a very special trip
Reflections on my recent travels to South Africa!!
i) Pre-departure, post pre-clerkship thoughts
Pre-clerkship has come to an end and my peers are starting their clinical journeys with medical rotations in these two weeks leading to the holidays. I am taking a drastically different approach; I sit in Toronto Pearson airport, RINI blasting in my headphones, awaiting the 32 hour flight to Cape Town that passes through Zurich. Instead of attending clinical work, I have opted for a research elective to prepare for an upcoming autoethnography project in medicine and to tend to the shenanigans of a long distance relationship.
However, along with the excitement and anxiousness of the adventure ahead, I feel guilty as I wrestle with the increasing non-linearity of my educational journey. After a year off, why am I still not focussed enough to put my head down and brave the depths of clinical work? Why am I still on the look out for these side quests? Is there a lingering sense of unfufillment that is driving me to escape the increasingly real responsibility of patient care? As I shared to a classmate from my previous cohort that I would be pursuing a research elective for December, he cheekily remarked, ‘so you’re doing anything but medicine, eh?’
Pre-clerkship has shown me how much I know and don’t know, such as the surprising ease felt and positive feedback received from my OSCE (a simulated clinical skills exam) in November to the constant dread of tutorials (where scientific knowledge is discussed in small groups). During the past months, I felt gnawing imposter syndrome during tutorials as my classmates seamlessly answered the tutor’s questions or skillfully scribbled tables and diagrams on the whiteboard. I often sat there, baffled.
Nonetheless, these final months of class discussions and theoretical work also reminded me that the practice of medicine is quite different. I was also reminded of the various potential paths in medicine, namely continuing qualitative research even if it may be less respected in medical sciences. While meeting with my research supervisors from my undergraduate university, one of them recalled her own experience in medical school and growing a mindfulness and social innovation research lab. They reaffirmed to me that doctors need not necessarily fit the pristine and stoic hospitalist picture, echoing the messages from The Other Human in the Room, a podcast on restoring humanity in care professions. Upon further reflecting on my research elective’s purpose, while I may not be immediately practicing medicine, I strive to continue to learn about people—ultimately the very important players in this game we call medicine.
ii) A very happy accident
I missed my flight to Zurich. The first flight from Toronto to Montreal was an hour delayed such that its landing coincided with the departure of my Montreal-Zurich connecting flight. Exhausted, I stood at the Air Canada customer service desk who deliberated between placing me on a Montreal-London-Cape Town flight, Montreal-Frankfurt-Zurich-Cape Town, or Montreal-Munich-Cape Town flight. There was definitely a most favourable option which, after an hour of heated negotiation with British Airways, became my reality: I was flying to London Heathrow for a nearly full-day layover!
To say I was happy would be an understatement; I was elated at the potential of seeing friends from my Oxford chapter. Video call conversations now in flesh and being. I frantically texted some friends and could not stop smiling when two responded they would be spending the day in London.
The city I loved grazed past my eyes on the train, from countryside to office buildings. We soon arrived at Paddington, and I stepped onto the platform as if I had commuted from Oxford on a Wednesday for fieldwork. The journey felt so familiar. First, I would drop my backpack at my friend’s—who had visited me in Canada and left only 4 days ago. Our ‘see you soon’ exchange at Pearson airport when I dropped her off felt incomplete, but we did not expect it to see each other again so soon. Greeting her at her door felt surreal.
As I walked down Camden Town to King’s Cross to meet my friend for brunch (an English Breakfast, of course), I felt all the memories from last year rush in—picnics on Primrose Hill, browsing the Camden market, taking the bus from King’s Cross to my field site, even the one time I bought South African snacks from one of its stalls in the Underground station (a gift for my then-new partner). Using the giant Christmas tree as a landmark, my friend and I ran towards each other and hugged tightly.
We caught up over beans and eggs in a cafe nearby, hot tea warming our hands and hearts. I listened to his adventures of his second Michaelmas term at Oxford, hoping to live vicariously through them. We talked about ideas I had not touched since leaving Oxford, ideas that were buried with the return to solely intaking scientific facts. I felt so recharged and grateful that our paths crossed once again, earlier than either of us had imagined.
