Mokolodi Part 1

There's a small nature reserve just outside of Gaborone called Mokolodi Nature Reserve. It used to be a farm, apparently, but the land was donated to the nearby town of Mokolodi and is now open to the public. It boasts an education center, self-catering chalets, camp sites and a restaurant. You can take a 2 hour game drive in the morning or late afternoon, and a few weeks ago we did the morning game drive and then ate lunch at the Mokolodi restaurant. Many of the game drives, or safaris, that one could do in Botswana and South Africa do not allow children. We opted to forgo one of those this time around and just go to some local, smaller-scale places. It was great for us, and Edwin seemed to enjoy bouncing around in the back of a truck for a couple hours. We went again this past Friday afternoon, but I'll post those pictures later.  Here are just a few from our first trip.

 

I wore Elena in the Moby while on the truck. There are no seat belts and the ride is really bumpy, so it was safer to wear her than to try and keep a hold of her carseat on the truck. Climbing in and out was a bit precarious, but I didn't have any trouble.

We saw a bunch of ostriches. 

The males are dark like this one, while the females are brown.

Can you see the doe?

 

We drove to the top of a hill and had a snack break. This was the view. 

This part of Botswana is mostly flat, 

but then you will see random hills jutting up here and there.

 

Some zebras. 

Botswana's national animal. 

Also the name of their soccer team.

 We didn't get to see the giraffes that live on this nature reserve, unfortunately. 

But we saw a lot of warthogs, impala, wildebeast and heartbeast. 

We saw a variety of birds as well.

After the ride, we ate lunch at the restaurant. 

Here you can see Edwin getting ready to enjoy his pitcher of ketchup.

It's not uncommon for a restaurant to have a playground right next to it. It's a brilliant idea. 

While we sat, chatted and waited for our food, Edwin could run around on the playground as opposed to having to be entertained at the table.  We've been to a number of restaurants (none of them fast-food) that have playgrounds right next to the outdoor tables. While we were in South Africa, we even ate at a place that had an indoor play area where the kids could watch a movie on a large screen, play video games, ride some small kiddie rides, jump in something like a moon bouncer and make their own pizza. There were some adults in there specifically to watch the kids and help them make the pizzas. Dan made the comment that such places wouldn't work in the US because we're just to quick to file a lawsuit. Too bad. We have all enjoyed the presence of a playground next to the tables.

Home Away from Home

 I think I said I was going to post some pictures of the house we're staying in here in Gabs. Finally getting around to it. Above you see the front door. The dried, drooping plants on the porch roof are an experiment (not ours). I think they'd look great if they went the whole way across and were fresh.

Just left of the front door. You can's see it on this picture, but the garage door is now nice and clean (a fun activity Edwin and I did together one morning) and the garage is a bit emptier since I took half a dozen bags of paper, plastic, bottles and boxes to be recycled. You can see there are some brightly colored outdoor toys. Edwin's been making use of those most days.

Here's the view when standing near the garage door. You can see the motorized gate connected to brick and cement block walls. The walls surround the plot and they're topped by and electric fence. There is an alarm connected to the fence. It went off the other day. Apparently a lizard touched one of the wires. That was the end of the lizard. Soon after the alarm went off, some one from the security company came to check things out. So we know the system works. Walls and gates and electric fences are the norm around here. It was the same in South Africa (even more so!) and also in parts of Swaziland.

 This is a view to around the side of the garage. Those tires are basically little raised beds for growing vegetables. There's another one (not pictured) that has some basil growing in it. A gardener comes a couple times a week for a few hours to water the plants. It's the dry season here, so we haven't seen any rain since we've been here.

And further around the to the back of the house. The second door from the right is the kitchen door.

There is a small house behind our house. A young woman who is volunteering for a year at a local clinic lives there. The small house contains a bathroom and very small bedroom. We share the kitchen with her.

You can see there is a lot of gravel and dirt around here. Edwin loves the space to run around. And because it's all walled in, he can't go too far. Being in the city, and in a mostly enclosed space, I'm not really worried about snakes being outside, so I'm happy to open the doors and let Edwin explore and play and dig in the dirt to his heart's content. I think returning to our home with a tiny back yard is going to be quite a shock for Edwin.

More Daily Scenes and Random Weather Info

It's naptime, and both children are peacefully sleeping. Quite the opposite of yesterday's naptime. I'm thankful they're sleeping so well right now since I'm on my own with them this evening. Dan works the 2-9:30 shift today.

I thought I'd post a few more random pictures of things you'd see here most everyday we're at home.

Elena hanging out with Rebecca, our house help.

Elena in the high chair. She hangs out in here while we eat and while I'm cooking.

Tummy time!

Edwin playing with Chariot. 

Edwin is fascinated by the front loading washer. 

I've heard it's hot and humid in the mid-Atlantic region these days. I can't say I miss that humidity. The air is dry here, and that makes any heat so much more endurable (I am not a hot weather fan, can you tell?) It's going towards winter here, which means the mornings and evenings are quite cool. During the day, the sun is warm if you're standing in it, but because the air is dry, if you walk into the shade, you might feel cool.  It's warm enough that Edwin can run around barefoot during the day and I don't have to bundle him up most of the time. But when the sun goes down, we pull out the slippers and sweatshirts, and we've closed most of the windows in the house because it gets too cold in the house otherwise.

Intro to A&E

I've reached the halfway point, having just finished my 3rd week of work in the Accident & Emergency Department (A&E).  It's hard to believe I'll only be here for three more weeks, but I think it's high time I post something about my work here in Botswana! (By the way, this is Dan, not Amy.)  

First of all, my schedule is pretty nice.  There are basically two shifts covered by the EM faculty here during the week: 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.  I work three or four shifts per week and none on the weekends!  The primary focus has become supervising and teaching EM residents ("registrars" in the master of medicine (MMed) - emergency medicine program) and medical students.  Most of the work in A&E is done by medical officers (physicians without formal specialty training) employed by the hospital (ministry of health).  The university employs the EM faculty (currently only 3 docs from the U.S. and Australia) and the registrars. The EM specialist faculty are generally available by phone when not working clinically in the ED.  

Left: Empty board = slow morning
Right: XRays on the PACS computers
(some days it works, some days it doesn't)

Around 30,000 patients per year are seen in A&E, so that's 80-90 patients per day on average.  Most of them are seen between the hours of 11 a.m. and midnight.  It's not uncommon for A&E to be empty, or nearly so, from the early morning hours until about 10 a.m. Things also pick up at month's end when people get paid.  

There are 10 bays in our ED and a two-bed resuscitation room.  Relatively stable patients waiting for tests or admission get moved to one of 7 "corridor" slots in either a bed or a chair.  Some patients who are suspected to have TB are kept in the "isolation" room next to the triage area for evaluation.  Most of the bays have a Philips monitors & wall oxygen units.  The university owns an ultrasound machine (SonoSite M-Turbo) that is kept in A&E.  You can also request an ultrasound with report from radiology.  Plain X-rays are available, but can take hours, even if you request a portable film.  There is a CT scanner that has been in and out of commission (supposedly because of problems with the doors containing its radiation) that can be used for head CT from A&E.  Apparently if you want an abdominal CT, the surgeon has to order it.  Labs are available but the reporting time is highly variable.

It won't be long 'til these bays are full.

One side of "Resus".

Medication availability is somewhat variable (like in the U.S. these days!).  We have some antibiotics, but not a comprehensive selection. It seems like everyone either gets oral amoxicillin or IV cefotaxime.  It's on an open shelf in our med room alongside IV diazepam and ketamine.  Apparently normal saline solution is on short supply, or not available, but currently there is Ringer's Lactate and dextrose containing IV fluids.  

Around town there are plenty of fancy new buildings and shopping centers (this is not a remote part of Africa) and yet the hospital (and entire health care system) is lacking basic equipment, supplies and infrastructure.  

The new health sciences building at the university.

Airplane Adventures

I don't think I ever posted pictures of our airplane rides. Here are a few. Enjoy!

Edwin was fascinated by the TV screens that were stored in our arm rests.

He was pretty excited to watch some preschool programming, but he didn't watch it as much as I thought he might.

Can you guess where Elena is?

 There she is!

Relaxing in the hanging bassinet. A "must have" if you're flying with an infant, in my opinion. Hoping we're able to have them again on the way back.

 

Naptime! 

 At the airport in Amsterdam.

Airplane silliness. This was on our 2nd, and longest flight.

I had packed a bunch of snacks for Edwin, and I'm glad I did. He didn't eat much of the airplane meals, so it was good to have snacks on hand in case he got hungry between meals.

 We had a little less than 2 hours to go on our last flight when I heard Edwin say:

"Ned all done. Get off plane."

Laundry and Pretzels

Monday is laundry day. The washer is in the kitchen here (compared to in the basement - which is the case at home), and it's surprised me how much quicker I seem to get the laundry done. I'm even line drying here. This house is also only one level, whereas our home in DE is two stories with a basement. I guess the only downside about not having stairs here is that I'm getting less exercise throughout the day. Oh well.

In between doing loads of laundry (which will not be folded until tomorrow at the earliest - our house help was not here today, and I don't usually fold laundry the same day it's washed, especially if it's line-dried) I baked some soft pretzel for lunch.

I like them so much I thought I'd share the recipe. You can find it HERE.  The two darker pretzels have cinnamon and sugar on them.

Most Likely Something Venomous

As most of you probably know (thanks to facebook), we saw a snake this past weekend. It was my first snake-sighting in southern Africa, and I think it was my first venomous snake sighting ever.

I didn't even see very much of it either. Here's the story Dan didn't tell on facebook.

We went to the Botswana Botanical Garden here in Gaborone. It's small and not very exciting. There were a bunch of cute monkeys running around and wrestling that were fun to watch. Some of the plants and trees were labeled so we learned a few names of native plants.

We decided to stroll down the paved path and see what there was to see. Edwin ran ahead in front of us. I was carrying Elena in the moby wrap and Dan was pushing the empty stroller. Suddenly we heard some rustling to our left and there was a snake slithering off a rock into the leaves. It wasn't very close to us, but it was close enough - and sudden enough - to make my heart start racing. We told Edwin he needed to come back to where we were and ride in the stroller at that point. I still can't believe we hadn't even thought about the possibility of snakes being near the path.

After that we continued walking along the path (no, we didn't turn around - are we crazy?!). I would stomp my feet so that any snakes ahead would feel the vibration and leave. Thankfully, most snakes don't want to come into contact with people and they'll leave if they sense some one coming. (However, some one told me today that puff adders are not that way. They'll stay put.)

We didn't see any more snakes and we made it back to where the buildings were. After watching the monkeys a bit more and looking at the 4 stuffed animals (two birds, a crocodile and a buck of some sort) in the "museum", Dan decided he wanted to stroll back down the path and see if he'd catch sight of the snake again. The kids and I didn't go with him (although I would've gone if we hadn't had the kids with us).

Voila! He saw the snake near the path and got to watch it slither across to the other side. Since then he's spent some time online trying to identify it. At this point, he thinks it's a cobra, partly because of the black band near it's head.

I don't mind snakes in general, but when I know that they can kill me (or Dan or the kids) with their venom, then I'm happy to not see them. I must admit, however, there is a part of me that is thrilled by the fact that I saw a snake here. Since we weren't in any direct harm, I can contentedly add it to my list of exciting animals (and reptiles) that I've seen in southern Africa.