Ceri and Ralph are in London

Louis and I are at home and we swim every day. Louis dives from the step into the water and he can swim beautifully now.

Louis told me he picked up 10 Rand at school and wanted to buy sweets from the 'Fantastic' sweet shop in town. It turned out to be 10 cents, not enough to get a blue lolly called 'blue lips' but we couldn't resist(full of chemicals but really tasty!)

Louis made a fire and we ate the pap and sous with our hands.

Louis hires videos from the local library every day. He likes 'Bush school 2' and today he watched 'Sharks and Killer wales' -the truth - very appropriate. Emily(therapist) told me she saw a whaleshark in Ponto bay last weekend!

House No 5 (our residence) is now almost finished and we can't wait to move in.

I am doing my videos for the GP membership and will present them to Janine in Johannesburg for editing this weekend.

Spoke to Ceri today and she is sorting out everything in London...

Looking forward to going to the cinema this weekend! Can't wait to see Ceri and Ralph.

Ralphie is 2 . The director 's house and the chickens

Lego was the toy of the year

our first potjie

Chicken on a wire

Polwyntjies

Ponta d' Oura (golden beach)

Ralph in the director's house

in search of the dolphins

It was Ralph's birthday on the 11th of February. We celebrated it in Ponto( literally on the beach). From Manguzi it is a 20 min drive to the Mozambique border and then another 20 min 4x4 drive through fairly thick sand. The road is not really sign posted but most side tracks end up in the same place, so you just go for it...

We stayed at the Dolphin encounters... a quirkie set up with alot of enigmatic type art and cool, trance like literature about swimming with dolphins and being close to nature. You stay in amazing reed huts(you have to fumigate it first) on the beach and then there is a lounge with sea views where you can sit on poofs and learn about dolphin encounters' research and activities. We took the boys out on a very rough sea(the dolphin lady who wriggles her body in the water and attracts the dolphins didn't join us) but there was little to see and both the boys puked-their pale faces are noticable on the picture). We met 2 nice couples with kids and we celebrated Ralph's birthday breakfast overlooking the golden bay.
We then came home and had a small birthday party with Bella and her 2 kids. Ralph was thoroughly pleased and sang 'Happy Birthday' several times(close to 100 times). Ceri produced a plate of home made cup cakes and also a large home made cake. We ate and ate..

happy birthday little goden hair boy!

Ralphie celebrated his birthday during the time that we were still camping in Ettiene's house(here he is pictured in a smart shirt)

We were in Ettiene's house until March. It was called the palace and it had a lovely stoep around most of the building. We regularly saw the chickens(the so called no - man's birds) of the hospital. They are like cats. They wander around and treat every house as a home.They multiply like rabbits and it is not unusual to walk to the hospital and see chicks, young adults, older hens, and even perhaps a dead one(this was only an occasional sighting as they are fairly robust and live amongst the strongest bugs in the world(including multi-drug resistant TB); so all the generations except for the egg! The chickens are a discussion point at the hospital. They sometimes are found in the maternity ward, in the trees, in the vegetable patch(little buggers). Chickens do well in this part of the country and I always suggested that patients start a small chicken business when they receive a disability grant for chronic disease(DG). The african word for chicken is chickeeeeeeen.

Tembe elephant park

with Robin(physio) on a game drive

We stopped here for a break(later, on another trip, we saw lions very close to this spot)

Sometimes we would go to the Maputaland lodge for swimming, beers and chips. On a few occasions Willie, Bella and kids were there and the 'owner's shockable dog'. This dog gets electric shocks for bad behaviour such as attacking guests who arrive at reception instead of the bar. Apparently the batteries are low and the manual control is left at reception. Ma looked lovely with her bright orange top( for sunburn prevention).

Willie and Bella have a very nice lodge in or almost in the world heritage site - wild and close to nature.
The Tembe elephant park is about 20 min from the hospital. The main gate is on the way back from some of the clinics (Mboza, Zama2, etc.)
I sometimes stopped for 15 minutes at the water hole/hide for lunch after a stressful clinic visits in order to find some nature healing. I would do this as a routine for the visiting students-just to de-brief and assess their ability to cope with what they had seen in clinic(this could vary from a genital wart to malnutrition to full blown AIDS/TB. The clinics were tough(sometimes 30 patients per clinic- 2 clinics a day) and most of it related to poverty, HIV and Tb. The animals were relaxing to watch, and balanced life somewhat...
The elephant park arranged a special offer weekend and we attended as a family to get to know the therapists and doctors from Manguzi and other neighbouring hospitals. We had several game drives and meals at the lodge(the bush babies come and peep at the guests during dinner time). The accomodation was tented and with a walk in the night from the main lodge...Tembe from Tembe would later tell me about all the elephants that entered through the lodge gates(they were kept open at night)and how the tourists would scream and cry out for help as the elephants cracked the branches and made angry noices near their tents!)

We met Robin, a therapist who was in her community service year. She was very sweet with the kids.

one snake in the pool and one in the bush

Natal bush shake

polwyntjies

I am now part of the medical team doing an on call a week, and doing paediatrics in the day(self elected).

I was 2nd on call today which meant we didn't go away for the weekend. Eunice disappeared off to church for 4 hours(what do they do, and does it involve eating!)

We had our first swim ealier in the day but went back to swim at 4 pm(the swimming pool is on the compound, so 5 min walk from the house). Mark(one of the senior doctors) appeared with his African pet python around his neck and then dropped it into the pool for a swim. Louis' day was made and Ralph shouted: 'snake, snake!'. Ceri and Louis braved it into the pool. The snake was swimming around in a rather frantic way... quite a sight!

Louis can now swim without any aids and uses his underwater goggles to check out the creatures in the pool.

Generally Ralph messes around on the step and Ceri clears the pool of bugs with the net which is hooked onto a very large tree.

A friend of Louis killed this harmless Natal bush snake in the bush next to our gate. No snake survives an encounter and this is due to ignorance and sheer fear. Snake bites are common and only rarely fatal.
After our exciting swim Louis made his first fire with paper, twigs(self found) large wood and charcoal. He lit the fire himself. There is a very large owl in the tree next to the the barbeque and we could see it through the leaves. There are different types of owls, some hoot and some make a very loud , shrill sharp sound.
Ceri saw a very pretty song bird(8cm tall according to bird book) with a long beak in the garden today.
Ma and Louis made cup cakes(polwyntjies) and put various decorations on them.
The minister of Health is coming to Manguzi on Tuesday - she is flying to the local airstrip but i am sure she is going to have a sore bottom from all the pot holes...i wonder if she will notice. She is hopefully going to talk about AZT and how good it is for all. I am not sure she is aware that we are issueing private stock to pregnant mothers according to WHO guidelines and ignoring local policy...