huge party to mark her departure last week, and there have been smaller celebrations for her in many of the surrounding villages – but now it is time for her to return to Switzerland. Father Leschek has invited us all over to the parish house for her last evening. We try to persuade Dave and Gav to come along too, but they decline. (I think their reluctance may be borne of having been persuaded to go to mass this morning, and then being hectored into standing up at the end and receiving a round of applause from the congregation. We may not be forgiven for that one anytime soon.)

But what a party it turns out to be. Sister Sabina force feeds us outsize pieces of gingerbread cake. Chris provides beer and music, although a few of the younger guests are nonplussed at his enthusiasm for the Calamity Jane soundtrack. (Chas tries to explain to one of the new volunteers that it comes from one of those old movies that you see on TV on Sunday afternoons as a kid. Brendan, who is twenty-three, says “Yeah, we had that in the States too, but the old movies were from the eighties”). And suddenly, apropos of nothing, Father gets out his double barrelled shotgun, and gives us a demonstration of how to dissemble and reassemble it. To the increasing alarm of the assembled company, he then decides to go out onto the balcony and fires the gun into the air, mujahadeen style, in Beatrice’s honour. And then, we round off the evening with a heated discussion on Satanism. It is an absolutely appropriate farewell for our friend, an eccentric but warm gathering of people who may have been in Africa for slightly too long.

Auld Lang Syne

31st December 2006

Hogmanay. I spend all morning engrossed in Rupert Everett’s autobiography, and having finished it, I have a slightly disconsolate afternoon. It’s partly that bereft feeling that you get after having read a good book too quickly, but maybe it’s also the dispiriting effect of reading endless accounts of international travel and glittering parties when you are stuck out in the bush in Africa. (Rupert does go to rural Zambia near the end of the book, but it only merits one paragraph; Joan Collins’ wedding gets three pages.)

It is a humid, overcast day, and it drags on and on. Chas and I have run out of conversation by about two thirty, and there is no one around to distract us. We are both a bit fidgety and fed up, having planned to go away for New Year and then, predictably, having failed to organise it.

In the evening, there is a small gathering at Beatrice’s house. We are just clearing up the dishes when we hear singing outside. The women of the Santa Anna society are meeting for a retreat tonight. Thirty of them are singing and dancing by Beatrice’s front door. Beatrice is dragged into the middle of the circle, looking over her shoulder with a panicked expression on her face. I take pity and follow her. The women ululate loudly as we join them, doubtlessly anticipating a typically European display of ineptitude on the dance floor. We do not disappoint them, although we do bow out when they try to get us to copy their kneeling-and-rapid-pelvic-thrusting manoeuvre. (I’m not sure what that’s about, but I do know that I’ve never seen them do it in church.)

The singing and dancing carries on until midnight, and we bring in the New Year together. Chas and I then lead the remaining revellers in an off-key version of Auld Lang Syne. Initially, our duet receives an uncertain reception, but by the end, everyone obligingly crosses their arms and runs in and out in the time-honoured fashion. Possibly more of a cultural robbery than an exchange – they gave us their best saucy dancing and we reciprocated with the Caledonian hokey-cokey. But we have a good time together all the same.

3rd January 2007

We arrive in Lukwipa for the mobile clinic. The church where we work sits back from the road, at the other side of a muddy patch of land. There has been a lot of rain over the last few days. I tentatively drive across, and am relieved to make it to the other side without getting bogged down. The church roof has seen better days, and the area where I normally see patients is flooded, so I set up in a corner and start work. Halfway through the clinic the rain starts to fall though the roof immediately above me, and I am forced to retreat further to prevent my notes turning into papier mache.

At the end of the clinic, I realise that Adamson has not shown up. Adamson holds the all-time clinic record for a low CD4 count, and he was recently discharged from the hospice after starting on treatment. I am a bit worried about him, so I decide to pay him a visit. I set off in the Landcruiser, and get completely stuck in the swamp at the roadside. I work my way through the 4WD settings, but every time I rev the engine, I feel the car sinking below me. I look up from fiddling around with the gearstick, and realise that all the men in the market opposite are staring at me. Just as I am beginning to resign myself to a long, humiliating wait in a muddy hole, some of the patients appear. They work quickly together, piling stones below the tyres, and then they assemble at the rear to push me out. I press my foot down on the accelerator, and magically, the vehicle starts to move, onto the safety of the tarmac ahead. When I finally get to Adamson’s house, I find him looking and feeling really well. I sit on the floor with him, checking his medicines, and admiring his new baby girl. Some journeys are worth a bit of sweat.

No tinsel, no Cliff.

17th December 2006

Chas and I are standing at the turn off on the Great East Road at 6am on a Sunday morning in the hope of flagging down a bus to Katete. My plan is to go to St Francis’ Mission Hospital for a week to learn something, anything, about obstetrics. It is a long wait. Mr Banda is also at the turn off in a shiny suit, on his way to a church meeting in Luangwa. He manages to hitch a ride from a passing pickup truck and shouts to me to climb in too. I pretend that I don’t hear him properly, smiling enigmatically and waving him off. I don’t think I can cope with four hours of bouncing around in the back of a van.

