Kiwi Christmas....

Oh it's so nice to be home.
The pohutakawa are in full flower. The sun sparkles on the waters of the Bay of Islands.

The fish nibble, tug and tease on the end of fishing lines. And dolphins frolick around the boat.














The fishing on Friday started a bit slow with some gust-propelled drifting across the bay with winds so strong that even the strongest snapper couldn't keep up with the bait, but culminated nicely with a drift between rocky outcrops, oyster-encrusted and pohutakawa fringed bays past a pod of frisky dolphins and we brought home enough fresh fish to feed a family a few times over.

The barbeque has spluttered and smoked as the sausages and steak charred to a slightly-less-than-carcinogenic-still-authentic-BBQ flavour.

Bottles of wine jostle in the fridge.

Menu-plans have been generated necessitating multiple trips to the local New World, butchers and weekend Farmer's Market for fresh raspberries, prawns, turkey, ham, cream and salad.

My pregnant baby-sister, her husband and her bump are expected home on Christmas Eve. Given that I haven't seen my baby-sister since her wedding 3 years ago, this makes for a full family Christmas.

Technology has gone mad - my parents have stepped up to the challenge with a Flash Drive (small steps for Gen-X, giant steps for parent-kind), a new lap-top, a wireless modem so I can email and blog from the comfort of the lounge (I don't think it was just for my benefit although I did do a bit of propaganda and enthusiastic extolling of benefits), a Wii and this has all required a fair amount of installation, explanation, testing and fiddling.








And throughout, cats do what cats do best.... be exactly where they want to be, which is not necessarily where you want them to be (inside clothes drawers, on the computer and kneading sunburnt knees with their razor-sharp claws).


Ah, it's good to be home.....

Going home...

I have been here in glorious Melbourne for almost 4 weeks and I have succeeded on a few objectives.



Firstly I have caught up with significant friends and enjoyed evenings on the couch with a bottle of good NZ white wine, or on the deck with a few beers as the sun dapples through the eucalyptus trees or watching the moon from the backyard of suburban Ballarat.



I have had evenings out; Kiwi Fish and Chips in the park or jugs of Singapore Slings on rooftops and consistently I have had high-quality, wonderful, generous, interesting and inspiring company.






I have reestablished a relationship with all the children that I know and love; baby cuddles and giggles are still the best therapy for any kind of ill and kids say the funniest things.




The boxes containing those worldly possessions which don't fit in my backpack and have been moldering in the corner of the shed for 5 years have been opened and thoroughly appreciated for the fact that everything has survived without damage and the eclectic nature of the contents.




Simultaneously a selection of items has been taken aside for relocation to deepest, darkest Africa; after 5 years surviving on 20kg of "stuff" I figure it's about time to take advantage of the relocation package and take along some kitchen utensils and a little black dress... well you never know when jungle fever will hit and I'll need to sashay around in a cocktail frock with a wooden spoon! Along with the wooden spoon a large number of food items ranging from miso soup paste to balsamic vinegar are being taken along for the ride and will hopefully augment the local ingredients available.


I have had a full medical check and can happily report that I am in certified good health, and I have had my hair done so I am now blonded up for summer!






And now I am getting ready to go home... good ol' NZ for a month of suxty-sux fush and chups, and all the good things that NZ does so well..... like 42 Below Vodka, Living Nature products, Olivado oils, Monteiths Beer, Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, lamb, dairy, IceBreakers, hokey-pokey icecream..... And of course to have a wonderful Christmas with the family :-)

Coming down

I've been out of Palestine for 2.5 weeks now, and I realise something that I should have learnt before. Every single time I get back from a mission I go through the same process and every single time I get stressed about it. I think that the stress is part of the process and needs to be endured like the other stages of "coming down" but it does become tedious.

The first stage of "coming down" is the flight home; many long days of travel, recycled underwear, sleeping in an upright position with my tray table folded and arriving jet-lagged and tired, but determined not to be affected by these
nuisance value physical complaints.

The second phase is the "catch up with everyone in the shortest possible amount of time while simultaneously stressing about the amount of mail that needs to sorted out, the boxes in the shed and finding a pair of trousers that hasn't been on a 1:3 rotation for the last 6 months". This phase may also be accompanied by worrying about or sorting out my next contract and starting to let my mind wander out to the airport, onto a plane and across the world to my new destination.

The next phase, which is the one I am currently entering, is the "everything is under control, I'm ok, make lists and start being efficient" phase, whereby I get a grip, suck it up, and get on with it. Yesterday was Day One of Phase 3; I spent 5 hours driving all over Melbourne whipping out my credit card, moving with determined focus through pre-Christmas retail madness, and filling the boot of Ding-Dong the Car, with bags and bags of necessary yet indulgent things.




