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.