The A&P Show

A few weeks back, one of the Rotarians, Allan Richardson, invited Eddy and me to come out to Wanaka to experience the Agricultural and Pastoral Show of Otago, which he claimed was probably the biggest A&P show in the country.  Last weekend, we were finally able to go.  On the drive to Wanaka, he told us about the geology of the region, the history of the gold rush, the intricacies of wine growing, and of course, the story of Shrek the Sheep.  Shrek evaded mustering and shearing for several years, and was incredibly woolly when they found him.  The local elementary school wrote stories about him, and now he has become an international sheep sensation.

We spent the night in a sleepout at Allan’s wife’s mother’s vacation home, then got up bright and early ready for a day at the A&P.  Unfortunately, since Dunedin is cold and rainy pretty much all the time now, I assumed it would be the same in Wanaka.  When I came into the main house, my hosts laughed at my jeans and sweatshirt and told me to go put on shorts and my togs.  After figuring out what exactly my togs were (my bathing suit), I then had to admit that I had brought neither.  Another oops.  Apparently I would not make a very good boyscout.

After I had changed into the most suitable clothes I could muster, we piled into the car and drove to the show.  After parking under a tree in a field, and leaving the back of the van open so their dog, a purebred Weimaraner, wouldn’t overheat.  No one seemed particularly worried about theft, and they told us to go our own way.  So we did.  And my own way was straight to the livestock section, pausing only momentarily to gaze longingly at the merino clothes, selling for $100+ for a small shirt.

Once in the livestock section, I was reminded vividly of 4-H, and my days at the Clark County Fair.  The horses stood in open paddocks, the cows smelled bad, and the sheep stood panting in the late morning sunshine.  And then, nestled between the tractor displays, I saw them.  The alpacas.  I dragged Eddy into the fiber tent, explaining to him the intricacies of crimp and luster and handle.  Then, we ran to the show ring, where juvenile fawn females were being shown.  As I explained to Eddy the importance of good conformation and the pitfalls of an animal down on their pasterns, one of the breeders overheard me.  Instead of berating me for criticizing her animals, however, she asked me if I had shown before.  I told her I used to train alpacas for 4-H, and she practically stuffed a leadrope into my hand.  Handlers, it seems, are a rare commodity at A&P shows, and owners who do well enough to have multiple animals entered in the championship rounds often need to show multiple animals at a time.  So, I met Alyssa the alpaca, and we entered the show ring with heads held high.  Standing in the show ring, my lead line held in a perfect J, toes towards the animal, I couldn’t help but grin at the judge.  I wasn’t wearing black and white, my parents weren’t watching from the sidelines, and Alyssa, not Fabio was at the end of the line.  But as the judge paced back and forth, examining fleeces and conformation, I realized that I was finally home.

After the show, Eddy and I wandered off to eat sausages and watch the Jack Russell Terrier race.  While watching the terriers yip themselves into a frenzy, then chase wildly after a rabbit roped to a horse, was fun, the best part was watching the owners try to catch the terriers after the race.  I never knew that anything with such little legs could run so fast. 

Once the terriers had been cleared from the center field, it was time for the the Grand Parade, a procession of the champion cows, sheep, horses and, of course, alpacas.  Once again, a leadrope was stuffed into my hand, and I led Alyssa, now bedecked with her championship ribbon, into the central ring.  Unfortunately, New Zealand alpacas don’t have the benefits of 4-H training, so halfway around the ring, Alyssa decided it was time to sit down.  It took 3 full grown men, plus me, to carry her, still cushed, back to her pen.  I guess I am my Daddy’s daughter after all.

The day after the fair was spent at the lake.  Allan’s family drove us around in their boat (complete with Weimarana), and attempted to teach me to water ski.  Alas, I am still a failure in this respect, but I blame it on the glacial waters and the very large holes in my wetsuit.  Boating, waterskiing, laying in the sun on a rocky beach that only the locals knew about…it was a pretty tough gig.  We had actually been to Wanaka once before, but only Eddy and I, but since we knew nothing of the area, spent most of our time driving trying to find the things that looked vaguely interesting on brochures.  Going with Allan and his family was incredible, because it let us experience Wanaka the way Kiwis experience it.  And the Kiwis have got it right.  I have said it before and I’ll say it again: if it’s not about what you know, but who you know, then Rotarians are certainly the right people to know!

Climbing Mt. Cargill

 On Thursday morning, I woke up to the realization that I definitely had caught the "O-week cold."  Apparently, everyone parties so hard in Orientation Week (O-week), that a week or two later, the entire campus comes down with a case of this chills.  So what do I do, but decide it would be a good day to climb a mountain.  Mt. Cargill barely counts as a mountain, especially by NZ standards, but it is about a 2 minute drive from my flat.  The trailhead is actually closer to my flat than my classes.  According to NZ tramping guides, the trail is labeled a "walk," rather than a "tramp,"  and is designated easy.  Since Eddy was at work, my friend Elyse and I drove to the trailhead, and started walking. At first, the trail was wide and gently sloping.  The trees were tall and thin, with white bark and small, thin leaves.  The afternoon sun filtered through the canopy, dappling the light on the ground before us.  It was beautiful, and fun to walk and talk with a newfound friend.  Then, suddenly, the trail turned and everything changed.  The flora became dark and dense, and the afternoon sunlight could no longer penetrate the thick leaves.  The trail became rocky and steeper, although there were bridges over the many streams and ravines that we crossed.  Vines cascaded over the overhanging trees, cicadas chirped overhead, and suddenly it felt like we were in the jungle.  It was then I realized I had forgotten my water bottle.  However, a sign said we were 5 minutes from the picnic area and viewpoint, so we decided to forge onwards.