After two and a half hours, even the local kids have got bored of staring at us, but then a bus finally stops and lets me on. It seems too good to be true – not only have I got the last seat but there is no gospel music playing onboard. I settle back with my i-Pod and try to ignore the intermittent lurching as the bus hurtles round bends at high speed.

When I arrive at St Francis, I find that nobody was actually expecting me to come today. However, after knocking on a few doors, someone comes up with a place for me to sleep – Rondavel No3 will be my home for the next few days. It is a concrete hut with an impressive assortment of dead cockroaches on the floor. However, it does have a functioning hot shower, and later on I discover that sponge and custard are being served in the mess. Small luxuries such as these are not to be disparaged.

19th December 2006

I am introduced to the consultant obstetrician this morning. He had no idea that I was coming either, but is instantly polite and accommodating. I have to break into a trot to keep up with him as he strides round the maternity ward, laying his hands on a succession of swollen bellies. Then, we are off to theatre. Someone asks me if I want to do a tubal ligation. I decline, explaining that I work in a Catholic mission hospital, so it’s not the most useful procedure for me to learn. This only adds to everyone’s confusion about why I am here, so I try to explain in the staffroom midway through the morning, over a cup of tea (served Zambian style: consistency of tar, four sugars). My problem is that no one quite believes that doctors who can’t do surgery exist; in this country every medic can do Caesarean sections and appendicetomies without breaking a sweat.

Nothing much seems to be happening in the afternoon, so I sit around in my rondavel. The only book I brought with me is finished by about half two. This could be a long week. I go back to the ward for the evening round but nobody else turns up, so I trudge back to the hut, slightly dejected.

20th December 2006

I start today on the gynaecology ward with Enock, the medical licentiate, and discover that there were two sections overnight. Nobody called me. I resist the urge to throw a hissy fit. Labour ward is quiet again today, and I hang around in the hope of some unfortunate woman pitching up with complications. My impatience is rewarded in the afternoon when an obstructed labour arrives. I dash to theatre and pull on my blues, but find there are no surgical caps available. Enock hands me a towel to wrap around my head as a substitute and I enter theatre looking like a delegate at a Hamas conference. I scrub to assist him, but I have a fainting episode just after the placenta is delivered and have to be taken to the tea room to recover. Later, I am recounting this tale to Anna, a doctor from New Zealand. She tilts her head back to show me a scar under her chin that she acquired from hitting the floor of an operating theatre at high speed, and I feel slightly better about it.

21st December 2006

Today, I am back in the tea room with my head between my knees again. I managed to get most of the way through assisting an abdominal hysterectomy before this particular attack of the vapours struck, but eventually I had to absent myself before I toppled headfirst into the wound. I return sheepishly to watch the end of the list.

Afterwards, we go to labour ward where there is a woman who is not progressing well. She is wheeled off to theatre and I follow behind. While the anaesthetist is preparing, the theatre nurse glances through the patient’s notes and mutters “elderly primagravida”. I say that actually, I am four years older that the woman on the table and I have no children. This declaration is met by the sound of air being sucked sharply through teeth. I should know better than to openly volunteer evidence of my social deviancy, and I spend the next five minutes being chastised by the theatre staff for my reproductive underachievements.

Enock asks me if I want to do the operation, and I agree, but after much fumbling and hesitation, he takes the scalpel back out of my hand and finishes the job himself. It is all a bit discouraging, but I do manage to stay upright, so it’s progress of sorts.

25th December 2006

Christmas has appeared out of nowhere this year. The usual harbingers of the festive period are conspicuous by their absence in Mpanshya. No decorations, no Cliff Richard singles, no oversized tins of Quality Street. And midnight mass on Christmas Eve is oddly empty, compared to the packed pews at home. Most of the congregation walk for an hour or more to reach the church, so it’s probably not an attractive option in the dead of night.

Anyway, as expats we cling to our traditions. Chas managed to get hold of a turkey from the nuns in Makeni, so we begin the day early, trying to light the ancient woodburning stove. We manage to cram the enormous carcass into the oven before mass, only to find it has gone out again on our return. We hurriedly stoke the fire again, not wanting this Christmas to go down in memory as the year we poisoned our friends.

As usual, it all comes together in the end, and we eat lunch with the other volunteers in the sunshine. The women staying in Alendo House are moderately amused at the sight of eight azungu dining alfresco in paper crowns. We proceed to the hospital for the orphans’ nativity play (the sheep steal the show). And then, onto the hospice party, which is a slightly limp affair until the music starts. Sister Sabina drags Chas and me onto the dancefloor, but we are outshone by Joseph, who has been resident in the hospice for the last seven months. He takes centre stage with his zimmer frame and shows us how it’s done.

Later in the evening we go to the parish house for drinks with Father Leschek and Chris the missionary brickie. We share Polish sausage, Famous Grouse and tall tales before we all stagger off into the darkness. Christmas in Zambia. Maybe not so different really.