two/six/thirteen

I will forever remember February 6th, 2013.  The following tale of my journey to and arrival in Lubango may seem tall, but alas is a true story.

The day started at 4am so as to watch the OSU/UofM basketball game.  After that heartache of an overtime loss, I took full advantage of the hotel's breakfast and what I mentally prepared myself to be potentially my last hot shower for some time.  After getting that brief update about my luggage situation out, it was a pretty non-eventful shuttle to the airport, check-in, and procession through security.  I even managed to do my first shopping and scored some Brazil swag left over from the 2010 World Cup and a souvenir of my new sports team, the Proteas.

Here's where the day starts getting...involved.  My connecting flights from Johannesburg to Lubango were the remaining question mark from my ordeals in arranging travel.  According to the schedule, I would have 55 minutes to change planes in Windhoek, Namibia.  I made it to my gate, A21, some thirty minutes before it was to begin boarding at 9:05am.  As I am super-anxiously awaiting the boarding announcement, I notice a lady wearing a Cincinnati T-shirt!  She was returning from The Queen City after visiting her sister whom she hadn't seen in eleven years.  I love my state.

Like I was saying, the plane boards from 9:05-9:30am with a 9:50a departure.  That is unless, your aircraft has a mechanical failure and is delayed.  I entered full-on, sympathetic overdrive, panic mode: I am going to miss my connection, be stranded in Namibia, etc.  I got to my seat at 9:54am.  We took off at 10:17am South African Standard Time.  Yes, I was watching the clock.  Yes, I was on edge.  I tried calming down to the likes of alt-J and that sick Neil Young cover by Chromatics.  It helped, but not quite as much as the red wine did (again, international flights are pretty cush).

Thankfully, our captain had a bit of a lead foot and we made up some time, landing at 12:09pm West African Summer Time (T minus 21 minutes until departure).  I was then That Guy who as soon as the plane is parked is standing up, packing his carry on, and quasi-politely pushing his way from the seventeenth row up to the sixth.  As the cabin door opened and my pulse quickened, I was then jogging to the terminal alongside an apparently fellow traveler.  I looked at him in an attempt to befriend a Portuguese speaker and said, "você vai para Angola?"  He replied in the affirmative.  I had now commandeered this man as my leader, translator, and spirit guide.  We make it to the building and in through the, "International Transit," door.  Here, we find one dude and one X-ray scanner in a no more than 8' x 12' room.  Through the glass door ahead we see folks lining up to board our flight.  Seeing as I do not yet have a boarding pass, I am terrified.  Now enters into this security broom-closet a flight attendant from my South African Airways flight.  She realized that the two of us were trying to connect and takes upon herself the task of acquiring boarding passes.  One rule for international travel such as this: do not let your Passport out of sight.  So I gladly hand my Passport to this chick and she disappears.  I then played the standard, "I am not carrying weapons and/or liquid greater than 3oz.," game and was admitted into the terminal.  And by terminal, I am referring to the one open room that is Windhoek Hosea Kutako International Airport.  As the security door closes behind me, I see folks now filing out to board.  As an instinctual male familiar with Jason Bourne, Zero Dark Thirty, and Homeland, I take up a position where all doors are visible and begin scanning for the aforementioned flight attendant.  With about a third of people still in line, she appears and hands me my Passport and boarding pass.  I asked her if I can hug her.  We shared a laugh.  Perversely glad about not having a checked bag, I boarded the plane.

We are just getting started.

Now in the super minority as both an English speaker and white person, I find my seat.  Before long, a flight attendant stops and asks whether I would mind moving to the emergency exit row.  Feeling self-confident in an emergency and considering my long dancer's legs, I happily oblige.  We went through the standard safety song and dance, taxied, and took to flight.  As soon as we are off the ground, I hear loud shouts and much hee-hawing from the back of the plane.  In tribal languages and frantic Portuguese, there are several women now vehemently praying for their safety.  It was highly entertaining and my first real dose of such a different culture.  I settled into a particularly fantastic article in The New Yorker and am minding my own business when I pause the music for a PA.  Stated only in Portuguese, I am picking up the occasional word, "boa tarde...vôo...se...médico..."  Translation: "Is there a doctor on the plane?"

