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January 10, 2007
Making it work
So things have shaped up here quite a bit. I went to the beach week and got a bit of a sunburn and enjoyed my time immensely -- I went with my friend Shawn, whom I've had the pleasure of spending a lot of time with since I've been here. Also saw several other people over the weekend and saw some of my favorite hang out spots in Observatory.
This week I got some other things done -- market trip, some research at the UCT library, and slowly but surely getting things together for my project's interviews. I did one interview with a woman from Marie Stopes, who is a private reproductive health providor -- and I interviewed them to contrast with the state-sponsored care. In my search for the correct contacts at clinics, I was given the contact info for who ended up being the Director of City Health of Cape Town -- the big kahuna for all public health clinics - and he offered to help me out and then offered to meet with me, which we did today, at his home. Nice, nice guy! And cool house. Anyway, he was a HUGE help and we selected some clinics for me to visit and then he's contacting all of them tomorrow morning to let them know I'm going to contact them, and then he says I should be able to get in with them all on Friday because it's a slow day. So hopefully all works out and if for whatever reason I can't get them all on Saturday I can try to schedule some on Monday, too. I just have to make sure my dude Cecil, or one of his friends, might be able to drive me around all day to these places. Hope they don't charge me too much. SO anyway, Dr. Ivan Toms, Dir. City Health, also gave me an interview, which is quite valuable.
Anyway, so that's exciting. I'm still working on getting interpreters for my interviews of women -- but the Case IRB still hasn't gotten back to me on all that so I really don't know what to think. If I can get people as interpreters(and I do intend to), then I will just do them anyway and only use them for my classroom presentation and not for anything else I do with this project later on, I guess. Not ideal but doable.
In other news, I went into "town" as it's called here, a.k.a. "downtown" and was at the market and decided to stop by the place where Jean Luke, the guy I met last week, was supposed to have worked. Unfortunatey, it turns out he didn't work there anymore, but I ended up having friendly conversation with some of the other people who worked there, and now I can certainly say that I have one more good friend in this city when I come back again by the name of Kenny. Always exciting -- and he has shown me some really cool spots along Long Street that I never knew about before, as well as provided me with plenty of fascinating conversation, both political and personal. This city definitely has its fair share of interesting people and I am enjoying meeting people that I wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet before. My last experience here was so insulated and I learned a lot and had a great time but I realize there was so much more I could've done. I think I knew it at the time but wasn't sure how to access the rest of things, and now I think I have the resources and knowledge to do so in the future.
I do love this city as much as I did before, I think, though it represents more to me now than it used to (which is good). And I am glad to be back. It's still sometimes weird to be in this house without the people who made it so great for me, and I don't know that staying here was entirely a good idea -- in some ways it's been really helpful and great but in other ways I think it might have been hindering my enjoyment of the city.
Anyway, it's been good. I am enjoying myself. Lots of work yet to do and I hope it all comes together... we shall see!
Posted by jcg24 at January 10, 2007 09:17 PM
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