Andrew, October 14, Port-au-Prince

"Over and over I replay in my head the implications of what we've just done. We told the Haitians that we couldn't physically stop their government from torturing and killing, but that if they told us in detail who was doing it and how, we'd bear witness and seek justice. Eventually the world would be outraged enough to send soldiers and reinstall democracy. We took notes, wrote reports, created summaries and a database of victims. I treated their wounds to give them comfort, an inducement to come forward.

They believed us, risked their lives to turn up at our offices all over the country, in full view of their attackers, to tell their stories. They exposed themselves, crawled in and spilled their guts, sometimes literally. They took off all their clothes, told me exactly who stabbed them and how, and trusted me to treat them. I handed out asprin and band-aids while the killers watched and waited. Now that they're at their most vulnerable, we're abandoning them, frozen in the headlights, roadkill for the macoutes' machine. And we're flying out, clutching our precious blue UN passports and bags full of Haitian art.

We just showed Haitians that our lives are more valuable than theirs. The logic of the mission was ours, not theirs, and so is the logic of our retreat. 'Tell us the truth and we will seek justice' was our idea. 'It's too dangerous and we must evacuate' was our privilege. Neither applies to Haitians. A ship with soldiers arrives at the dock and exits the dock. Haitians have no exit.

The most basic principle they teach you at meidcal school, years before you even get to touch your first patient, is 'First do no harm.' But harm is exactly what we've done, identifying the next victims for the assassins running Haiti. It was a vicious setup from the beginning."

- Andrew, October 14, Port-au-Prince
Extract from 'Emergency Sex (and other desperate measures)

Fresh Start

So it's been about a year and a half since I've written a post, and being the lazy ass that I am, I never got around to writing about the end of my trip. Suffice to say, too much time has passed for me to clearly remember details and write anything of real substance (which will please some people who claim I babble anyway). In a nutshell, the rest of the trip continued to be incredible, the Masai Mara was fantastic, better than I ever expected, and on leaving Kenya I pledged to return... One day soon it'll happen.

So now I am no longer a 'mere mortal medical student', but have been graced the title of doctor, which initially was exciting, but now embarrasses me to mention socially to the non-medical. Well, perhaps not embarrasses, but rather, it creates awkwardness and assumptions, and before you know it you're giving advice about a rash, or an old broken bone. It doesn't help with the men either. You can be having a pleasant enough conversation with a man, unfortunately drop the d-word, hear the obligatory response "Oh wow, you must be really smart", and before you know it the drinks stop flowing, and he goes to the 'toilet' never to return.

Anyway, I'll save the whinging about the difficulties of finding an appropriate man for another day...

I've decided to start this blog afresh. I'm no longer travelling, well not for the moment. I'm based in Brisbane, working as a resident, surrounded by lots of incredible, intelligent people with different views, that continue to challenge and inspire me. I'm consuming more books than food - not text books, I've had enough of those for the moment - and learning something new nearly everyday. So this will be a place for interesting quotes I come across, thoughts, links to articles, books etc. A mish-mash of everything which I'm hoping will help me compartmentalize and express my ideas in a more acceptable way - so I don't find myself stopping people on the street and saying something controversial just to get another perspective.


"Dream to love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try to understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget."
- Arundhati Roy

That's what I'm hoping to do.

Lake Nakuru

I mentioned the Carnation Hotel in the last post cos when we got off the matatu from Lake Bogoria at about 9pm we got chased by about 7 street kids sniffing glue. We had a to get a taxi to the hotel around the corner! When we reached the hotel there were all these young women lurking around the entrance. "Safest" place in Nakuru. Ha!

We went to Lake Nakuru National Park the next day which was nice. A big lake, lots of animals including flamingoes, rhinos, and the regular gazelles and zebras.

This place was nothing compared to Lake Borgoria, but it was nice. A rhino came really close to our van so that was cool.

We decided that we couldn't go back to the Carnation Hotel so we ended up at the Tropical Lodge which the LP recommends and where we were going to go before Chris's friend told us otherwise.

