Misadventures in Durban

This period has been a time of new experiences for me, and this trip to Durban has not been an exception. I arrived here yesterday evening with five other women of the Mandela Museum staff for the South African Museums Association conference, yet here now I am sitting in a curtained bed in Durban's fine Entabeni Private Hospital: my first non-ER hospital experience. I've never actually been admitted before. Got an IV drip and everything - or I did, until they removed it as it was causing my vein to swell uncomfortably. I went in this morning as I'd been planning for a few days to get checked for what I assumed were gallbladder problems. I'd hoped to have some sort of wham-bam-thank-you-Doc laproscopic surgery to get the damned thing out, leaving me a day or two to recover and still actually attend the SAMA conference.
The test results, though, showed nothing wrong with the ol' bladder of bile, which is weird. So instead they admitted me to let a gut specialist doctor take a look at me, possibly with a camera in my stomach, tomorrow. Still optimistic that I can hit at least some of the conference tomorrow or Wednesday.

Apart from some thrilling adventures in sitting, laying, and waiting, it's been routinely boring here. That's no surprise, but I do have to say the docs and nurses of the ER (where, as a walk-in-patient), I had to be admitted, were surprisingly quick to treat me. Made me feel all special. I pretended that it was because I was a special emissary from the United States, or possibly the United Nations. That's right, I got Barack watching my back. Well, hey, it gets boring laying on a hospital bed. I had to think of something to keep my mind off the needle protruding from the back of my hand.
Medical woes aside, this trip to Durban has provided another not-so-new experience as well: that of getting quickly irritated wih my fellow travelers. I was ashamed by how soon it was happenning. I like to think that I am a most tolerant person, but by this morning I wanted to wrap my hands around the necks of at least two of my colleagues. I'd like to blame the raging abdominal pain for that, but I wasn't in that much pain and actually haven't been for a couple of days now. with some time, rest, and a little morphine, I can see now that I jumped the gun on triggering the anger (see what I did there? gun - trigger? I dare you to mix a better metaphor). I can see now that snapping at them while they were trying to find their way to the hospital to drop me off could be seen as selfish and impatient and stuff. But really, when you're the navigator and the driver proceeds to not drive where you indicated, take a different route and then get lost, all the while
speaking with the other passengers in a language you don't understand (when all of you DO have a language in common), it does get a little easy to overlook the fact that they're speaking - if in another language - about trying to get you where you're going.
I wouldn't have minded so much if the whole speak-the-language-that-one-of-you-doesn't-know thing hadn't also happened in the four hour car ride and the multi-hour combination of hotel-finding, check-in, and dinner the day before. It gets easy to feel overlooked and, well, marginalized. It gets so much more frustrating when you're in a moving vehicle while overlooked and therefore are pretty much helpless to control the situation short of causing bodily injury or a car wreck.
I guess this kind of situation is a short-cut to setting off my fuse because of the lack of control-feeling and the being ignored-feeling. I don't like either of those and the combination of the two would on a long-term scale, I think, amount to psychological torture for me. (Now those of you reading this, try and forget that last tidbit if you ever find yourselves in a situation where you've taken me hostage.)
I said this wasn't a new experience because it happened the last time I was in Africa two years ago, in Botswana, on a field trip to the Makgadigadi Pans with two Tswana-speakers. Guess which language got spoken predominantly? Guess how often they switched to English to consult me in decision-making? Guess who couldn't wait to jump out of the car and away from the others by the end of the trip? Back then, I'd imagined that what was happening was a gendered thing - both of my two companions
were male, and Botswana tends to be patriarchal. This time though, we are all women, and Xhosa women are "known for their independent spirit" anyhow (according to a guide book, but I can generally concur based on what I've seen). So it got me thinking that really, the perceived marginalization is likely very unintended. Not that the gendered bias of the Botswana trip is impossible - my fellow archaeologist back then actually refused to let me sit in the front seat on the ride home, when I'd been crammed in back for hours - which just seems plain rude, no matter if we've had some differences.
But all in all, I do think this has been a lesson in maybe just taking a chill pill when situations like this arise. Or at least a lesson in saying - loudly - that I don't understand and would like some clarification. I hate feeling helpless, but even more I hate feeling like my opinion/ thoughts/ etc are too unimportant to be bothered with. I do think I try hard to listen to others so I get pretty damn irritated when people don't do the same.
It can be easy to forget, though, that one person in a group doesn't speak the lingo. It can be easy to overlook their need to feel informed and included in your effort to, well, help them out. That's a lesson I will try to remember when I am an awesome PhD Professor Museum Curator Type and I am busy hosting awesome cultural international heritage artifact conferences with guests from all over the world. Listen, world: speak up!
So now my thoughts are duly expiated electronically and I can turn to anticipating a nice drowsy morphine-ariffic night. Tomorrow I can hope to see the beaches of the Indian Ocean closeup and daydream, bored, sitting in a museum conference rather than on a hospital bed. All in all, I pretty much love my life. Most of the time.
PS, I took a photo of my hand with the IV needle sticking it out and will try to remember to post it for those who like to live vicariously in such gruesome experiences.