"O Senhor, fala Inglês?"  Now consulting with the gentleman seated next to me, we look around and find no one moving.  Explaining that I am almost a doctor, he suggests that I go.  I go.

Just on the other side of the first class curtain, I find a woman who appears to be in her 40's that is tachypneic, diaphoretic, and totally, "not there," mentally.  I hop over her into the next seat and, as I am trying to talk with her, take her pulse.  She is lub-dubbing away super fast and not even able to focus on my face.  A flight attendant is unzipping a bag and produces a sphygmomanometer and stethoscope.  The stethoscope was super-cheap and with the 737's engines doing their thing a couple twenty feet away, I couldn't hear a thing.  I use the cuff and find her blood pressure elevated in the 160's using radial pulse extinction.  I ask if there is oxygen available.  There is.  A mask and a cold towel return.  As she is slowly becoming more, "with it," I put her hand on my chest and coach her on fewer, deeper breaths.  Over the next two or three minutes she stops her cold sweat and all of her vital signs come back to normal.  Diagnosis: anxiety?  She slowly calmed down and had an uneventful rest of the flight.

Thankful that she wasn't sick, I started to get up and head back to my seat.  The flight attendant stopped me, saying, "you stay, her watch."  So I am now flying first class to Angola.  We are talking double-wide seat and leg rest.  We are also talking lunch served on a linen cloth and real glassware.  And so added to my Rolodex of life experience was, "Is there a doctor in the house?" and flying first class.  Apparently my global health elective got an early start.  We touched down in my final destination, Lubango, to another round of cheers and much applause (lol).

I HAD ARRIVED.  Months of planning, days of traveling, and I had finally arrived!  Quickly deplaned and although customs and security were quite gruff, I was admitted with that stamped addition to my Passport.

Nowwwwwwww, I had kind of let something go in the several days before arriving.  The visit coordinator with whom I had been e-mailing had, for the last week or so, not been replying.  Knowing that we had confirmed my arrival time and date previously, I was foolishly confident that someone would be at the airport to pick me up.  No one was.

Enter the South African couple, John and Citali, that were seated ahead of me in first class.  We had become buddy-buddy after that anxiety hubbub.  John works for SNC-Lavalin, a Canadian engineering/consulting firm, that is refurbishing a hydroelectric dam in southern Angola.  They recognized my stranded nature and offered a ride into town.  Maximally gracious, I accepted.  This is my first view of Lubango and it is a true example of a third-world, developing city (more to come about the city and its people later).  Our van arrives at SNC-Lavalin's Lubango office which is a walled compound of fancy everything.  Arriving just after us is a duo coming down from CEML (my clinic site).  All are converging in order to caravan to their project site that afternoon.  Imagine the absurdity of this happenstance: the folks arriving from the hospital had forgotten something and needed to return.  And so this string of events - anxious woman, no doctor on the plane, first class conversation, no one to pick me up, shuttle into town, others arriving who forgot something at CEML - are what allowed me to arrive safely.  Wow.

The first person I meet at the hospital is Dr. Tim Kubacki.  We proceed with the normal small talk and discover that I go to school at Ohio State and that he grew up in Toledo!  Small world, I know.  We then discover that he used to fill-in at Lima Memorial Hospital's ER.  The very same Lima Memorial Hospital where I was born.  7,273 miles away from Lima, OH.  Small world, I had no idea.

I was given a nice orientation to the hospital (more to come later) and saw my first patients in the ER: TB pneumonia, probable new diagnosis prostate cancer, and a splenic tumor found via ultrasound.  If that is any sample of what is to come...wow.

The Kubacki family is to be my host for the first two weeks as well (more to come later).  After wrapping up for the day around 6:00pm West African Time, it was down the mountain to the city and the Kubacki home.  A fantastically delicious family dinner, WiFi, and warm water were all awaiting.  I slept pretty well that night.

Some day, huh?