The Tropical Lodge was clean, with comfortable beds and about a quarter of the price of the Carnation Hotel. The streets actually had pavements and there were no streetkids sniffing glue lurking around outside. In fact, the streets felt so safe, it was like we were in a different city. I can't believe we spent two nights at that dodgy hotel!

At the Tropical, I started talking to the guy behind the desk Joseph, who I swear was probably the most genuine guy I met in Kenya (Peter the intern now comes a close second). He didn't have any hidden agendas, he wasn't trying to pick us up, he wasn't trying to make us help him go to Australia or wherever, he was nice to us cos he was actually nice. Hard to find in a place like Kenya.

The next day Joe and his friend George took us to the Menegai crater - an old volcanic crater that is seriously HUGE. It's no longer volcanic, even though at one stage we saw some smoke at the bottom and got excited - turned out it was just someone cooking :)

We climbed - well actually slid on our bottoms - down the side of the crater. That wasn't too much of a problem, what I was worried about was getting back up. We were sliding our way down and suddenly we saw the rains making their way towards us, so we had to head up again before the dust turned to mud and we got really stuck.

God, that was a tough climb, I tell you what. I appreciate that I'm totally unfit, and the fact that I'm short doesn't help, but I was grabbing onto tufts of grass for dear life, which wasn't entirely comforting...

Beautiful place though, breathtaking.

Lake Borgoria

So I headed out to a town called Nakuru with Ann and Laura, two Danish med students I met in Nairobi. We left on Monday evening in a Luxury Premium Deluxe Rift Valley Shuttle Coach (I swear that's what it was called) matatu. It was merely a glorified matatu - filling up in Nairobi with only 12 people (incl the driver) and not picking up extras along the way. Although the drive from Naivasha to Nakuru is horrendous, I've done it couple of times now and this was the most comfortable form of transport along this potholed stretch.

We reached Nakuru about 9pm. Chris (a cool british lady who came with us in the matatu) got picked up and her friends offered to drop us off at a "very reliable and safe" hotel as Nakuru is "very very unsafe". I'm not sure if he was getting a commission or something but the place we ended up at was called 'Carnation Hotel'. The beds were as hard as rock, but the bathroom attached was clean so we thought we'd go for it. At about 2am we were woken up by trucks reving their engines, honking horns, loud music and general unrest. Again at 5am we were woken up by the wailing prayers from the mosque next door. I appreciate that everyone has their own way of going about praying to their particular Gods but at that time in the morning I really wished more people thought religion was a private thing. Why the hell would you attach a megaphone to your place of worship and make sure everyone else hears your preaching? Putting aside that no one can actually understand anything... I just dont get the point in that. I guess it's equivalent to door knockers - but at least they dont knock on your door at 5am.

We'd all decided to go to Lake Bogoria National Park the next day. Lake Borogia is now reenowned for its pink flamingo population, and hot spring that are about 200 degrees celcius. We got a matatu from Nakuru and, as usual, totally underestimated the time it would take us to get to the park.

As an aside, I made friends with this cool chick on the matatu called Sarah - a Kenyan who works for the UN World Food Program. Apparently they really need medics so she's going to send me the employment details. Exciting!

Anyway, according to the Lonely Planet (LP) you can hire bikes at the main gate, to do the 13km stretch from the gate to the hot springs. Through Sarah, the matatu conductor said that bikes apparently cost 500Ksh each and that they could take us to the hot springs for a price we could negotiate. It was nice of them to offer (we thought) but the LP describes it as pretty easy once you reach the gate, so we thought we'd get there and figure something out. We could get bikes or hitch a ride with another safari vehicle or something.

The matatu dropped us right up to the gate, and immediately the conductor jumped out and started talking to the police officer at the gate in Swahili.

When we asked the officer about bikes, he said they didn't have any. He said we could try and rent one from a local but it would cost us 500Ksh. I didn't have a problem with riding as long as the bike wasn't too tall for me (which most are). I'd had a bad experience with a big bike in Mauritius and didn't really want to repeat it. When I described the issue, the officer pointed to a huge bike and goes "That's the smallest bike we have in Kenya". I swear you would have had to be 2metres tall to ride a bike like that!!

