Something Completely Different

Hello from the end of Day 1! Happy to report that I am alive and well, and only slightly exhausted. It has been quite a 48 hours since I (finally) took off from Atlanta. Surprisingly the flight was not that bad – I think I slept for about 7 hours, on and off (thank you ZzzQuil).

We landed in Johannesburg around 5PM local time, and I was shocked to see that the sun had just finished setting. It’s very strange to be in summer one day, and winter the next. Although their “winter” here is like spring in NYC – cold in the evenings/early morning and lovely during the day, around 65 or 70. Except none of the houses apparently have central heating, just these neat heated tiles, so the rooms (except for the floor) are pretty freezing when you wake up.

Hasina, my contact at the National Department of Health, picked me up from the airport and after I tried to accidentally get in the driver’s seat of her car (wrong side), we made the 30-minute drive out to Pretoria to Celicia’s house in Sunnyside, where I’m temporarily staying (Celicia works for the Clinton Health Access Initiative). Both women were very friendly and happy to answer my many questions about this strange new land. After unpacking and a bite to eat, we settled in to watch a replay of Obama’s speech at the University of Cape Town on CNN. It was pretty bizarre to see him speak in South Africa, while I’m here. A nice little tie to home.

Sidenote: the neighborhood next to Sunnyside is called Brooklyn. Who knew I had to fly 15 hours just to get to the next borough?

Another sidenote: the plugs here are MASSIVE. They’re like crazy Fisher Price 'My First Plug' plugs. In other news, I brought all the wrong adapters. Whoops.

Celicia’s home is a nice 3-story bungalow-style home, in a gated complex of similar homes, in what she called a “very integrated neighborhood.” It’s definitely still a bit jarring to hear things like that, and hear people readily referred to as “white” as a primary descriptor. I also learned that a lot of the street names were just recently changed, as many of the old street names were leftover from Apartheid.

And so today I had my first day of work. We started off at the National Department of Health, where I got to know the many, many players that are (or might be) involved in what I will be doing. A handful of the names I can’t even understand, let alone pronounce, so that should be interesting. It turns out that they primarily need my help in working with a team at UNICEF (another acronym! Another key player!) preparing some materials for an African Union conference on maternal and child health, showcasing the successes that the NDOH Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission (that’s PCTMT) of HIV program has had over the past few years.  The UNICEF team is flying to Durban (and another area in the same coastal province that I honestly cannot remember) on Wednesday, and apparently I will be going with them to learn more about the project and sit in on some initial filming for a video they want to create for the conference.

It also looks like I’ll be helping to implement some sort of a larger over-arching strategy to inform how new communications about this program will roll out in the future. All a bit different than the original plan, but as I’ve been told, TIE objectives frequently change on Day 1, so I’m trying to just roll with it! The trickiest part at the moment seems to be figuring out who exactly I’m meant to be working with and reporting to.

One thing that I definitely learned today is that the Public Health sector LOVES acronyms. And imagine trying to catch all of those, from someone with a heavy Afrikaans accent, while majorly jet lagged and not a cup of coffee in sight. A challenging morning, to say the least.

This afternoon I also met two Clinton Health Access Initiative volunteers, Pablo and Neal (who is from NYC!), who drove me over to the CHAI office so I could hook back up with Celicia for the evening. They’re living in a guest house nearby, which I’ll actually be temporarily staying at as of Wednesday, while Celicia is out of town. So potentially some travel buddies, or at least someone to pine for the hustle and bustle and well-lit streets of Manhattan with.

Tonight I apparently am crashing someone’s birthday dinner (sushi!) and then hopefully crashing in my bed. Trying to power through the jet lag to hang with the locals.

ALSO – I met my fundraising goal today! Thank you so, so much to everyone who donated. Your generosity was inspiring; I truly appreciated every dollar. And if you still want to donate, you still can :)

Much love!