Keg Camping and Keas

When my friend, Nicky, invited me on a camping trip to celebrate her birthday, I wasn't quite sure what to expect.  I'd never really been camping with friends before, and my NZ camping experiences were confined to Department of Conservation (DoC) campsites to save money while traveling around.  To me, camping means solitude, songs and stories around a campfire, star gazing and an uncomfortable nights sleep.  Imagine my surprise, then, when 15 people arrived to set up a close-knit a ring of tents, each large enough to stand in, pulled out their air mattresses, and carried the keg over to the campfire.  The girls spent the afternoon chatting and trying to start a fire, while the guys played cricket.  Once evening fell, the guys cooked half a cow on the full-sized barbecue, and the race to finish the keg began.  And while I may have been wrong about the solitude, the other facets quickly became apparent.  An ipod attached to what looked like a car battery with speakers blasted everything from Bruce Springstein (probably the last place I would have expected to hear "Proud to Be an American") to Katie Perry.  When Bohemian Rhapsody came on, the singing commenced.  I'm still not convinced that anyone but me knew the words (thanks to my high-school string quartet!), but what they lacked in knowledge, they made up for with heart.  As the night progressed, the clouds cleared (a miraculous occurrence that close to Dunedin), revealing the beauty of the southern night sky.  Someone showed me the Southern Cross, and I spent much of the night trying to find Orion's belt.  When it was finally bedtime, I fell asleep on a holey air mattress, complete with sheets and my duvet cover (since my sleeping bag hadn't come in the mail yet, I basically brought my entire bed), and woke up the next morning on the ground and covered with dew.

Unfortunately, I couldn't stay to watch all of the antics my new-found friends employed to rid themselves of the post-keg hangover (which apparently included lots of gatorade and jumping into the nearby, muddy, COLD, river), because I needed to drive up to Wanaka to make a speech for the Rotary club up there (in retrospect, I was quite glad I knew I had to give this presentation, because it saved me from what looked like a very painful hangover).

In Wanaka, Eddy and I spent the first day riding our Rotary host's bikes on the lakeside trail from Wanaka to Albert Town.  I had never been "mountain biking" before (and this barely counted as mountain biking, but there were the occasional hills and roots!), and I loved the feel of rushing along the trail.  The fall colours were absolutely beautiful, and the lake was, as always, a breathtaking shade of blue.  Riding back was not quite as much fun - the wind picked up, and I realized the the initial trip was so easy because it had been downhill the entire way - but equally breathtaking.  Our hosts, Duncan and Rosemary, were ex-school teachers who were eager to hear my take on American politics while feeding me mounds of cous-cous and chicken, perhaps the healthiest meal I have experienced yet in NZ. 

The second day was spent getting to and hiking up to the Rob Roy Glacier.  In our 1 hour drive to the trail-head, we forded 8 small rivers.  In a small, 4-door sedan.  I now understand why so many Kiwis have 4-wheel drive and snorkels on their cars.  But Little Black (the car came with that name...it was part of the reason I bought it) did quite well, and emerged only slightly dented (and washed!) from the ordeal.  The first bit of the walk was through a cow field, then switchbacked sharply through the bush.  On one break, I could see Mt. Aspiring in front of me, the glacier above, and a few hundred sheep migrating purposefully towards a cliff below me.  Eddy and I watched the sheep for a quite a while and decided that sheep migration could serve as an accurate model of simple diffusion.  A bit further on our walk, a second break introduced us to a New Zealand organism both more native and less prolific than sheep: the Kea.  The world's only alpine parrot apparently knows that tourists get tired at the top of big hills, and sit and wait for you at the provided benches in hopes of getting fed.  Bright green and black, the bird blended in perfectly with the shadows, making it very difficult for me to get a picture.  Less than a half hour later, I emerged from the bush to the grandeur of the glacier.  Waterfalls plummeted from the cliffs, crevasses so streaked the blue-white ice, and we sat and ate lunch as the sun set (at 1pm) behind the mountain.  It got cold real fast once the sun had left the track, so we scurried back down the track, down the 23km of unsealed, unbridged road back to civilization.                 

 

1 Day of Solitude

3 weekends ago, I took a trip down to the Catlins.  I wrote this entry the day I returned, but neglected to post it.  Bad me.  I will be better in the future, I promise.

 

Not only was this my first trip to this supposed “scenic and solitary heaven on earth,” it was my first trip completely alone.  Eddy was up in Christchurch, playing for Dunedin’s Ultimate Frisbee team at the National Competitions.  Although I was invited, I would have been the only girl, and I didn’t quite feel like playing the part of cheerleader.  So I packed my bags and headed south, armed only with an atlas, 4 books, my knitting, extra shoes, extra towels, my ipod, my camera, 2 days worth of food and clothes for every possible weather situation.  This time, I pledged to be prepared.

About 20 minutes into the 2 hour drive, my ipod died.  Yes, I charged it fully the night before.  Technology, however, seems to hate New Zealand.  My drive, then, was spent singing Dr. Horrible and counting the sheep.  And there really are a lot of sheep.  They remind me of bacteria in a petri dish; a few lone sheep dot the rolling green hillsides, becoming more and more condensed towards the centre and then, boom, an explosion of sheep so thick you can’t see the ground anymore.  If you yell out your window, one will inevitably start running, a funny woolly waddle that doesn’t seem much faster than a walk.  But once one runs, they all run, up towards the safety of a slightly higher spot on the hill.  It is so much fun to torment the sheep.  Not that I have ever done this, of course.