He kept emphasizing that we could hire a vehicle into the park and insisted the matatu was the best way to get in. Not only were the conductor and the driver hanging around, but about three random male passengers must've decided they wanted a piece of the mzungu cut as well and were hanging around inside the van.

We were NOT going to get this matatu with 5 random guys into the park. But everytime we tried to enquire about some form of transport we would hit a brick wall. It felt like everyone was in with these matatu guys.

Eventually we spotted some mzungus at a campsite by the gate and went over to see if they knew what we could do. They were pretty useless and we were back to square one.

By this stage the Matatu had left but some randoms from the van were still hanging around. One of the guys approached us and told us he could get us a small vehicle and we could drive ourselves into the park. This sounded perfect and we sent him off to bring the vehicle.

After about 20mins, we turn and see the guy who offered us a vehicle, riding a bike and leading none other than the matatu back into the parking lot. I couldn't contain myself, I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to vomit. How obvious did they want to be? It's one thing to want to take advantage of mzungus, but you're only going to be successful if you're subtle about it.

We decide we needed to walk away from this situation, that was the only way they'd leave us alone. We started talking to another local guy who was working at the campsite. He said his mate had a car that we could rent, and in the meantime he could take us somewhere to get something to eat.

We all trooped off with Daniel, to the matatu guys' dismay and ended up in the random dingy local "hotel" for chapati, sukumawiki (not sure of the spelling) and chai. The town, called Loboi, is really small, with a few shacks in the "city centre" and some houses sprinkled around.

While we were eating, a young guy walked up to us, said he had a car, and that we could rent it. We thought he was Daniel's friend so said yes, and negotiated a price. Turns out he wasn't, he was just some other random local, but he didn't have anything to do with the matatu guys.

We all jumped in the back of Ashley's pick up and noticed that all these other African men were getting in with us. Laura cracked it and said we only wanted one guy in the car with us - it's not safe for three girls to head off with about 5 random local men. Eventually everyone got out, but someone claiming to the be the "co-driver" remained adamant. It was a shame we had to lose Daniel but were weren't about to be outnumbered in the middle of nowhere.

Turns out Ashley did need a co-driver - his older brother Charles - as everytime the pick up stopped they had to fiddle around under the bonnet and then we all had to push to get it started.

These guys turned out to be really nice and we had such a fantastic time. Ashley is 18 and has just finished his year 12 exams, he wants to be a mechanic. Charles is a fair bit older, he's a farmer now, but was a UN peace keeping soldier for 9 years.

Lake Bogoria is stunning. You can get really close to the flamingoes - they're so beautiful and their pink colour is really vibrant.

The hot springs are cool! Apparently they have a tendency to blow up so you have to keep your distance (we didn't) and the water is about 200 degrees celcius. You can bask in the steam rising from the springs and cleanse your pores.

This place is unlike anything I've ever seen, and I doubt I'll ever see again. I don't think my photos really capture how beautiful the lake, the ranges, and the flamingoes are.

I don't think we could've had a better, and more random time. It all just sort of happened without us really realising what was happening. I'm so proud of us for standing our ground and not giving into the matatu guys and not letting them take advantage of us. I know we paid Ashley and Charles waaay too much in Kenyan standards but they were nice guys and we were desperate. Desperate times call for desperate measures!

Mama Africa

I reached Busia Kenya at about 5:30pm. A 2 hour ride ended up taking me nearly 5 hours. That's Africa for you.

Mama Grace, Betty's mother, came to pick me up from Busia and we arrived in their village Harambe, near a place called Mumias which is famous for it's endless sugarcane plantations. Chewed up bits of sugarcane carpet the streets, and there are plantations as far as the eye can see. If it's not sugarcane it's maize. If not maize then cattle.

I think this family is the one wealthiest in the district. Compared to the standard mud hut, they have a brick house, with no running water, but with solar power! They have a lot of cattle, who's mooing songs I bathed to in the mornings, and a large chamba (farm) with lots of maize, sugarcane, kasava and other cool crops.

