A Johannesburg welcome, ay

Although my flight into Johannesburg arrived 20 minutes early, it by no means set a precident... actually, it probably set the bar a little high. During the 3 hour flight, I met a really nice (though slightly bitter?) South African businessman, Shamus (yes, he's also an Irish national...). He was so friendly that the spent the entire flight telling me about anecdotal rapes, muggings, stabbings... you get the picture. I also got a healthy dose of pro-apartheid era propaganda... although even I have to admit that some of what he said seemed to ring true. I'm going to delve into this topic (inevitably, i suppose) more and more as I adjust to South Africa, so I don't want to start off on a tangent now. However, the consensus amongst white South Africans seems to be that there's now a great deal of reverse-racism, which, in addition to being frustrating, has also resulted in a gradual weakening of institutions, deteriorating infrastructure, and overall incompetence as the previously educated (and white) leadership has been mostly replaced with hand-picked blacks who, in a lot of cases, aren't qualified for the job. A prime example of this would be the minister of health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who in February announced that HIV patients don't need anti-retrovirals, and can instead be cured by using a combination of garlic, olive oil and beet juice (http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2007-08/2007-08-14-voa19.cfm?CFID=23414950&CFTOKEN=65465016). Aside from frustrations, these issues bring up another question worth a good deal of consideration: How do countires that have been ruled by colonialism transition into effective self-rule? Is rapid modernization even possible in these circumstances, or are such societies inevitably going to descend into (hopefully temporary) chaos? I'll write more on this later... for now, back to my flight...

When the plane landed, Shamus called my contact at the university to make sure that he was already at the airport... ha, yeah, I guess we all knew that it was a long shot. Nicholas, the driver, was nowhere to be found and said he would "call me back"... yikes. I retreived my bags, and Shamus offered to drive me to the Wits campus. Well, his wife (whose accent I could barely understand, ay) met us... in a Porsche! I have to say, that ride was much better than a beat-up minivan would have been :). The were incredibely nice to me - they drove me to an ATM, a restaurant to pick up dinner, and helped carry my bags upstairs to my room. My room is a single (yay!), though with a shared bathroom down the hallway... I have yet to see anyone else using the bathroom, however, so either this particular wing is nearly empty, or there's a second magical toilet I don't yet know about... either way, everything is clean and fairly new, so no complaints.

After moving in (read: randomly throwing clothing around the room), I had one more small matter to take care of. About a week ago, my sandals caused a cut between my big and second toes on my right leg... by Thursday, the cut had mostly healed, but a small abscess had formed in its' place. I had been waiting to see if it would resorb on its own, but by the evening it was slightly painful and the area around it was red and tender... so, I decided, time to break out the first aid kit and do a little self-surgery.

The procedure: draining abscess, maintaining as much sterility as possible under the circumstances
Equipment: safety pin (to puncture the abscess), lighter (to sterilize the safety pin), not-so-sterile tissues, and a small tube of neosporin.

I won't go into details, but it went well... it's Saturday night now, and the cut has dried up and is healing pretty well. And yes, i'm still wearing the sandals! It's hot here, damn it.

Alright, i'm off to sleep... it's been a long day, and i'll write more tomorrow. I start my first shift at 8am, and I still need to go and "iron" (read: flatten out and pray) my scrubs and find my stethescope...