Cape Town,
South Africa
Monday, March 5, 2007
Today was my Cape Doctor: Culture and Medicine tour. We got on the bus at 9am and drove across Cape Town to visit the hospital where the first heart transplant was performed in 1967. We arrived at the hospital and right away I noticed the difference between the old hospital and the new buildings that have been built in the last ten years. The old hospital had absolutely gorgeous architecture- smooth off-white buildings, six and seven stories tall with a cross at the highest point, and tall windows. It looked more like a college academic building than a hospital building. The new hospital, however, looked like a building in the states- an ugly, gray stucco two-story building. The group was too big to go anywhere at one time, so we split up, and my group took the first tour of the new hospital building. I didn't know quite what to expect from this trip, but I knew that we were visiting a hospital. I didn't realize, however, that we'd be walking through the wards of the hospital. I thought maybe we'd be talking to doctors or administrators, but no. We were guided through the front and back halls of the emergency room and the women's floor of the hospital. It was fascinating to hear about the health care system in South Africa while walking through the hallways, but I felt incredibly awkward being there. These people were suffering from gunshot wounds, tuberculosis, broken bones from car wrecks, and cancer, and here we were, this group of college kids prancing through the hallways as if their pain was on display for us. And in fact, it was, for the time we were taking the hospital tour. I think I would have preferred to just see the waiting rooms at the entrance and the lecture room where the med students take their classes (which was pretty cool to see), and walk along Hospital Street. Hospital Street was about a half-mile of pharmacies, eateries, and artwork connecting the entrance of the hospital to the different wings. I don't know why we haven't thought of that, putting the pharmacies within the walls of the hospital. We're so much about convenience, and that would certainly help make the process of leaving the hospital to go home a little bit easier. After our somewhat invasive tour of the new hospital, we trekked back to the old building to take a very short tour of the museum dedicated to the performance of the first heart transplant. They had turned the very rooms into a museum and displayed all of the newspaper clippings from every angle of the event, from the 58-year old patient himself to the story of the car wreck that killed the 25-year old heart donor and her mother. They had the recipient's original heart preserved and the donor's heart that only kept the recipient alive for eighteen days before he died of a lung infection, the table where they removed the donor's heart, and a mock-up of the entire transplant scenario. They had mannequins of each doctor present, all of the instruments and towels used, the date of the transplant written on the blackboard at the back of the room, everything. We got to view it from the benches where the med students would sit and watch surgeries. Considering my recent Grey's addiction, I loved this part of it. I wasn't bothering anyone and nothing I was staring at was still breathing or in pain. I'm not typically the museum kind of girl, especially if the real thing is right on the other side of the wall, but when it comes to hospitals, I definitely prefer the museum. I appreciated the chance to see it from the inside, but I just couldn't get past the feeling that I was intruding, which I was. However, I hate to say, I felt completely different when we went to the Red Cross children's hospital simply because here, we got to interact with the kids and not just stare at them. We weren't allowed to take pictures with them because the hospital didn't want them to be made spectacles of, which was fine with me. They took us through the hospital past a big room where kids could trade their toys for new ones and through the waiting room on our way to the burns unit. The waiting room was a unique experience because some of the kids and their parents were disturbed by our being there, understandably, but some parents would look me in the eye and smile, and wave with their children as we passed through. And that attitude of confusion was the theme for the rest of our visit there. Our first visit was to the burns unit, which was probably the worst ward we visited. These children were all ages, from little babies to ten and eleven years old. Some were being held by their mothers in the hallway, some had their mothers by their bedsides, and others were completely alone. Tara, the young girl who was leading us through the hospital, explained to us that a lot of children are burned by their own parents, and not by accident. I had to try so hard to fight back the tears because seeing children with their heads wrapped, their hands or arms wrapped, their legs wrapped in gauze just tore my heart apart. And knowing that their pain could have been prevented, that it was inflicted by their parents because they were crying or misbehaving, was just appalling. We walked through the wide, colorful hallways, stopping to smile and wave at the children out and about, and breaking up into small groups to go visit the children in their beds. Some parents would smile and call us over to come play with the toys in their children's beds or just talk to them, but others would turn away as a way of telling us to leave them alone. This I completely understood because as much as children who are cooped up in these rooms all day might want a little interaction and attention from big kids, we're still outsiders. But I was surprised at how many mothers were willing to open up and tell us about their child's situation, if they could speak English. One woman didn't speak English, and the nurse told us her baby received a burn from a candle by accident, but she was holding her son and she a couple of us stand with her for a few minutes and rub his back and let him play with our fingers. We also talked to another little girl, probably about five or six, who was learning math at a children's sized table out in the hallway. We talked to the teacher and learned that she comes every day to help the children continue their studies, regardless of how long their stay in the hospital may be, so they do not fall behind in school. She was learning basic addition, using beads to count. We chatted with the teacher for a few moments before Tara gathered us up to move on to the next ward. Thankfully, we didn't spend as much time there because it was quite hot, and the smell of the charred skin in the heat was sickening. And there's something about knowing it's children skin that makes your brain tell you its even worse than it probably is. After the burn unit we went to the cardiac and tracheal ward. They wouldn't let us go into these rooms because they, in their conditions, were a little bit more delicate, but some of the little boys were riding around on plastic tricycles so we got to goof around with them. I found it interesting that this was the only ward that had that familiar