As an aside I've had so many interesting bathing experiences whilst I've been here. Showering to the sound of our resident Maasai singing songs at Upperhill, showering in an open shower looking out over the river Nile and Bujagali Falls, and bathing to the mooing of Mama Grace's cattle. Welcome to Africa!

(Ryan and Mguito, our resident Maasai)

To be honest, I'm not sure whether Mama Grace knew why I was there. Instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing - meeting the guy in charge of the Computer and Bee Keeping Projects - I was paraded around and put on a pedestal. It wasn't fun.

The day after I arrived, I was taken to all the schools in the area who are receiving school books from Adam and Betty in Adelaide. At each school, classes were disturbed, and an assembly was called cos a mzungu was there. I was expected to say some inspirational speech about education to these poor innocent children who had no idea that I a) had nothing to do with these books at all, b) I wasn't there to be parading around and making inspirational speeches, c) I totally don't believe in putting myself up on a pedestal cos I'm a mzungu and feeling good about myself cos I'm saving little black children by giving them a hand full of books that schools in Aus don't want. This all goes completely against my whole belief system. I'm not in Africa to parade around as a white person saving the black race. I'm not interested in public health and community development cos I think I'm so great I can save the world or that I want people to look up to me. I'm interested in this area because I can't not be. It's hard to explain.

Anyway, I was feeling more and more guilty about having to pretend that I had something to do with these books and accepting people's gratitude. The final straw was when suddenly I couldn't find my mobile in my bag. As I was looking around for it, one of the teachers who was parading around to all the schools with us goes "Are you looking for this?" with my phone in his hand. I thought it was weird that he had my mobile, and that he'd taken it out of my bag, but I tried not to think anything of it. He told me that he had to message his friend back to tell him he was busy but he didn't have any credit, so he asked if he could use my phone. I was tempted to say no, but gave him the benefit of the doubt and let him do so. The idiot didn't realise I can check my sent messages, and the message he had written went something like this: This is dr. snieha from austria. call this number, she can help you go abroad.

I was pissed off. The idiot lied to me. I then had to field off phone calls from random people telling them I had no idea how they could go to Austria or Australia or wherever, and that no, I didn't have enough money to help them buy a ticket. Not happy.

That wasn't it. Everyone I met over the few days I was there kept asking me for things. I'd meet a random Bishop and Mama would go "See, he has no furniture, you must send furniture for him from Australia" and then the guy would thank me profusely and say God will be my saviour and all this shit. That's not why I was there, and after days and days of people continuously asking you to send them things it gets a little frustrating. In all my time in Africa so far, I have never been treated like this. I didn't know how to deal with it.

I suspect that I probably sound selfish. But it wasn't like these people were asking me for money to buy food or water or whatever, I was asked for stuff like a keyboard for the choir in the church and a generator to run it, furniture for the Bishop's lounge room, and a van for the kids at one of the primary schools to go on excursions.

Anyway, I was miserable and lonely and eventually I spun a web of lies and came back to Nairobi.

I've met some Danish med students who are staying at Upperhill. They're doing a brief stint with an NGO called Provide Int through IFMSA. Provide has clinics all over Nairobi - primarily in the slums (there are many more other than Kibera). I went along with them to a clinic in a place called Korogocho and we ran an information session on family planning for single teenage mothers who have had kids out of wedlock adn have been ousted from their families and dumped by their boyfriends.

These people have some really strange ideas about contraception and sex. As well as the standard story that I have heard a few times that Joshua was telling me - if the woman takes the pill a lot, the medicine builds up in her body so when she has sex with the man, the medicine is transmitted to his body and he can no longer enjoy sex (or something along those lines) - they have many other strange ideas. One woman was saying when she has sex with ehr boyfriend and she has her period, after 2 days he gets lower abdominal pain. She thought that was her fault cos she had her period...

I'm not sure why they have these beliefs. There are no mens health groups, so all the information the men get is from their friends. And when no one really knows the truth it's easy to blame the woman for random symptoms.

