This is the End

Now that I am back in Montreal with one week of work at the Royal Victoria behind me and in the warmth that a proper winter season brings to me, I sit down to ultimately share with you, my friends, my family, the lasting impressions of a trip gone mindfully everlasting. Even from the distant perspective that I now find myself in, it is hard to wrap one’s head around the past month’s continual stunning stimuli. I thank you all very much for following this blog which has been an absolute pleasure to write. Thank you also for the nice words you have sent my way, the dizzying attractions of a new world are inebriating, but the friendship and love from back home mean much more. Hopefully I will finish writing up my motorcycle trip to Mexico in 2010 before another year passes and so you may enjoy it before long.

The End - The Doors    

After my birthday’s bountiful beauty – scenic, musical, and feminine – I was back at Bara for two busy twenty four hour shifts Sunday and Tuesday. As always with weekends in Soweto, the Montreal’s Code Orange (Mass Casualty) fill of patients already saturated the trauma bay when I arrived on Sunday morning. Also, the Pirates had drawn to the Chiefs in the prior day’s football match which had served as an additional reason to keep us busy. The fans probably disliked the game’s conclusion, but it somehow suited us quite well as a victory, and therefore a defeat, would have had a more dire impact.

The three weeks of experience I now carried felt like an equivalent multiple of what I could have witnessed in Montreal and the associated poise and know-how I practiced with never still erased the hidden silent disbelief that this busy bloody trauma bay instilled within me. The professional reacted to each novel atrocity, frighteningly creative every time, with a calm indifference as if nothing was new, as if I had seen everything but the humanity which completed my healer’s double face kept shaking its head in disapproval. No point in torturing one’s logic in a world devoid of it with a question I grew tired of repeating after a few days: "why?" There are more important things at hand anyways.

I remember taking a few seconds to breathe, not out of choice but rather because that is the time the blood gas machine takes to analyze samples, and I looked at the trauma bay in front of me. Its eight pods crowded with sixteen bloody gurneys onto which a child, a father, a student, a grandmother, a friend, a somebody, or a nobody were sadly all united in fighting for their lives. The loud beeping of monitors only annoyingly confirming what everyone here knows. A puddle of blood, urine, and vomit under a bed. Bloody footsteps retracing the many to and fro’s of nurses, students, residents, and staffs running around doing what they do best. I chuckled in stating the obvious to myself: “this is not normal”. The machine produced its results and I dove back in.

When my last call ended on Wednesday morning, I drove back home, slept until the early afternoon and prepared for one last trip with Shoshy. Not having had the chance to witness the wonders of Kruger National Park, I set off a course towards the closer Pilanesburg National Park. On my way there, I passed by South Africa’s executive capital, Pretoria. Not long enough to appreciate what the city had to offer, but enough to notice a certain post-apartheid peculiarity. Also serving as the country’s capital before the advent of democracy, Pretoria’s streets had once shared their names with prominent historical figures of Apartheid. They have since been renamed, but to avoid confusion, the previous name is still featured on street signs barred by a thick red line.

I got to Pilanesberg and entered a campsite on the North East end of the park; Christine, my landlord, had lent me a tent for the occasion. Had I known earlier that I could have borrowed it, there surely would have been more camping on this trip. Not five minutes had passed after I arrived that four people greeted me and offered their help to mount my tent. The deed done, I thanked them and they left as quickly as they came. Having not eaten yet, I strolled towards the campsite’s small restaurant to see what they had in store. I chose the impala cutlets.

The childhood years I spent sleeping in a small bed trained me well in order to sleep comfortably in relatively uncomfortable settings such as a bathtub in the USA, a small apartment floor in Japan, a sidewalk in Spain, or a roof and the Sahara desert in Morocco. In comparison, camping is like a day at the spa and I relish it, so I woke up that morning quite content with myself. I drove the few kilometers separating the campsite from Sun City where I was going to embark on a safari tour of the park. Sun City might sound delightful but it is an abomination. It is a miniature South African version of Las Vegas and, as far as I am concerned, it has no place next to a National Park. I parked Shoshy for the day, traversed a casino floor and took my seat on a large open aired truck.

As we made our way through the park entrance, I let go of my aversion to Sun City (which does provide jobs for a few thousand people mind you) and paid more attention to my surroundings. A hilly region covered with tall grasses, bushes, and sparsely scattered trees giving animals a minimum to conceal themselves and visitors a chance to spot the worst hiders. It was a bit chilly that morning and our guide offered us blankets to fight off the cold that a three hour ride in an open-top truck would bring. However, being Canadian, the low temperatures suited me wonderfully and I declined the blanket with a large smile while the rest of my fellow safarists looked on in awe.

