Weekend 1: Settling in Bloemfontein

So I haven't had internet access for the past three days, but I finally got a guest verification code. I have been writing my posts on the tablet daily in anticipation for this day. You get serious friend and family points if you read all of this, but I promise that I tried to keep it entertaining.

 5/9

First sight of South African terrain

Looks can be deceiving

As I am writing, I am sitting in the airport of Johannesburg waiting on my flight reflecting on the marvelous discoveries I have made about international travel as a small, white woman in South Africa. Unfortunately, this means that every escort in the place has scouted me out trying to direct me somewhere, which at first was sketchy, at second was helpful, and at third was bothersome because they wanted a $20 tip. For anyone else who would like warned, when anyone asks to help you in a SA airport, even if they clearly work there and have a shiny badge and a uniform, say you can do it yourself and would not like any help, thank you. Also, though JFK was significantly harder to navigate, I am struggling to find any useful shops here, I cannot even find an ATM for currency exchange, nor can I find any medicinal shops. Just food and safari hats. The flight here was okay, it was 20 hrs long and I landed a window seat partnered with a very large fellow that smelled kind of funky, but at least he was nice. The flight attendant for our isle was especially entertaining, as he looked and sounded like Alfred Pennyworth's apprentice. The bowl cut and the plucked-to-an-arch eyebrows may have also contributed to the impression. In a sort of Indian-Dutch accent he delivered our plastic coated cuisine with a classic "Be my guest sir," or "I hope you found breakfast to be satisfactory, Madame." He asked where I was from and after I replied "North Carolina," he remarked "I would expect no less than a Carolina girl. Your people are very beautiful." Yeah, I think I like Ishmael, the butler flight attendant.

Connector flight: Johannesburg to Bloemfontein

I'm not usually accustomed to selfies, but traveling alone warrants trying new things.

So I tried to sleep from 5pm to 1pm to accommodate myself to South African time, but I can't say I slept incredibly well, though the neck pillow was definitely a good call. A couple other dietetics students emailed me yesterday to inform me that I should pack for the diabetes camp this evening at 5pm, which will be a bit of a rush considering I will land in Bloemfontein at 3pm and I have no idea where I will be residing for the next month. Apparently the diabetes camp is overnight, which was also new information gathered yesterday. Unfortunately, all of the well-advertised free Wi-Fi in this airport is inaccessible to me for some reason, and I have no other avenue by which I can check my email to confirm that I will be picked up in the Bloem airport, so I am praying that dear Mr. Olckers (whom I've never met) checked his email yesterday or this morning. I also really need to find a bank or an ATM and some store that sells Ibuprofen. However, this is still vastly less stressful than exam week, so I am doing just fine. I am thankful that there are people back home praying for me.


Now that I am so close to the destination that I have been obsessively planning and researching since January, I am realizing just how long two months is, and am beginning to wonder why I thought this was a good idea. "Hey self, what do you think of traveling halfway across the world alone for two months? Oh yeah, that sounds fun, let's do that." I am already missing my family and friends, but I am hoping that feeling will be overshadowed soon by the addition of new friends. I guess Ishmael was a start.

I'll keep you updated as to what goes down at diabetes camp. Hopefully not insulin levels.

-Jordan.

5/10

Bloemfontein Airport

So thankfully Marleen Olckers did remember to pick me up, though he seemed very much in a hurry to drop me off and leave. Thankfully I remembered to ask for a Wi-Fi password to communicate with my family, because they hadn't heard from me since I left JFK airport. He gave me his university internet credentials, but the internet is so weak that the only use I have for it is to send text messages through WhatsApp. Thanks SO MUCH to Rebecca Barker (a teaching friend who just returned from the UFS last week) for telling me to download the app. So I relied on texting Ryan to call my parents to tell them I made it.

New residency at JBM Annex!

Nicole is one of my apartment-mates who apparently was unaware of my arrival until I walked in. However, Nicole was very friendly and polite after he left. She showed me around the apartment and we chatted for a bit. She is from Holland and has been here since January taking classes in the public administration department as an exchange student. About an hour after my arrival, Carlien (a 4^th year dietetics student) came to pick me up to take me to the diabetes camp. If you are wondering what happens at an overnight diabetes camp, so was I. It was actually really rewarding experience aside from the visual impairment induced by jetlag that made everything seem like a hallucination, though I totally did see a meerkat run across the airport landing in Bloem.

Carlien brought me to the camp and introduced me to the rest of the dietetics students as they were preparing dinner. The overnight camp was surprisingly held at a really nice facility. I guess was expecting an elementary school gymnasium or something, but the estate was called Sandstone Sleeper which was kind of a wedding-hosting resort, but I guess they may have given the nutrition department a discount or donated price. Many of the kids there had been there in years previous so many of them already knew each other. It was neat to see how the program was run in order to teach kids how to properly manage their diabetes. Though you might think that the kids already know how to manage their diabetes from private counseling, many of the children had been diagnosed at a public hospital so they did not receive appropriate diabetes education either because the nurse was a volunteer community member and did not properly understand the diagnosis (type 1 vs type 2 diabetes), or because the hospital was understaffed and could not spare the time for thorough education. Most of the girls are Afrikaans (white African) and speak both Afrikaans and English; they frequently switch back between the two languages. Afrikaans is very similar to Dutch, so there a lot of words that were easy to pick up on, such as "dankie" for 'thank you,' "pleseer" for 'my pleasure,' "hallo" for 'hello,' and "lekker" to describe something likable. All of the girls were very pleasant and friendly and I foresee making some good friends!

