Ultra!

It was ultra long and ultra exhilarating to finish! Last weekend was the two oceans ultra marathon. 7000 people started in Cape Town and headed straight to the coast were the route cuts across the peninsula to the other coast for a series of hills. First up Chapman’s peak, and then a steady climb out of Hout Bay before eventually finishing at University of Cape Town 56km later.

In the dark at 5:30am it was a tough start into a biting wind. It is billed as the world's most beautiful marathon, the memory of it now conjures up quite dramatic images of roads winding along cliff edges, but at the time I remember just thinking "this is tough".

Just before half way a fellow runner whipped up conversation!...I nodded and yeses but couldn't manage much more! The hardest bit was, surprisingly, the downhills, it felt my legs were getting electric shocks with each jarring step. And then the last 10km were tough, cramp was setting in and it was void of supporters as the race went through the forest. The finish though was such a relief and so exciting to know I'll finally done it. Highlights were housemate supporters on bits of course and running though drinks stations with pumping music (my pace seemed like it doubled in the music). Your name gets printed onto the top of your number, so lots of ”come on David” all around, I just wish now I had written on my race entry form that my name was Forest :-)

I got round in 4 hours 31 min - so not too bad for a first attmept. I sprint finished but on top of my mild dehydration as soon as I stopped I felt faint and dizzy. I lay on the floor to avoid falling from fainting. However, it was enough for the medics to insist on dragging me onto a strecher and monitor by blood pressure for a while. After the race the best thing I did was get a massage (free), apparently the race had caused loads of micro tears in my muscles which caused inflammation and the massage pushes out the inflammation and allows blood back in. In any case felt amazing.

It has been an exercise filled month (apart from the last week when I've done nothing). The weekends I've been doing lots of long runs in preparation and 3 weeks ago I did the cape argus cycle tour. Its 31000 people cycle race around the cape peninsula (108km). Brilliant atmosphere. I did it on a 700 Rand (£40) bike from cash converters - it squeaked ominously all the way round.

For pictures of me looking like I'm in pain follow this link and type in the race numbers (so far too stingey to buy them):

http://www.actionphoto.net/ap.aspx
Race number 40140 for the Old Mutual 2 oceans marathon 2008
Race number 18619 for the Cape Argus Pick and Pay cycle tour 2008

Meanwhile I've finished the first stage of the TB adherence research. I’m now waiting for Salla, my supervisor/collaborator to anaylse the transcripts as well and then we will plan who and where to interview next. Too early to say really, but lots of interesting things about TB associated stigma coming up and how support from the Treatment Supporters works(people who visit patient in their homes) it seems like a strange mix of authority and caring relationship. Originally the research was meant to have all been done by now but things all ways take longer hey. Its been a real journey into the world of qualitative research which can be confusing and intangible but is ultimately illuminating.

The third photo above is from the child TB training conference I went to, the department I was at Stellenbosh with ran. Main message was: Child Tb has been ignored for years because children are that infectious, but everyone overlooked that the fact it kills them! The conference was trying to address this oversight and train lots of doctors up to deal with child TB better. The pic is from the cultural show on the last night.

Tomorrow marks a new stage as I start at the Treatment Action Campaign. I am going to try and do the research and TAC at the same time. I spent the last week visiting my parents and bro in Jo’berg and reading up on TAC - staggered by how many success they have had, how much policy they have changed..cant wait to see what its really like.

A comedy about Apartheid

Last night I went to see a play, a comedy, on of the lives of people under apartheid, called “Woza Albert”, named in reverence to the 1950s ANC leader Albert Luthuli (and nobel peace prize winer). Even living on South Africa, it is easy to forget what living in apartheid must have been like.

It stared only two actors, adept at doing their own sound effects (they did a great train), accents and dashing behind a clothes rail at the back of the stage to grab another costume. The play gave a montage of characters and a snapshot of their lives under the constraints of the regime.

What the play showed again and again, is apartheid's devastating impact on people’s psychology; how they saw themselves and how they felt. The play’s gambit was that there was news that Christ had made a second coming and arrived in South Africa. As the play progressed the characters eventually met him, or at least who they thought was him, and ask him to fulfill their hopes. Having seen how unfair and tough their lives were, you expected emotional pleas along the lines of ending apartheid. But, for example, the two guys who were making bricks for their “baas” asked Christ for “more bricks please - let it rain down with bricks”, the women eating food in the rubbish hoped to, “find more chicken in the bins, let the while man put some more chicken in his rubbish”. Despite the plays numerous attempts at making light of the whole situation (including mooning the crowd repeatedly in one scene), overall it was heart sinking, and tragic. In fact the idea that people were making comedy of it made it much more uncomfortable and shocking.

Seeing the play explains better than most history books, why Steve Biko, a student from Durban, leader and intellectual heavy weight of the South African black consciousness movement is often heralded as the other side of coin to Mandela. Mandela addressed the structural barriers of apartheid, he gave people back their civil liberties; Biko addressed the psychological impact of apartheid, he challenged the real lived experience of feeling inferior. It is that inferiority complex that also explains, in part, why there was little resistance to apartheid for years. And, most worrying, its a psychology that people still talk about remaining.

I was surprised to see a play that billed itself as a comedy about apartheid. Is it now OK to laugh about apartheid? I didn’t really get an answer, this comedy still had a dark and disturbing underbelly!