First sighting of the day was a group of impalas on the side of a water hole in which two hippos were lazily wading. Next, a lonely giraffe followed by zebras, wildebeest, a large elephant, rhinos, warthogs, and even lions. The latter actually got quite close to us showing off their impressive musculature. It was amazing to see the variety and abundance of fauna only a three hour drive away from one of the world’s large metropolises. Even more amazing was the apparent calm and serenity I found myself in heavily contrasted by the violent chaos that kept me so busy back at Bara. The only violence seen here, justified by an evolutionarily selected way of life, consisted of hunting and fighting for mating privileges. For our species, easily available food has relegated hunting to a hobby and the mating ritual has in large part been completely pacified and replaced by a playfully complex behavioral system... though muscle and power can sometimes do the trick for fellow humans which may have missed an evolutionary step.

When the safari was over, I had to face the fact that my time in South Africa was coming to an end. Just one more shift and I would fly home back to a proper winter, a city I love, and family and friends that I love even more. I drove back to Johannesburg and started packing my bag with each item evoking a fond memory of my time here. Later that evening, Christine, a seasoned horse rider, her husband, and I went to a Christmas equestrian performance showcasing Lippinzaner stallions. They used to be war horses and their long training required them to accomplish technically difficult footwork and movements in formation. While my amateur self could still appreciate the complexity of their achievements, I was more mesmerized by the immaculate whiteness of their coat. Being a big Lord of the Rings fan, I was seeing a family of Shadowfaxes parading in front of me.

Then came my last shift. What had come initially has a mixture of shock and coyness in face of such an intimidating environment now was replaced by a composed efficiency. The concentrated experience I gained over the month had forced this quick transformation in response to necessity. Sink or swim. But that day, instead of just putting in a chest drain, or removing one, I looked back at this learning path I had just traced and was glad to see how much distance I had covered in such a short period. This is ultimately what I had come for: trauma experience; superficially measured in chest tubes, intubations, central lines, deaths, blood and more blood but the impalpable real experience I had gained was perceptible through my demeanor in the trauma bay, this surreal place where I was now at home. A place where dramatic distractions constantly try to rip your attention from making life saving decisions, where the incomprehensible results of human violence keep filling blood soaked gurneys, where people die, where people are saved, and where my career will hopefully last a few decades. I tied my last stitch, particularly glad with the fact that I was only one of four students out of ten who had not suffered a needle-stick injury requiring HIV prophylactic medication, washed my hands, wished the best to co-workers and left the ward with perhaps an overinflated sense of a job well done.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, us students would often go eat at Chaf Pozi, a restaurant between the Orlando Towers in Soweto. These old, massive power plant chimneys are no longer in use but they have found a new life in entertainment when a company reorganized the facilities to accommodate bungee jumping, paintball, and scad freefall. Scad freefall involves getting lifted to a certain height by a crane and then released to fall completely unattached into a net a few stories below. I have heard people say it feels like dying: I could not resist. And I concur, it felt like I was dying, but with an enormous dose of adrenaline rushing through me after getting caught by the net, it also felt absolutely amazing.  

       

Back home, I finished packing the rest of my stuff. Christine came over to pick up the keys, say goodbye and wish me well. A friend from Bara had generously agreed to take all my stuff and follow me to the BMW dealership where I had to return Shoshy before going to the airport. The weather had been threatening all day but not wanting to have to fetch my protective riding gear from the depth of my densely packed backpack for such a short ride, I took a chance and prayed for the skies to spare me… which of course they answered with the exact opposite. Not five minutes after leaving the house, the clouds emptied themselves over me and, with the additional help of the spray of other cars on the highway, soaked me through and through. When the dirty deed was accomplished, the rain stopped, as if its whole single purpose had been to teach me a lesson, and gave way to partially cloudy sunshine. The wind and sun thankfully helped dry my clothes on the remaining few kilometers to the dealership where we arrived half an hour later due to heavy traffic.

I parked Shoshy next to the side entrance, her odometer reading 4,299 kilometers more than when we had first met. She had been great with me, a fantastic mechanical companion that carried me through the splendors of South Africa and allowed me to discover so much. This trip would not have been this successful without her. I turned off the ignition and, with her last moment of wakefulness with me, thanked her and wished her a long life. My South African odyssey was now truly over; the remaining hours left on the territory a meaningless formality. My friend from Bara drove me to the Airport and a few hours later, I was in the air planning which movie I would watch and organizing my Christmas shopping strategies.

South Africa has scarred itself onto me, into me. A sometimes painful process, but as like a tattoo, a beautiful, everlasting, and symbolic branding of one’s life changing moments. The country, the people, the work, it was all what I hoped for and then some. An adventure perhaps fraught with risks such as needle-stick injuries, crime, or motorcycle accidents, but oh so worth it. Nothing is risk free. It is up to you to adequately discover yourself, discover who you are, what you are, and how you wish to live your life. No one is going to find out for you. And once you feel you have gained a certain self understanding, it will be easier to weigh the pros and cons of important decisions and figure out when the benefits outweigh the risks of enterprises deemed hazardous by others. I for one was ready to risk contracting HIV. The life is yours, the choice is yours. And if shit hits the fan, no bitching allowed, deal with it. South Africa was risky but phenomenal and often with things that can be bad for you like alcohol or women, they are wonderfully addictive, and if you chose right… phenomenal.

This is the end, beautiful friend.

Cheers folks,

TF