hospital smell. I only noticed it when the nurse came up to talk to us, and as soon as she walked away it was gone. But you know that smell, the smell of hospitals. That's what the woman herself smelled like, and not the rest of the ward. It was a nice light moment to break up a heavy morning. Our next stop was the general ailments ward, where they'd be taken for broken legs and other non-life threatening problems. The nurses were taking care of a premature baby, a beautiful little girl who was four weeks early, and she was being fed just as we arrived. There were a couple of future class clowns out and about in the hallways, just running and jumping about. One little boy was finishing up with the nurse at the end of the hall and when he was done he just came bounding down the hallway, running as fast as his little bare feet could carry him, and when he blew past us the wind caught in his hospital gown, exposing his little bum. He leaned around and looked, and just stared laughing. This little guy wouldn't let me leave, and I ended up getting left by the group for a few minutes. You had to walk through a gate in order to get into this hallway, which I didn't really understand at first because what kind of message are you sending to children if you're gating them in. But I opened it to leave after tickling him for a few minutes, and he ran out on the other side with me. I spent a few minutes trying to get him back on the other side because I doubted that the nurses wanted him running up and down the stairs by himself. By the time we got him back on his side of the gate, the group had disappeared. I found them a couple of flights up at the oncology ward, our final stop. This ward was a little bit different. Rather than just being a long hallway with rooms on either side, it was a bit open space in the middle with rooms around it. One room had only two children in it, one of them sitting on his mother's lap by the window. She's the one I remember most vividly as making it very clear with the look on her face that she didn't want us coming in to visit her son. Instead, this little guy came to us. He came running out when a couple of us started playing catch with another little boy. He'd seen us from the window, and peered around to see what was going on. He tiptoed over to us, and we threw the ball to him. He couldn't catch very well, but we had fun trying. The mother watched us through the window, and I think she loosened up a bit because we were actually interacting with him rather than simply staring at him. We all enjoyed ourselves, chasing after the ball together. It's just hard to swallow, knowing these kids don't really understand what's going on inside them but their spirits are still so high, pleased with any chance they get to be a normal kid, even if it means playing catch with strangers in the hall. We finished our game and Tara escorted us back to our bus and we headed to Langa, where we were going to have lunch and meet with a traditional healer. We went back to Lalapa and Sheila made us lunch again, delivering the same speech about tea time. Some of us had been on the tour the day before, so we all got a kick out of it, knowing she hadn't changed a bit of it. We enjoyed a fabulous meal and music for the second time, and after we were finished eating the group split into two. The first group went into a back room to meet with the traditional healer, and the other half of us remained in the dining area and learned how to play the drums. Apparently, I don't have a very good ear for music because he kept having to come back to help me stay on beat. But we had fun anyway. After about a half hour, it was our turn to take off our shoes and go into the room to meet with the traditional healers. One of the women who worked at the restaurant sat on the floor next to two men dressed in traditional African clothing, with animal skins and elaborate headdresses. They were seated around a pot with a small flame, and the first healer stuffed what looked like a mass of twigs into the fire. The smell was something like incense but a little bit mustier, and it was supposed to evoke the ancestors. I'm camera happy and tried to turn off the flash but apparently forgot to, because it went off when I took a picture. The woman who worked there, who was with us to translate the healers' Xhosa, stared at me for a good thirty seconds before speaking. Speaking very slowly, she told me that I was to take no pictures because I was disturbing the ancestors. I probably would have laughed her stare hadn't terrified me so much. The healer did my reading first, probably because I'd made my presence pretty apparent with the bright flash. He'd study you for a few moments before speaking as the woman translated. She first said I had bad dreams. I didn't, but I didn't want to just say that wasn't right, so I said if I did I thankfully couldn't remember them. Another few minutes of studying me, staring at me, before he spoke again. This time, he said that I needed to get my throat checked out, because it gives me a lot of problems. He says I have a family history of problems relating to the throat and that if left untreated, I'm going to get cancer. I didn't quite know what to say to that, so I simply thanked him and told him I'd go to the doctor. Now, he'd lost me at the start with the dreams. The throat thing was a little weird, considering I'd just gotten my tonsils taken out, but I didn't think anything of it. The last thing I'm going to say about it, though, is that the next morning I was awakened by a bad dream, and my throat was sore. Interesting enough. But come on, when the traditional healer's cell phone goes off- twice- during the reading, when he's supposed to have come to us from the middle of the bush, it's a little hard to take him seriously. It was a fun experience, though. He didn't use any of the animal feet or snake skins that I'd seen the day before, but that was okay. He only needed his incense and the ancestors did the rest for him. Our final stop of the day was at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, where we were supposed to learn about medicinal plants. We didn't learn a whole lot about medicinal plants, but we did get a lovely tour of the gardens before heading back to the ship. Katie had gotten back from her safari when I got back, so we showered up and went to grab dinner at Tequila Cantina, a Mexican joint right on the wharf. It was a popular place for the SAS kids to go because they served fish bowls, positively huge plastic bowls filled completely with alcohol. We spent most of the night there, just hanging out and sipping our drinks as we watched our friends who were there drinking fish bowls offer drinks from it to every SAS kid we saw walk by. And we wonder why so many students got back on the ship with colds. After Tequila Cantina, we all got in cabs and went over to Long Street and hung out a place called Cool Runnings for a bit before calling it a night. I can see why Long Street is so popular. It's a long street lined with bars. It's like home without having to get through the casinos to find the bars. All in all, it was a great way to spend an evening out with friends in Cape Town.
