Western Distractions

Sights of Tanzania, African Scaffolding.

Today has been a surreal day. Clearing all my clinical commitments, I borrowed the hospital car and escaped to Tanga for some quiet and isolation. Time is flying by here in Africa and with our increasingly imminent return to the UK on the cards, I need a job to return to. We are starting to scrape the bottom of our now almost bare coffers and we need to ensure the means to begin to refill them.

It was strange to immerse myself in such things, but not unpleasant. It felt a very western activity to account in detail (pretty much to the day) how I have spent my entire working career, what I have achieved, what courses I have been on, how I can demonstrate the various qualities that the job is looking for. Whilst the detail is frustrating at times, I found myself enjoying the process far more than I expected. Perhaps it was nice to reaffirm my role in western life. Perhaps I enjoyed the challenge. Or perhaps it is just a nice opportunity to review all the things I have actually done over the course of my now fifteen years as a doctor. Thankfully, I have electronic copies with me of almost all the documents I required (although finding things such as my National Insurance number was a bit of a mission), and the option to ‘phone a friend’ (who is looking after all our admin back home in the UK) filled in the other gaps. My optimism that I would have it all done and dusted in a day turned out to be naive. Not least because having written most of a personal statement that I was actually really pleased with, I then lost it all (about 90min of work) due to a dodgy internet connection. I won’t bore with the details of how such a thing can occur, but it did. After a flicker of irritation, I found myself smiling at this misfortune. How very appropriate, I could not help but think. Was this Tanzania’s attempts to hold on to me? Or perhaps a gentle reminder of where I am (although, for the most part the mobile internet coverage here is very good, even 4G in Tanga). I began the process of trying to recall what I had written and it was getting very late when I decided I must call it a day to return to Muheza. I had pushed things perhaps a little too far and would be driving the last part of my journey back in the dark.

All the cautionary tales we have been recounted of avoiding night-time driving at all costs proved to be true. The last 10 minutes of journey home were in true darkness and that was more than enough for me. On a ‘fast’ metalled road it felt a particularly dubious experience. The hosts of pedestrians, unlit bicycles and unlit bodabodas (motorbikes) are very disconcerting. It becomes even harder to give them the wide berth that I usually try to. When you throw into the mix that those oncoming vehicles that do have lights on are usually set in a position to dazzle, it feels a distinctly risky. And there seems to be a certain lack of awareness by the majority of road users as to quite how difficult it is to be seen at night. An unlit bodaboda might suddenly loom out of the darkness and veer across your path to drive up a tiny dust track.  

It was a relief to get home.