Stories from Zambia

  “Do these parents write about anything other than medical dramas?” “Oh, just read it, Eleanor.” December 18, 2021 Pretoria, South Africa It is not yet 4 AM and I am wide awake at the cozy quirky Brooklyn Guest House in the dark in our room behind the Alice in Wonderland door with its thigh high key hole, on the second floor landing with thigh high painting a foot by foot square and mirrors facing mirrors across the chandelier dangling beaded lines of pink plastic jewels. Being here was not in the cards even three. Now, Drew and I are medical tourists in Pretoria, South Africa at the height of its omicron variant fueled COVID-19 wave. At 6AM, we’re scheduled to report to Mediclinic Medforum Hospital for Drew’s surgery for what has (finally) been properly diagnosed as ethmoidal sinusitis with an abscess that has swollen his left eye nearly shut. Over the past three weeks, it has gotten more and more purple and puffy with a firm mass just below the surface radiating the heat of a gr...

Kafue is the largest national park in Zambia at 22,000 square kilometers, but it is only a couple of hours away from Lusaka. We decided to take the trip out to one of the Kafue camps during the thanksgiving weekend. As soon as we crossed into the park we began to see amazing wildlife including a herd of elephants and the first lion that we have seen here. We went to the Kasabushi camp on the Kafue river (the namesake of the park). It was a beautiful camp with creative architecture and an abundance of local hippos and crocs (thankfully the lions were elsewhere during our stay). There were a few self guided game drives that we did to help me and Maya hone our driving skills. They had a boat so we were able to see some of the Kafue river and go up and down some of the treacherously shallow river. They had these amazing swimming pools that were made using the natural rock formations to make a beautiful natural pool. Right at the end of our weekend and after much trying I caught a giant 12l...