I'm heading to Lake Bogoria and Lake Baringo next week with two of the Danes to check out the pink flamingoes and hot springs. Then heading to the Maasai Mara with Ryan for a few days. Should be fun!

Matatu

I left for Busia on Thrusday and decided to do it like a local and get a matatu. A matatu is minibus that locals use to get around. Matutus go anywhere, and you can get off anywhere you like. They pack them till they're bursting, and the drivers are notorious for driving drunk, stoned, or high on the local drug miraa. The Lonely Planet recommends travellers don't use matatus, but of course, I'm stupid so I decided to go ahead and give it a go. Plus matatus are much cheaper than actual buses and they get to their destination a lot quicker.

According to my Lonely Planet, the trip from Jinja to Busia was supposed to take me 2 hours. So I figured 2 hours in a matatu would be no problem at all. I had to pay extra for my pack, but it still only came to the equivalent of AU$4.

This isn't my matatu. This is just a random pic of the matatu stand, but you get the idea. I was too scared to take my camera out and take a picture or our van for fear of being robbed. Our matatu was called "Bismallah". It was good to know the van needed to be blessed by Allah...

They have the strangest names for matatus around here. I've seen vans called "Big Brother", "No pain no gain", "Jesus is Lord", and a bright pink one called "Shakira".

The drive was crazy. At one point we had about 25 people in a van that would carry a maximum of 8 people in Australia. That's not including babies, goats etc. There was one stretch of road that was so bad we had to drive on the dirt strip on the opposite side of the road, and then swerve when vehicles came in the opposite direction. The radio was on full blast with rnb numbers pumping whilst we all clung on for our lives. Apparently the government started to fix this road back in 2001. Somewhere along the line they forgot about it and have never started up fixing it again.

At one stage we stopped at some random town and I was the only one left in the van. The conductor said that we'd have to wait for more people to get on before we can continue the journey. I suspect to justify the petrol... Some guys started hassling me - saying stuff in Swahili and looking at my chest. It was a little awkward. I would've got out and slapped them one but I didn't want to leave my pack in the van by itself. Eventually a young girl got on the bus and said "Are they disturbing you?" and they left me alone. Juhiyo was going to the next town to collect some medicine for her grandmother who was sick. Her mother was the doctor in her town (she told me the name of it, but I can't remember). She was a cool chick. I'd say she was about 12 years old but she had attitude. The guys gave her a hard time too but she told them where to go. What a cool little girl.

The conductor kept packing people onto the van even when we were obviously full, and eventually a guy in the back cracked the shits and started yelling obscenities at the conductor and the driver. What dramas! Everyone (all 25 people) in the van decided to get involved in the argument and there were Swahili and Luganda swear words flying left right and centre. It was pretty amusing.

We finally reached Busia at about 5pm and then I had to get a bicycle taxi (with my pack) from Busia Uganda to Busia Kenya. I felt sorry for that guy... I had to sit so close to him cos I had my pack on my back, I could smell his body odour.

I got picked up at the border by Mama Grace - the mother of Betty who is part of the Books for Kenya project in Adelaide.

The source of the Nile

We arrived in what I was told was Jinga at about 7am and I was summoned to the front of the bus. I got all my gear and as the bus pulled away I realised I was alone at a service station in the middle of nowhere in the rain. There was nothing in sight. Oh, except a roundabout...

I went into the servo and talked to the guy behind the desk Haresh. We bonded on a curry to curry level and he offered to get a boda-boda for me and actually secretly told me it should only cost me about 4000UShillings which was nice of him. A boda-boda is the common mode of transport here in Uganda - it's a motorcycle taxi like they have in Thailand. After I bargained the original quote of 15000shillings to 5000 we headed off. As we pulled away I realised it was probably really dangerous for me to get on the bike with my pack, as the rain had turned the roads to slush.

But I reached the campsite in one piece, just burnt my leg on the exhaust getting off the bike...

Jinga is amazing. It's so green. Everyone lives in mudhuts and there are kids everywhere. Once again you're always greeted by the obligatory "Jambo Mzungu!" and waves.


