Tuesday, November 23, 2010

It has been an extremely long time since I wrote on the blog. Perhaps this is a sign of ennui with this kind of work and lifestyle, perhaps a sign of the poor internet connectivity I have been subjected to, perhaps because through Facebook everyone who has a vague interest in me already knows what I'm up to or perhaps it is sheer laziness.






After completing a year on a mine in Ghana I agreed to take on another job of a similar nature on a mine in DRC, albeit with a better rotational schedule and a slightly better remuneration. I am on site for 6 weeks and then off-site for 6 weeks, with 2 days each way spent in the air or airports.

I am Senior Medical Advisor at TFM site, working with a team of Intl. SOS expats to care for the workforce and dependents, which in my case means responding to Public Health emergencies like ensuring that the expats have been vaccinated against Hepatitis B, and treating a constant stream of truck drivers with gonorrhea and/or haemorrhoids. My hands have never been washed and disinfected so thoroughly or so frequently!
There have been few but horrific emergencies to deal with including vehicles launching 30 feet off disreputable bridges to the river below, crumbling trains electrified by collapsing electrical wires as they derail for the 4th time in 100km and concertina conveys of trucks carrying cobalt and copper rear-ending in sequence in thick dust on potholed roads. We have very good facilities on site to treat national employees and we have an air-ambulance only a phone call away to evacuate expatriates, which insulates us from the reality that, outside the gates, the infrastructure of this country is crumbling slowly and the population live in the starkest poverty. We have a mandate to stabilise non-employee casualties on-site and transfer them to the public sector hospitals. To transfer a patient with severe injuries to a local hospital, degraded by corruption and civil war to a shell of a building filled with dysfunctional equipment and staff is tantamount to a death sentence.



This is a poor country, recovering from years of civil war, corruption and post-colonial de-development and as much as there is abuse of power and nepotism at the top, there is a real committment by the people on the ground to work towards something better for the people. During our recent school surveillance survey for sub-clinical malaria in school children, the local school inspector happily rearranged the entire schedule of entire schools to accommodate the testing.
Medical staff at the health centres and health posts work without salaries. Volunteers fill brick-pits and dig latrines in the village.

Now, I may, and frequently do, complain about living on a mine site. There is the wrench of leaving home for deepest darkest far flung places, the mining mentality, the dual politics of Intl. SOS and the client company, the lack of internet, the restriction of movement outside the artificial constraints of camp, the limited culinary options, the constant on-call and the separation from friends and family. There is however the.... well, there's the money and the exotic status of being International Doctor of Mystery in interesting places, although I think I had more street-cred when I was fulfilling my passion of NGO work with an empty wallet.

The pay-off for all this has been the fact that after one year in Ghana I had saved a substantial deposit on my very own house and home. No more were my boxes consigned to a moldering corner of Brig and John's shed. The contents of these boxes were liberated into a spacious 2-3 bedroom home where they found niches, nooks and pride of places. I selected a few key pieces that I had picked up on my travels to lead the decor, and have spent a goodly proportion of my off-time painting and decorating around the key tangible proofs of my nomadic wanderings.

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