Prisoners Wear Pink

At least the prisoners on the hospital ward do.

I learnt this on my first morning at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Kigali (CHUK). More specifically, I learned that the pink is for those convicted and the orange suits are for those that are accused.  The pink was beautiful in the early morning sunlight.  The irony is obvious.

This first full week in Kigali has been full of learning actually!

I'm learning that looking for a home to rent allows one to see many Mobutesque mansions,  cookie-cutter housing estates, and homes of faded elegance that are slowly succumbing to the inevitable creep of the untended jungle vine.  I also know that the Realtors seem to have prior knowledge of my housing allowance and enjoy pushing that envelope!  The search continues for the ideal family home....

I have learned that having people on the ground who have been doing this job for a year are a fabulous resource.  Joe, who is the emergency physician that I am replacing, hails from New York and has been here for one year with his wife, Julia.  She is also with the HRH program in critical care and anesthesia http://hrhconsortium.moh.gov.rw/.  They have become good friends whom have helped me navigate, literally and figuratively, through the Kigali streets, CHUK politics, Rwandan mannerism and finding the best place for Thai food Kigali.  I will miss them when they leave this week.

They have also sold me their  well-loved vehicle - a 2002 Toyota Forerunner Surf edition with a Turbo diesel engine and a chassis that will get us to some amazing places in Rwanda over the coming months.

I'm loving driving it and know that the girls will dig it too.

 Joe & Julia's tutelage has spread to even showing me some local single track - well, the "singletrack" are actually the paths where villagers conduct their lives of subsistence-agriculture.

 Despite people herding cows and goats, carrying firewood, harvesting bananas, pushing cans of cooking oil, peddling fruit and vegetables, caring for their younger siblings, and hoeing, planting and clearing their land, everyone had a happy greeting of "maramutse," or "good morning," for us as we rode by on our fancy velos with unimaginable recreation time!

Gracious, accepting, resigned and resilient are these folk.

I've learned that I'm not yet ready to describe the CHUK ED.

  At least in so far as the caseload, the M&M and the stark realities of what can and can't be done for the many young patients who present  with serious, and largely preventable, trauma or infectious disease.  More to come on that in a future post(s)...

The residents of the inaugural CHUK Emergency Medicine Residency Training Program are engaged to learn and they are what this HRH effort is all about.  It is exciting to be here now, with the development of EM in Rwanda in it's mere infancy.  The frustrations, challenges, and opportunities loom large. Their solutions and systems will hopefully be learned in the times ahead....

Forward with enthusiasm, tempered-optimism and well-placed determination!

A few other things I have (re)learned this week are that Ryszard Kapuscinski is a fantastic writer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_of_the_Sun),
that you can't always trust what you read (even if it tastes good)

On every table at the CHUK Cafeteria

and that having a sense of humour and humility is essential.

Life is rich.

I hope that all goes well with you all.

Thanks for reading.

That's what the signs say, "watch out for pythons and puff-adders while hiking on Table Mountain."

Watch out I did!  I would rather deal with the potential bear than get envenomated by a puff adder.  Such thoughts of fangs and paralysis were invading my head as I stuck my hands onto warm rocks on the short blocky sections of the India Variant ascent (link). Serpentine fears continued while walking by the geraniums and the uniquly indiginous protea plants

high above the southern Atlantic ocean on a splendid Cape Town Saturday morning.  Every rustle of the wind and lizard had me hyper-alert.

Somewhere on the ascent, I began to think that the python hiking fear would be a decent entry into the blogging world. I have been meaning to start a blog for a while, but I have always stalled at the last minute, losing the story into "why would I write about what I am doing" sands of time...

I almost started this "moving to Kigali" blog a few weeks ago when the concept that I WAS MOVING MY FAMILY TO KIGALI finally hit me hard in the face - an abstract plan had changed to cement-heavy reality.  All this happened while I was quietly drooling saliva down my chin and wincing with bilateral arm pain riding home from the RCMP.  Why was this?!

I dislike going to the dentist. So much so that I refused to schedule the recommended three visits for overdue dental work and insisted that the dentist anaesthetize every nerve in my face and do all of the work on a single visit. She complied and I rolled out of the office with a non-functioning tongue,  a completely numb face and a continuous stream of saliva down my chin.  Next stop was vaccinations. Getting shots in the arms is the next thing I dislike after dental work. Getting shots at a for-profit Travel Clinic where they not only charge you too much money, but also instil fear about bugs, worms, fleas, sun, sand, water, food, jet-lag, blood-clots, yeast infections, bare feet, and counterfeit medications into even the seasoned traveller, is particularly annoying.   Alas, trying to get the doctor to understand my schistosomiasis questions with a non-functional tongue and a copious stream of drool was for naught.  Regardless, some vaccinations save lives and I couldn't get out of there without at least 4 of them.... The North Van RCMP for a criminal record check, required by the Rwandan medical board, was next. At least better than going to the dentist or getting shots - so I thought... The clerk couldn't understand what I was asking and what I was saying  - To be fair, try saying "I'm moving to Kigali and need a criminal record check for the Rwandan Medical Board" while drooling with a hot potato in your mouth, and you will get the idea what I sounded like.  Just when she was about to have me escorted over to the next door LGH emergency department for assessment, she understood and gave me the paperwork.

Anyways, that was another story... Today's story is one of a fantastic outing on Table Mountain, with no puff adder sightings, and a great end to week in Cape Town for the exciting and inspirational EMSSA and AFEM Consensus Conference www.afem.info.  It is also a story of embracing fears - dental work, vaccinations,  and even pythons, all just need to be faced with "grace in your heart and flowers (metaphysical ones) in your hair."  Thank you Mumford https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/after-the-storm/id354072886?i=354073280

Back to Kigali tomorrow to settle in and get to work. The girls are still in NV until Christmas. I miss them.  I guess it is time to face not so much fears, but to deal with some healthy intrepidation about the exciting work ahead. That too will be another story!
Thanks for reading.