Sylvia's Journal

I woke up early after going to bed late. Closing off our 13-week course took me much longer than I had expected as it took a long time to review everything so that I could write the proper closing comments. I tumbled into bed exhausted next to a similarly exhausted Axel who was already asleep. We made a nice pair.

My dreams wove many of the yesterday’s strands together with so many images that it is hard to catch them all. Something heavy (which looked more like a large piece of building equipment than a plane) falling out of the sky (still, the concern is obvious); leaving my purse on a table at a busy street and running back to get it through very heavy sand, the kind that makes it hard it hard to run in. All sorts of colored skeins of wool tangled together; a picture of someone’s mother with a bite taken out of it. “He didn’t take his malaria medication,” said one of my public health colleagues as if this was totally normal and to be expected – I did find out yesterday that I don’t need malaria medication for Addis. Groups of purple-clad church ladies fainting in clusters along the road and finally a depressed Axel who told me he was sitting on a hill behind the house, right in back of where Scott, another colleague of mine, was sitting working at his computer, putting in numbers.

If I could only get at the whole story from which these snippets are pulled I could probably write a bunch of great and bizarre books. Now it’s more like a powerpoint slideshow with the presenter notes mostly missing.

Axel had his last PT appointment for the trip that causes him much anxiety. He was told to get up every 45 minutes during the plane and walk – of course this means no sleeping. When we get to Holland we have to get in a car pretty quick after our arrival because the family reunion starts at the end of the morning so there will be no time to rest. This probably adds to the anxiety. He also knows none of those people except my brothers and sister.

I made my first visit to the hallowed halls of harvard (medical school first and then the public school). It was a gorgeous day and the crème-de-la-crème of our next generation of doctors, young, eager, smart, well off and in all shades of skin, hair and eye color were sitting in the sun on the quad, or elsewhere outside having lunch. It was a very vibrant place, as universities are supposed to be. Marc and I had lunch and he then showed me around a bit and we talked some more; we still have about 5 more years to catch upon.

I was reminded again of how much I enjoy teaching. The materials I had brought lent themselves well to a class like that. Three of my younger colleagues were able to attend as well and could advise, at the end of the class, a young woman from the British NHS about how to use our materials to start making small changes in the way people work together. It’s a revolutionary idea but at MSH they are doing just that. Granted, we are a bit smaller, but the principles apply just the same.

The work is not quite done today but I hope, sometime later to veer into the vacation lane. Sita will drive us to the airport at the end of the afternoon. I am very happy I am not departing alone this time, and not straight to an assignment. And now the empty suitcase suggests my next activity. How nice it would be, for once, not have a ‘next activity’ for awhile. Hopefully that will be Sunday morning.