Finding a car park in central Melbourne is an exercise in frustration at the best of times, not to mention cripplingly expensive, but I perservered through throngs of vehicles and masses of swarming shoppers in order to position myself in the centre of it all for maximum efficiency.

I don't shop often and only out of necessity; I have retail self-discipline which, if applied to Paris Hilton, would probably result in the collapse of the major designer labels.



So, I brutally executed a complete overhaul of my underwear, a chat with HSBC, replenishment of my Aesop products (body and hair products, highly recommended by me - expensive but lasts an entire mission in a range of conditions from mountainous mud huts to dusty deserts), craft supplies, and bags of Asian foodstuffs so that I may make Udon soup, sushi, Madras curries and Thai delicacies in the jungles of Ghana.

Phase 4 will commence just prior to my departure.... stay tuned :-)

Who and where am I?

The last few years have been a bit challenging in terms of claiming residency; I have a New Zealand passport, an Australian mailing address and bank account, and a backpack. I usually put that I am a resident of New Zealand, even though I was not entitled to vote as I hadn't been in NZ for the requisite number of days in the last 5 years.

Now I am about to sign a contract to work with International SOS. I was first approached about the job, while I was in Israel/Palestine from an ex-boss now based in Dubai, who passed me onto the Human Resource person in Zurich, who arranged a phone-meeting with the Regional Manager who is based in Melbourne, who then emailed the Regional Medical Director in Ghana, and the ex-boss in Dubai and someone in South Africa, while the HR person in Zurich will pass me onto Human Resources in Singapore to do the contract and SOS Sydney to arrange my pre-employment physical. This is truly International!

Succumbing to the blog

It's been pointed out to me that it would make sense, given the number of sillinesses I get up to, that I should keep a blog, in order that anyone who is vaguely interested in my sillinesses can follow them at their leisure and I can update with poignant vignettes, tales, stories, anecdotes and the like on a regular basis.

This first entry is to set the scene:

I have now spent 5 years of my life lugging an aging Kathmandu backpack around the world. My backpack and I spent 21 months in Vietnam. My backpack hung out in my room most of the time while I caught xe om (motorbike taxis) all over Ho Chi Minh City setting up an infection control programme at a surgical hospital, teaching English, going on ward rounds at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, working at International SOS, doing my Masters and drinking a multitude of
cocktails, chewing on chicken feet and attempting to communicate in a language with 8 consonants and about 60 tonal vowel sounds.

I then moved to Nigeria to live in a 3-star holiday resort/expatriate residential compound in the most filthy, polluted, violent and debauched city I have ever visited. In between plane crashes, shootings, bus crashes, helicopter evacuations, cases of cerebral malaria and STD checks I managed to get in some goat head stew (trying hard to look coquettish as I nibbled on a goats ear), some tennis/squash, a number of Star beers, and some mighty fine photos of agama lizards.

After Nigeria, the call of the wild took me and I became what I always wanted to be - an MSF Doctor. Flying over the mountains in a Yeti Airlines flying-bus, and walking for 10 hours over mountains, along river valleys and up mountains barely prepared me for the isolation of working up a mountain, with limited electricity and patients that walked or were carried for hours - days to reach us.

Subsequently I went to the Jaffna Peninsula, in Sri Lanka, occupied by the Sri Lankan army, and cut off from the rest of the country and the world. Everything from bus crashes to conflict related injuries kept the surgical team busy, while I dealt with suicide attempts, snake bites, scorpion bites, difficulty in breathing and chest pain, and coordinated the field base regarding security and logistics.

2007 was the year of many moves; after Sri Lanka I found myself in Almaty, Kazakhstan doing a locum, then flying with Azal Airlines (Azerbaijan's finest) to Baku, Azerbaijan to look after pampered expats and understand the subtleties, or lack thereof, of vodka.

I came back to my base of Monbulk, Victoria (thanks to Brig and John as always), and arranged myself a job in Occupied Palestine Territories which necessitated a trip to Paris, a trip back to Azerbaijan to fill in time, back to Paris and onto East Jerusalem, in time for the post-Ramadan Eid festival, Christmas and snowy winter months. The sight of snow on the Dome of the Rock is a dramatic image of incongruous nature melding with centuries of religious conflict. The 8m high wall running around and through West Bank segragating Palestinians from their families and their agricultural land is also pretty evocative.

Now I am in Monbulk, resting and bonding before going home to NZ for a month and then making my way to Ghana for 2009. Watch this space......