Charlotte in South Africa

Struggles For the past two weeks I have mainly been working for school and doing my internship. I was on neonatology for two weeks. Next to trying to keep my babyfever under control by seeing all these cute little babies, I have learned a lot. Even though I really liked the ward, the staff and the kind of work, there were a lot of moments that I was a little bit bored. I was not allowed to do the administrative part and fill out the files, so there were moments that I had to just sit and do nothing. And if there is one thing that I am NOT good at...  Besides the cute and fun part, it was also very confronting. I started noticing a lot of social and financial issues. Very young mothers, parents with addictions, parents who weren't able to take care of their child, parents who didn't want to take care of their child due to financial and social issues, ... Of course, there were a lot of wonderful and caring moms, but I couldn't help and focus on this side of the story. ...

The Arrival To tell you about the arrival, I must first talk about the goodbye. It was way harder than I expected. Lieselot was staying in Cape Towm to continue the WP 2.2 program (educating the children on healthy lifestyle), Jana and I were leaving for George to start a new program - WP 2.3, doing research in the hospital on hand hygiene. For our last evening we had some girly quality time, doing facemasks and watching netflix together.  The next morning the two of us left with two other Dutch social work students (Terri and Max), leaving everyone else behind. The journey itself took about 4 hours. No time to sleep while driving through this amazing country. Every 5 minutes it looked completely different, going from endless looking open fields to wild bushes and mountains. We even saw some elephants! When we arrived to George I immediately noticed the difference with Cape Town. George is a small town, very country-side-like athmosphere. First impression: Beautiful,...

How Did I Get Here?? I still remember when I applied for the project. It was October. The school year had just started and we were overloaded with work. Assignments, exams, internships, ... Very busy business. Untill I heard a lecturer talk about a project in South Africa. That same evening I wrote my motivation letter -  like the impulsive person that I am. The following months were very stressful, on school level as well as personal level, so I didn't really think about the fact that I would be leaving soon. All of a sudden, the 16th of february was there. I had done all the preperations, struggled to get my visa in time and packed my bags. Without even realizing it, I had said goodbye to the persons I love and was sitting on the train to Paris. We (Jana, Lieselot and I) didn't have a lot of time to catch our plane, but after a nervewrecking couple of minutes we were ready to go.  The next 11 hours were the longest of my life. I was sitting next to a very frie...