There are only about 20 people in the department, a good bit smaller than at home, and about 10 of them were at the camp. Carlien said that because the students had been cooking and cleaning for the entire weekend, they didn’t really get a chance to interact with the kids as much as they would have preferred. There were a few practitioner volunteers: a pediatrician, a dietitian, and a couple nurses. One of the nurses was so lovingly called "the fat lady" in whispered tones because she was always complaining that the children were not getting enough food. Carlien made the menus for the entire weekend according to the medical counsel of several physicians, dietitians, and lecturers, which I know must have been a toilsome task, but the woman was insistent that the children were all hypoglycemic because they were not receiving large enough portion sizes, when in actuality, the children were hypoglycemic because they were running around playing soccer more frequently than they usually do during school hours, and so they were injecting too much insulin before meals. I know from advanced nutrition and health risk appraisal that aerobic exercise is incredibly good for diabetics because it bypasses the need for insulin to reach insulin receptors and activates the GLUT4 transporter that transports glucose into the cells. Anyways, the group was frustrated that the woman demanded more snacks, but Carlien went ahead and bought more. The kicker was that shortly afterwards, the lady was found munching on the snacks in the kitchen! Hey, you can't stop  bellyaching when you can't stop the bellyaching.

So anyways, I was excited to talk with the children, but it didn't seem like the children were excited to talk to me. However, they were very excited to play soccer with me, and they told me that I was the first "grown lady" to ever play soccer with them. They had a movie night and we all watched Madagascar 2, which I think was ironic considering the subject matter of American African animals struggling to identify where home is. That was awesome, haha. What was more awesome was that one of the volunteers with the diabetes camp, Jonathan, who had been really interactive with the kids the whole time invited all the kids to sit down for story time before bed. He told some jokes, and my favourite one (warning, this may be offensive to Zimbabweans) was about the president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, going to China to understand the true meaning of his name. And so Mugabe asked a wise man named Ze Pow Sing to help him understand. The man said that all one has to do is skip a rock across the water and listen to the sound to discover one's true name. So Mugabe did, and when he skipped the rock, the water said "Chee-pan-ze.” Mugabe didn't like that very much so he tried again. "Chee-pan-ze" the water said again. Mugabe was frustrated so he took a big rock and chucked it as hard as he could into the water, and the water said "Ba-bOOn." Oh the kids loved that joke!

Afterwards, while all the kids were leaving for bed, Jonathan and a youth leader named Tabogah talked for a while. They were both black Africans that had grown up dealing with type 1 diabetes, and I was astounded at Jonathan's story. He was a political refugee from the Congo and had escaped the violence of the war by running with a bullet in his leg and cuts all over his body. He made it to South Africa, but not have his insulin, as he had received his insulin from missionaries that came to his church while he was living in the Congo with his parents. He was orphaned by the war and homeless in South Africa at the age of 9. He survived for several weeks without insulin, until one day he woke up in a public hospital and he thought it was heaven. He said, "Yes, the public hospitals are not great, but for me, it was heaven." There he received some diabetes education and was given some insulin pens. He was later enrolled in some sort of foster care program, but sometimes he was physically and emotionally abused because of his status as an immigrant. He was eventually adopted by white Afrikaans that he still calls his parents. He told me that he calls his life miraculous because there were countless situations he had encountered in which he should have died. Not to mention a type 1 without insulin or appropriate dietary intake really shouldn't have lived as long as he did during the refugee periods of his childhood. But he also said that the only thing that gave him the will to live was his faith through Jesus, and he trusted that God would save his life. Now he says that even though managing diabetes was a severe challenge for him, he would never give up the disease, even if he had the opportunity for a cure. He believes that he needs to be a diabetes educator in regions where the diagnosis of diabetes is a death sentence due to the lack of insulin availability. He wants kids to realize that they are not alone in managing the disease and that they can live lives of worth. Jonathan keeps all of his insulin pens, he never throws them away because he feels that they are a symbol of his daily challenge to stay alive. He said diabetes reminds him that he is human and that life is a gift not without challenge.

I went to bed last night believing that God was beginning to answer my prayers, not simply by presenting me with a story that mentioned him in it, but by presenting me with an opportunity to listen and understand people, and not just through the tough stories like Jonathan's, but through all stories privileged or not. I prayed last night that God would open up my heart and eyes and allow me to listen and learn from the people I encounter, and I also prayed that he would allow me to see immigrants in my own nation with a new heart of compassion. It is easy to become dull to oppression when it is ingrained into your own society, and I believe that professing equality as a virtue of a nation is a dangerous profession because there are so many exceptions to the rule. I also prayed that I will make friends and the internet will begin to work. I may not see the latter happen anytime soon, but I am beginning to make friends.

Today I borrowed Wieda's phone to call Cobus, my driver (only for today and yesterday), to take Nicole and me to the Waterfront Mall to buy groceries and use the ATM. She showed me around and kindly bought me a milkshake from Spur, a local burger place she really likes. Though I could use my credit card to buy groceries, I could not withdraw any cash from the ATMs for some reason, which was bothersome. So I've befriended Nicole as well as Carlien, Wieda, Hannelise, and a few other dietetics students.

A very sugary  coffee date with even sweeter people: Hannelise and Wieda

They were so sweet to have given me one of their uniform t-shirts with my name printed on it that says on the back, "Keep calm and ask a dietician," hahaha. Wieda and Hannelise want to take me to a cheetah park soon, so that's also really exciting! Also, they both have WhatsApp, so I can actually communicate a bit with them when I am in my apartment. Tomorrow morning Carlien will pick me up and we are going to start working at Botshabelo, which is a small, rural public hospital.

-Jordan