About 30 minutes later, a bend in the trail revealed yet another change in scenery.  Suddenly, the dense flora disappeared, replaced by short bushes and "cabbage trees," which look like palm trees, but aren't.  The muddy, trail was replaced by gravel, and large rocks to step over.  Each bend in the trail looked like it could be the promised picnic area, but turned out to be only another, steeper switchback.  The rocks turned into stairs, which led up and up, until suddenly, there were no more cabbage trees.  Instead, there was an incredible, 360 degree view.  On one side, was Dunedin, hills covered by little white houses, and the crystal blue harbor.  The ocean lay beyond, empty of land all the way to antarctica.  On the other side were hills, bright green hills that were too far down to see the sheep.  But we could hear them.

Something about the lay of the land amplified certain sounds. The howl of a dog, the chime of a flute, cows mooing; we could hear all this, but somehow, the sounds of the city were absent.  It was beautiful, and as we sat and ate lunch, baked by the UV rays made stronger by the hole in the ozone layer, I realized this was something that could only have happened here. 

And so it begins

My first day of class is also the day of my 1^st speech to my Rotary club.  Yikes!  I wake up at 6am for a 9am class, petrified that I have forgotten to do something, that I didn’t prepare fully enough, that I somehow missed an assignment emailed to my student account, which I have neglected to check.  By 6:30, I realize none of this is true.  I go back to sleep.  By 8, I am awake again, and realizing that it is an hour long walk to class, because it’s located past the university, in the hospital.  I throw on clothes, run to catch the bus, miss my stop and end up in the Octagon, a 10 minute walk from where I need to be.  I practically run to my class and arrive to find the doors still locked.  It is 8:35.  I really need to get a watch.            

My epidemiology class, usually filled with no more than 25 students, has 37 in attendance.  In the back, there is a man with a very large camera, recording the lecture for the students in Christchurch, whose classroom has been marked as “potentially unstable.”  My professor, a slim woman with an extremely quiet voice, is clearly unused to the camera, and keeps glancing at it and addressing the Christchurch students as if they were here with us.  And soon, many of them will join our class in person, choosing to leave their damaged homes in order to continue their studies.  We are going to need a bigger room.

The students in the class are the most diverse group I have ever seen.  I am one of the youngest people there, but certainly not the only American.  My RAS twin, Chase, an Ambassadorial Scholar from Kentucky also earning his DPH (and taking every class, all year, with me), sits beside me.  Across the room there are at least 2 other Americans, and several Canadians.  There are also students from Zambia, Samoa, China, the UK.  There some are recent graduates, with degrees ranging from anthropology to physical therapy to veterinary studies, but there are also doctors and nurses and mental health professionals.  Just hearing all of the credentials makes my head spin.  And my professor told me I would find the course less challenging than most of the other students.  Hah! 

The introduction to epidemiology, however, is a lot like an introduction to statistics.  Boring.  True, the case studies are much more interesting (studies that determined the causes/treatments of scurvy, cholera, plague, etc, are MUCH more up my alley than the examples I had to put up with in Stats 101), but the ideas are the same.  Randomization, observational vs. analytical, sample selection: important, but oh so obvious ideas.  Oh well.  At least the homework should be easy.

The “Comparative Health Systems” class, however, fascinated me from the start.  After reading the first two assigned articles, I was beginning to wonder if the American health care system is the worst possible system in the world.  By the end of the 6^th article (this was before the 1^st class started), I was convinced.  15% of the population is not insured (and therefore, basically have no access to health care), and we spend upwards of $7300 per capita, per year, on medical care.  New Zealand spend $2454 pc/year.  Not only is our system overly expensive and inequitable, but the quality of care, reliability of services, efficiency and coordination of care, is abysmal.  We have one of the lowest life expectancies, and the highest infant mortality rates, of any industrial countries.  Many “developing” countries have higher quality care than we do.  Before this class, I knew some of these things (the high percent of unemployment, the high cost of health care), but I did not know its extent.  Furthermore, I did not know that so many other countries were so much more advanced than us.  I knew the Netherlands, the UK, Canada and France have excellent health services, but did not know that Singapore’s health care system is rated far above our own.  I did not know that the US is the only industrialized country to continue to use the market-driven model of health care.  Our health care system is on par with that of Ghana, Thailand and Nepal.  Reading these statistics, for myself, in scholarly, published journals, was shocking.

Another aspect of this class that shocked me was my own ignorance about other health systems.  To be fair, many of the students in the class had worked in the healthcare system for most of their lives, or had at least lived in New Zealand for more than 3 weeks.  But when the professor asked for examples of primary health in a secondary or tertiary setting, or for models of a health promotion scheme, my answers were met with an uncomfortable pause and a “well, maybe that is how it works in the US.”  Next class, I am going to sit on my hands.