Zambezi Kiwi

Ok, I know that title was offensive to some of you. But I often get laughed at here for using the politically polite language of “developing country”, so I figure I won’t win either way.

Anyways, the point is a little while ago Will and I discovered a wee surprise was on the way. After more than two years of trying, we were actually pregnant. It caught us so off guard (we were VERY busy with the lodge) that it took THREE weeks of me whining about not feeling right before we clicked.

After getting our heads around the news, I began the process of officiating things: call the doctor, get a script for blood tests and scans, do blood pressure etc, etc.

The only way to describe what followed is cultural whiplash.

It started with our local doctor, who is AWESOME. He does house visits, which instantly made me feel like a 1950s housewife. After the first visit, it also made me feel extremely joyful at not having to wait up to an HOUR at a local clinic like we used to in Cambridge. Quite honestly, having a doctor come to you feels like the best medical care ever, especially if you are sick as a dog and don’t want to get out of bed (more on that soon). After turning up on time, as usual, Mike did all the necessary checks and sent me off to the lab for bloods etc.

I was suddenly thrust from the serenity of feeling I was in competent, professional hands, to, well…something different. The lab was not like NZ. There was no waiting room, and as I slid awkwardly through the door, I saw there was also no Patient chair. Modern-looking equipment was stacked along one wall, covered in files and papers for Africa (pun intended), while the other was lined with boxes of supplies. Chaos reigned supreme from my observations. A technician slid his chair across to me, while another fought with a strap to tie around my arm. In the end she got a plastic glove and used that. Then she pulled out an obnoxiously big needle and fought with my vein.

“It keeps moving” she said, before heading over to a smaller vein.

In the end, we got the blood and it was remarkably pain-free for how it all started.

Then it was scan time, which thrust me back into a world where medical care goes above and beyond. Brian, whom I consider a dear angel from the Lord, was SO thorough. He made me come back and said he would stay late at work just to get all the information he needed, thanks to bubs not playing ball. His dedication outstripped any experience I have had in NZ (I’m sure you’re out there, wonderful scan people. I just never met you).

Things turned quite pear-shaped when I got a BRUTAL flu which had been going around. Thanks to pregnancy-suppressed immune system, I was in bed for five weeks. In the end, it turned bacterial, and through a cracking headache and light-sensitive eyes I called on Mike again. By this stage I could hardly eat, drink or walk, so perhaps it was the illness, but quite honestly when he arrived he seemed to be surrounded by a gentle glow of light, and a halo, particularly when he uttered the words “pregnancy-safe antibiotic”.

I staggered back to gentle, professional, kind Brian for a chest x-Ray, just to clear pneumonia from the list of possibilities, then came home to feel blissful recovery take hold of my body AT LONG LAST as the second antibiotic surged through my system.

Now, I also got flu in NZ with Kepler at about 12 weeks pregnant. But there, a national flu jab programme ensured that if it did hit, at least it wasn’t that bad. AFTER I nearly died, someone off-handly told me that apparently you can get the flu jab here. Thank you Zimbabwe.

I am, thankfully, now fully recovered and the cultural whiplash has slowed as I instead get my head around all of the details that come with planning to have a baby in another country over the holiday period, and needing a passport to get it back again as well as adding bubs to pre-purchased return tickets.

Now, to take bets on whether or not Will will make the birth…he’s planning on arriving one week before the baby is due. And Kepler came early.

Oh, one more announcement. As per Viki Johnson’s dream on February 18 (before we were even pregnant), and Kepler’s INSISTENT predictions from the moment we told him the news: