My Latest African Adventure

I am about to embark on an "adventure" that most PCVs will not have in the course of their service.  I am leaving at 1:30 AM on Monday to go to South Africa.  Now many volunteers do take a trip to South Africa when they are here, but I am being medevacked there. That sounds much scarier than it actually is.  When we come up with a condition that cannot be handled locallly, the Peace Corps will authorize medical care at another location.  Washington DC determines if you will be medevacked and where you will be sent and South Africa is the main medevac site for Africa. 

My adventure started when I realized that my left eye had gone blurry and was still blurry with my glasses on.  I went to see our local Peace Corps doc and he set up an appointment with the eye clinic at the Gambian hospital in the area.  The primary benefactor of this clinic is an Arabian sheik so it is named after him and their is a giant picture of him in the lobby.  I must say that their system of managing appoitments etc is different than the US.  Luckily they had sent me to the clinic with a Gambian named Marie.  Having her there to help me made all the difference.  I might still be there if she had not come.  I basically had vision tests on Friday but did not see the opthamalogist.  After the testing they gave me an appoitment for Monday to see the opthalmologist. When I say Monday, that was the appointment, there was no time specified.  When I arrived on Monday the clinic was jam packed.  People and their entire families were there.  I had Marie along with me, which was again a great help, but it still took quite awhile.  When I finally got into see the doctor there must have been twenty people in the room.  There were Gambian med students, other technicians, the patient who was being seen at the time and his family, and people passing through the room to get to the waiting room on the other side of the examination room.  I imagine that they see many more people in a day than a doctor here, but I was experiencing a little culture shock  The net result of the eye doc's exam was that I had some opacity in my eye capsule that was causing the blurriness.  He said it sometimes would resolve itself and to come back in 3 months.

I did not feel entirely confident with that.  The doctor seemed compentent and most likely is very good since he sees so many patients in a day.  However when I reported back to the Peace Corps doc I said that since it was my eye, I did not feel comfortable waiting for 3 months to find out if things got better.  Bless his heart, Dr. Blessing got right on it and set things in motion with Washington DC.  The next night he called me to say that I was going to be medevacked to South Africa.  So tonight is the night.  Dr. Blessing said that if they need to do laser surgery they will do it when I am down there.  He also said that they have 50 opthalmoligists at the clinic in SA so that raised my comfort level quite a bit.  I could also just end up with a new pair of glasses, who knows?

Anyway my return is booked for October 10th but hopefully I will be back well before then.  The clinic is in Praetoria, which reminds me of a song from my childhood.  Unfortunately I am unable to sing it for you so you will have to do without my rendition of it.  (I know this is breaking Patti's heart).  If I end up being down there for awhile they said that we can make day trips so hopefully I will be able to to the tourist bit while I am down there.  Send some positive vibrations my way, folks.  I am calm but it is a little scary.