In the British library, I waited for another friend who was showing his own visitor around. As my friend completed his undergraduate studies at the same institution at which I was currently enrolled, I wasn’t super shocked that his visitor also went to our university. Yet, it still was a ‘small world moment’ as his visitor was also a current first year student at my medical school. As a group of three, we sat in the beautiful third space of the library—a warm and dry public space to simply exist without pressures to buy anything—and chatted about life in STEM, travelling, and studying in England vs. Canada. I saw myself in her experiences of medical school, generating comfort in knowing that we are often never alone in our struggles.
iii) A solo day in Cape Town
With the 12 hour flight coming to an end, I dragged my tired and stinky self off the plane ready to shower and sleep on a real bed. My frantic googling of the city was now my reality, and, to be honest, I was nervous especially from hearing how dangerous Cape Town is (edit: I never felt unsafe in the city even when I was alone. Of course, I did stay in relatively popular areas and there are neighbourhoods you may want to avoid as a foreigner, but this is often the case in any city). Here I was as a solo female traveller who, as one of two East Asians I had seen on that flight, stuck out like a sore thumb (another edit: but actually, I did noticed more diversity in Cape Town than during my brief time more north in the country because Cape Town is more touristy…)
Messages of comfort come in the most random encounters. In the line for border control, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the other East Asian woman from the flight. ‘Are you Canadian?’ she asked, pointing to the Canadian flag on my teal med school backpack. Turns out so was she—from Calgary—and she spent the past nine years living in both Canada and South Africa because her partner whom she met abroad was from Cape Town. Perhaps these international (and literally across-the-globe) relationships can logistically work out after all?
Solo travelling is and will always have a special place in my heart. This time, I was also challenged to memorize directions better given that locals warned me not to hold my phone out too visibly due to opportunistic theft. My day was well spent learning about the colonial legacies in Cape Town, chatting with a Cameroonian shop owner about his traditional family structure, and wandering the Bo-Kaap neighbourhood where I tried Bobotie, a Cape Malay dish (the yellow rice was surprisingly sweet not savoury!)
iv) Being in love
He is no longer a face on a screen but now a three-dimensional human in front of me. There is simultaneously nothing and everything to catch up on. It has been only 4 months but it feels as if it has been an eternity—much like how I felt when I first saw my friend who had visited me in Canada a week prior.
The week blurs as we explore together. I catch glimpses of his university life in Cape Town. We hike, we eat, we quarrel. We learn more about each other, the true self uncovering with the length of our relationship. We watch one of the most beautiful sunset I have ever witnessed, before walking through the city centre for an ice cream shop and finally returning to our Airbnb. This sunset, with us both sitting on a platform used during the day for paragliding, grazing on fresh lychees, stays imprinted in my mind. On the east side, dusk falls and the city’s lights glimmer from below. On the west side, the lingering beams of sun shine pink and orange over the ocean and beaches. Bliss.
We find ourselves in Johannesburg, renting a car to drive north to his village and then Kruger for our second week. I am anxious at first, having never driven on the right side of the road before, but surprisingly find it intuitive after he helps call me down. We pick up a friend in the city where he wants to settle. We drive the rest of the day until dark; the lack of streetlights means you cannot see the road in front of you and you must predict where the speed bumps lie. People, goats, stray dogs, and cows stroll on the sides of the road. We arrive at his home on the edge of the village. In a surreal way, I now sit in the sweltering heat, night stars above me and red dirt below, in front of his family members about whom I’ve heard from his stories. His smallest cousin greets me in English with the most adorable smile, proudly shaking my hand. He acts as a translator for his grandmother who does not speak English. The next few days, I learn some words in his home language.
If only we could camp, chat, and grocery shop together forever. But when you are from the opposite sides of the world, that isn’t the easiest ask. After our camping trip to Kruger National Park with two of his friends, we stay the rest of the week in Pretoria. To get there, I mistakenly make a wrong turn and we end up on a pitch-black pothole-ridden road for 2 straight and painful hours. Despite his frustration at me and the situation, he remains calm and carefully swerves around the potholes, getting us safely to our destination at 3 am; it is through these kinds of challenges where I see his beautiful character. Like the potholes on our poor vehicle, it soon hits us both that we won’t see each other for another 5 months.
It pours on my way to the airport. ‘See you laters’ are always the hardest…
v) Nostalgia
What this trip has taught me is how lucky I am to be in the presence of incredible friends. My last few hours spent in a country outside of Canada were exactly that. After landing in Zurich for a final layover, I scurry to the airport’s train station, hugging her tight as soon as we lay eyes on each other. This meet-up was planned; my beautiful friend and college-mate was visiting family in Zurich and had come to the airport to see me.
No time to waste and we cannot stray too far from the airport. The crisp winter dawn air presents a sharp contrast from the sticky summer heat I had felt less than 12 hours before. We walk around a park near the airport until the sun rises, telling each other stories from the past months. And suddenly it’s as if we were walking back to Holywell Manor from Headington, catching-each other up about our day of study and discussing what to eat for dinner or when to workout in the gym together that evening. When we later visit the grocery store in the station for a to-go meal, I am transported back to when we would frequent the Tesco on Magdalen St, picking up a Swedish Glace vanilla ice cream on our way out.
We hug goodbye, and I once again feel the urge to cry—but this time I hold them back. Soon enough, I will host her in Canada, and we will relive these memories again…
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I hope you enjoyed reading some of my thoughts!! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!
- jas <3