Nile River Explorers campsite at Bujagali Falls in beautiful. The showers are open and look out onto the river, which makes for an interesting bathing experience. It has tiers all the way down to the river bank where the dorms, bandas, and tents are lined up. There's a bar and you get a tab which you pay when you leave - which is a little dangerous...

There are so many Aussies here it's not funny. I hadn't met a single other Australian till I arrived here, but they're everywhere! And they own all the major businesses around here. I feel like I'm at home again!

Jinga Town is a little decrepit. You can tell at one point the town must've been thriving and beautiful, but all the buildings are rundown and unkempt and everything is covered by a film of red dust or mud. Including me. My feet are now permanently stained red from the mud and dirt.

Everything here has a name that refers to the Nile in some way. It's pretty funny. The stores, the beer, the meals in restaurants, the clothes, the hotels...

The Nile is famous for it's Grade 5 rapids (Grade 6 is the highest and they're unraftable) and rafting and kayaking fanatics flock from all corners of the globe to ride these waters. Maybe that explains all the Australians.

So, I decided to see what all the fuss was about and I went white water rafting yesterday. I couldn't actually take my camera on the raft - it would've fallen out and been swallowed by the mighty Nile so I dont actually have any pics as such. I got to the place we were supposed to meet and this old guy comes up to me a goes "Hi, I think we've met" in this dodgy way. I was like "No, I dont think we have, I'm Sneha" and he said "I'm Ian. Yeah, we have met, I spent the night in your banda the other day." Now let me tell you, there have been no visitors to my banda at all since I arrived, so I had no idea what he was talking about... If he was hot, I would've considered going along with the conversation just for fun ;)

It's weird though, ever since I got here, lots of people have been mistaking me for someonce else. I've been told I cured Josh and that he says thanks, that I hooked up with this Ian guy, and boda-boda drivers are offended when I dont know their names. How weird that there's some other curry chick who looks like me, roaming around Jinja getting with ugly guys.

Anyway, back to rafting. The group I had was so eclectic. There was Ian from Ireland. A Dutch couple working for an NGO called War Child and 3 Poms. Steven one of the Poms, looked like Peter Pettigrew from Harry Potter. Nice enough guy though. The other Pom was Steven's brother in law, and he was there with his girlfriend. I dont know her name, but I kid you not, she looked like Moaning Myrtle. And fuck did she whinge. The whole time all she did was complain in this prissy English accent, and all her boyfriend did was look at her longingly. They couldn't keep their hands off each other. It was gross.

Myrtle refused to stay in the boat when we practiced flipping, and started hyperventilating everytime we came up to some turbulent water. She had some serious issues.

I had an awesome time though, even though I had to sit behind Myrtle and paddle doubly hard cos she kept stopping and hyperventilating. The flips were awesome, the rapids were unbelieveable and the scenery was amazing. I can see why people are addicted to the thrill. It feels like you're playing a game with the river, teasing it. It wants to kill you, and you ride the waves on an inflated dingy hoping you dont die, and get this rush of adrenaline when you dont.

I think I nearly did die though - at the last rapid, which was the most turbulent, called "The Bad Place" for a reason, the raft flipped and we all ended up in different corners of the rapid, as usual. Then as we were flipping the raft back over again, I forgot to hold onto the raft, and ended up under it. As the water was so turbulent, I kept getting pushed down lower and lower, and people were piling into the raft which didn't help. I was struggling to get out from under the raft and I thought to myself, I think I'm going to die here... It was pretty awesome ;)

On the way back to the campsite we drove through a Circumcision Party.

Bloody Myrtle was waving to this bunch of fully grown men in a really condescending way (you know when you flex your finger instead of waving your hand). They just stared back at her, no one smiled, no one waved. Then she turns to her boyfriend and in her prissy english accent goes "I love putting a smile on their little faces, I love making them happy!". I felt like slapping the bitch. THEN to top it all off her boyfriend goes "Darling, that's cos you're special that way". Argh! Vomit! Why do people like that exist in this world??

I'm leaving for Busia tomorrow, and I'll get picked up from there and taken to Mumias, where I'll be spending the next two weeks or so for the EWB project.