let us give thanks

Okayyy……

I started writing a post about how our trip was all about showing love to the community and building relationships but I just got annoyed! The current rant going through my head is about the NHS- its flippen great! Im not going to sit here and say everything about it is perfect but I think we regularly underestimate how lucky we are to have free healthcare!

While we were away we had our fair share of diarrhoea, infections and colds. It got to a point where the doctor recognised me, my UK doctor wouldn't know me at all (I never go) so this was getting weird! Every trip to Umhlanga medical centre then resulted in a mass scanning operation so we could claim back from our insurance- we were sorted. Apart from the paperwork, which was annoying, we had access to healthcare whenever we needed it and all for free (thanks to Tearfund doing our insurance). We could go to a state of the art hospital and know that we would be seen in no time at all, we got a good and personal service even if it was the staff saying ‘o no not you girls again’.

But not all hospitals in South Africa are the same, I also got to see Mahatma Ghandi hospital- a hospital where you can wait all day to see someone and that I recently heard described as ‘the hospital of death’. This is where the people we worked with had to go, people who couldn't afford medical insurance. The two hospitals couldn't have been more different. While we were away I wrote about Mahatma Ghandi and when me and Pippa went, you can read it here.

A couple of weeks ago I dropped my mum at the hospital and she made a comment about how there was a queue- there was about 6 patients and anyway us English are good at queuing! I sometimes have to bite my tongue as I could make a comment on how lucky we are twenty four seven!!!

Tonight I was talking to a friend who has a seriously ill baby and who has to pay for two taxis to get to the hospital. I hate the fact that we live in a world with incredible healthcare but that its not accessible to everyone, because not everyone can afford to pay (through no fault of their own) and not everyone has the NHS. They have named their son Asibonge- lets give thanks. That's something I personally want to do, to give thanks for what I have.

I failed to find the photo of me and Pippa with our medication

where it looks like we have cleared the pharmacy so here is one

of the photos Abi took on safari- this elephant looks so chuffed 

with life!

There were a couple of times in South Africa where if I couldn't sleep (usually because of every dog in Durban barking at the same time) I would write blog posts about whatever I was thinking about at the time and then read them back the next day to see if it made sense at all. Since returning this has become more of 'a thing' so I thought I might as well actually write down what I think rather than let it just stay it in my head. So here begins an insight into the mind of Catherine, warning this may sometimes just turn into me ranting/ making no sense/ a random jumble of words.

I've been home from South Africa for little over a month, at the same time it feels like I was there yesterday and that I have been home forever. Im constantly being asked 'how was africa' and to be quite honest this is too big a question to answer in one sentence, I can talk about South Africa forever- something Ally experienced when one simple question turned into me having a full on rant.

The next most popular question is 'how is it being home', again quite a big question! My standard answer is

            'Its weird, for some reason I thought it would be different but everything is the same'

and from there the conversation usually moves on to discussing what we did, my favourite moment or what we ate. But when I said this last week I was met with the reply of

            'but you've changed'

and she was right.

Life at home has carried on pretty much the same as the last 19 years of my life, my parents have the same jobs as when I left, the only physical difference in my family is that my brother is a bit taller, my friends are mainly in the middle of their summer holidays which look much the same as last year. But I've come home having lived in a totally different culture for 6 months, we built a home in Durban. There are things you would never even consider being a shock when coming home, for example we had no carpets in our house so when I got home I would constantly trip up going between rooms with different flooring! I've met people that I hope will be friends for life and had my heart broken hearing the stories of what happens daily in Amaoti (the township we worked in)

I thought that coming home would be easy, we saw the rich poor divide on a daily basis so coming home to a place where I have everything I need (including tin openers and bread knives) shouldn't have been a struggle (I thought). But its been harder than I ever expected and adjusting to England is going to take longer than expected, every little thing reminds me of Africa! At the same time as wanting to settle back in (especially when I move away to uni in a few weeks) I don't want this passion to fade, I don't want to become comfortable with the fact I am so lucky and that people I know personally are suffering so much.