Yins and Yangs

It seems that the more we go along in our life in Botswana, the more polarized things become. For every positive, a negative seems to crop up. To better explain this hopelessly vague introduction, I've divided the experience into "yins" and "yangs" in historical order. It also adds a pseudo-sophisticated angle to what can only otherwise be described as "good stuff" and "bad stuff."

Yin 1:

Our jobs here are fantastic. It's many of the great things about medicine without as much of the pain and paperwork. Matt spends 1-2 days/week attending at the main tertiary care referral hospital in Gaborone. The other 3-4 days/week are spent on community outreach, during which time he travels to district hospitals to teach, learn, and see patients with medical officers. The PEPFAR mandate that he works under is concerned with building local capacity to take care of complicated patients with HIV, TB, HIV/TB coinfection, and other chronic diseases. So most of the time, he rounds and sees patients with medical officers in both inpatient and outpatient settings. The work is exceedingly gratifying - as one colleague Dr. MH likes to say, "it's nice to be in a place where the goal is to work yourself out of a job."

Premal spends most days seeing adult HIV patients at the Botswana-Baylor Center of Excellence (COE for short). It's a sweet gig - she takes care of the primary care needs of adult HIV patients while simultaneously learning about how to manage complicated HIV cases.

Yang 1:

So this actually is a good thing. We just put it in this section because our friends Amy YANG and Shivani came to visit us a few weeks ago. Good times, game drives, and lots of great food - it was great to see them and reminded us about how much we miss our good friends back home!

Yin 2:

Our accomodations are great - we have a three bedroom, 2.5 bath place with a small backyard and a garage (with no car in it - see yang 3). A few of the other Baylor folks live in this complex, making for a nice community. We're also a short hop to one of the main shopping centers, replete with bars, restaurants, and supermarkets.

Yang 2:

There have been 4 burglaries in the past two months here (not including us...yet). Apparently the 24 hour security was sometimes dozing off at night after disabling the electric fences because "they went off too much." Guess we're all targets since we're foreigners, but I just wish someone could translate our collective amount of debt into local currency so they could understand that we don't exactly budget for another laptop computer!

Yin 3:

We bought a great car about a month ago. 1997 blue Honda CR-V with all-wheel drive for those muddy game drives, low mileage, and only a mild hint of the cigarette stench that pervades most Japanese imports here. It drove great (note past tense and see yang 3).

Yang 3:

We went to Johannesburg a few weeks ago to see one of Matt's jazz idols, Abdullah Ibrahim, in concert. He and Matt had been in touch over email and had recommended we come down to "meet." So down we drove on a Friday afternoon, only to find out that he actually had wanted us to join him at a concert. Well, Premal developed a nasty migraine and Matt barely made the end of the first half of the concert (maaaany hijinks trying to find the venue, let me tell you). The following day, we were enjoying ourselves in a nice Jo'burg suburb, commenting to each other that "Jo'burg really gets a bad rap" and that "it really isn't so bad after all - why do people freak out so much about coming here?"

That evening we went to eat supper around 8pm in a very busy, well-populated and lit area. At 8:45 we returned to the car only to find an empty parking space. Apparently going to Jo'burg without eight levels of security on your vehicle and with Botswana registration is "a bad idea." Stolen in front of a bar with a bunch of people eating and drinking outside - what balls! These guys are real pros. Mafioso types - not poor 'youts from the townships. And what a trip it was to drive down and fly back. Jo'burg: 1, Matt and Premal: 0.

Yin 4:

Matt has started to play with a local jazz guru called Socca Moruakgomo. He's a trumpet maestro who also sings his own tunes. Great horn parts, fantastic band, and amazing Afro-jazz energy. He's played three gigs with Socca's group now with many more to come. He's also been able to meet some of the other local musicians and is really starting to get known in the scene (for better or for worse!). It's really a musical renaissance, playing music in a style to which he has always felt a deep connection. (Don't worry - photos to be posted on picasa soon if you haven't seen them on Matt's FB page!).

Yang 4 (unrelated):

Of course after our car was stolen we had to start looking for another one. After looking at 10 to the 6th sub-standard 1997 Honda CR-Vs, we started to think about changing our expectations. Maybe since we do so much driving we should get one with airbags and safety features, right? So we started looking at vehicles with airbags. Shit if we weren't test driving an SUV on Wednesday and got into a SUPER nasty car accident.

We were behind a large 18-wheeler and couldn't see oncoming traffic. Premal was driving. We slowed to see if anyone was coming. She signalled to turn onto a dirt road. No sooner had she begun to turn the wheel to see around the truck when a guy doing about 90 Km/hr blindsided us on the passenger (left) front side. Airbags deployed in P's face. Apparently his crew was fleeing after having stolen a guy's laptop, who was giving chase behind them. He ended up getting his laptop back, but then served as our ambulance so we could get a bruised, confused, and bleeding Premal to the hospital ASAP. In the end, it was an excessively frightening experience that left Premal with a concussion,a pair of nice shiners, and a night in the hospital for obs, but no major intracranial problems or fractures.

On the yin side of that story, everyone here has been nothing but amazing during this weird and awkward post-accident time. We are thankful for our friends and colleagues - we could ask for no better people to be around in a time of weakness and need. Everyone supports each other when it hits the fan - for that we are forever thankful.

So for now, the yins have it 5-3 (I counted Amy and Shivani's visit as a yin!). Stay tuned and we'll try to stay away from cliches for the next posting. Emails and facebookmails are of course welcome.

Matt and Premal