beginnings

isilimela hospital, for a place that i will be spending at least one year at, i know very little about it. in my defense, nobody else does either. i am a physiotherapy student at the university of cape town, in a month, if all goes well, i will finish my studies and leave for community service. in south africa, all the medical and health related professions are required to complete a year (or two) of community service i.e. working for the government, to be allowed to work privately in the rest of the country. i believe it is attempting in a small way to ensure that medical professionals stay in the country and to stem the growing brain drain which south africa is experiencing. after two rounds of placements, i am now posted to isilimela hospital in the rural transkei. i knew nothing about it before i applied except that it was near the ocean, so i would be able to surf. once i knew my placement i decided to find out where it was. this would be harder than you would think. the first port of call was the eastern cape department of health website. this department is not well known for its organisation or indeed for its computer skills. a colleague of mine who qualified last year didn't receive pay for three months because nobody in the department knew how to transfer payment on their computer systems. not to mention that the list of second round locations for the province was, in a word, wrong. not a good sign you may think. however, the directions to the hospital provided the first glimpses of something to look forwards to,

"Isilimela Hospital is situated plus minus 17km from the tar road Tombo junction. It serves the port St. Johns municipality area and located at Gomolo A/A next to plus minus 2km to Mpande beach along the Sinangwa River, population served: 437 294."

the rest of the the site is rather sparse, but come on, 2km up river from a beach? as directions? yes please. it was time to whip out the google earth




the beach is mpande beach and apparently is considered the most consistent breaking wave in the area. the pictures of the beach and river are amazing. some quick figures then: isilimela is 40km from the nearest town, port st johns, by road; it is 1050km from my home of cape town; and the closest airport without astronomical prices for tickets is durban, five hours away by road.

as i continued to look through google searches, i was finding minimal information about the hospital itself. what are conditions like? what services are actually offered? where do the staff stay? the only info i found for the conditions was from seven year ago (http://www.dispatch.co.za/2001/04/02/features/HOSPITAL.HTM) other than that, nothing of substance.

im beginning this blog so that people who come after me might have the information that i did not. my outlook at the moment is positive. more info as i get it