My first stop in the Catlins was Kaka Point, a rocky jetty on the “Southern Scenic Route.”  I walked down to the beach, and watched the waves.  The wind was so strong it pulled the spray backwards off the waves as they curled, creating flying jets of water that trailed after each wave like a veil.  I lifted my camera to take a picture, and it refused.  Technology hates New Zealand. 

My next stop was Nugget Point, an 8km drive down a pot-holed gravel road.  I walked down to the wildlife hide, and saw a baby yellow-eyed penguin hiding in the bush.  Well, my guidebook told me it was a penguin; to me it looked more like an ugly grey blob that kept peeping.  I then walked 900m out to the lighthouse, following a wide dirt path that skirted the edge of a cliff.  At one point, cliffs fell down towards the ocean on either side of me.  On one side, the ocean raged against the bluffs, a frothing mass of foam and bull kelp that crashed against the rocky shore.  On the other side, bladder kelp swayed gently in the deep, crystal blue waters.  It was yin and yang, heaven and hell, bull and bladder, and I stood on the thin divide. 

At the lighthouse, I ate lunch to the sounds of waves crashing against the large rocks that lined the shore.  I watched the fur seals (which are, in fact, sea lions, not seals) playing on the rocks, barking and splashing in the tidal pools.  After lunch, I drove down to Cannibal Bay and got to meet some real sea lions up close and personal; apparently, sea lions sleeping on a beach look a lot like kelp.  After a failed attempt to do the beach walk to nearby Surat Bay, I met a nice elderly couple about to embark on a short tramp through the surrounding farmlands up to the cliffs above the beach.  Not only did they take me on the tramp with them, they invited me back to their RV for “a cuppa and bikkies” (aka tea and cookies) afterwards.  I love Kiwis. 

I finished my day by driving up to my backpackers, a lonely lodge atop a hill.  The sun was setting in the mountains behind me, turning the ocean pink.  After moving into my dorm room (the lodge was meant to sleep 12, but there was only me and 1 other girl), I drank tea and listened to the birds as the sun went down.  Although I spent the day completely alone (save for the kind Kiwi couple), it was one of the most fulfilling, beautiful days I have ever experienced.                

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. 

Shaken

New Zealand is in a state of shock right now.  65 casualties, and counting.  This is a small country, where everyone knows everyone else, so everyone has a friend, co-worker or relative living in Christchurch.  University of Otago has a campus there, which is closed.  The airport is closed (although reopening for local flights only today, to help get survivors out and medical help in).  Cell phone services, even here, were slow (and in Christchurch, they were virtually nonexistent).  All the headlines in the newspaper are about the quake, the victims, the heroic attempts to rescue survivors still caught in the wreckage.  It’s like 9/11 all over again, on a smaller scale (smaller country, smaller number of casualties), but this time there is no one to blame. 

I am lucky – my day yesterday was very uneventful.  I only found out about the quake when I answered a Skype call from my Dad frantically asking if I was OK.  I had been out running (or maybe in the shower) at the time the quake hit, and didn’t even feel it.  Many people here in Dunedin did, though.  Eddy said he noticed because he got dizzy and then saw the liquid in the beakers shaking (typical chemist).  My Rotary counselor, Margie, said she actually had to brace herself in the doorway because her building shook so hard.  Dunedin is 360 kilometers (about 200 miles) south of Christchurch, so the people who felt in most were on the higher stories of buildings.  I am thankful my flat seems to be located on a very sound piece of rock.

Although I don’t know anyone in Christchurch, my heart goes out to its residents.  The city has been plagued with aftershocks (this earthquake is even considered an aftershock) since the 7.1 magnitude quake last September.  While New Zealand is used to earthquakes, several residents told me that last September was the first time Christchurch had experienced a major one, and that geologists only recently discovered it is built just a few miles from a fault line.  Now, they have been plagued with them, and their fear is tangible, even down here.  For lack of a better word, everyone here is shaken.  Hopefully I will be able to make myself useful and volunteer to help with some sort of disaster relief, but being so new around here, I don’t really know where to start.  At the very least, it will certainly be interesting to begin studying public health in the wake of this public health disaster.          

Adjusting to the Long White Cloud

There must have been a drive from the airport to Russell’s house, but I have absolutely no recollection of it.  After more than 48 hours on airplanes and in airports, I may have been walking and talking, but I was not awake.  Those first few days in Dunedin were spent in a haze of errand running and getting lost. I don’t remember much about those days – I know I set up a bank account, checked into my flat, walked around, bought groceries – but what I did and when blurs together like it was years ago, rather than a week.  What I do remember is that I wrote a list.  It was a list of things I learned, things that surprised me, that I wish I had known or done.  And here it is: 

-          Believe the weather report. I looked at the weather report for Dunedin before I left for India.  50^oF and raining, it said.  I figured that it was getting the same rains as Australia, that it would all blow over by the time I got there.  Besides, Google Earth had a picture of my flat, and in that picture it is sunny and there is a palm tree.  Plus, February is dead smack in the middle of summer here in the southern hemisphere.  So I packed for India, and figured I could buy some warmer clothes once winter set in.  Nope.  The first thing I bought in New Zealand was a sweater from Kmart.  New Zealand wasn't named "The Land of the Long, White Cloud" for nothing. 

-          Metric System Being a scientist, I know how the metric system works.  However, taking my bench/classroom knowledge and applying it in the store is a completely different story.  I have no idea how many bananas 1 kg of bananas is.  Or how fast 100km/hour really is.   My first trip to the grocery store nearly stopped my heart, until I realized that the prices were per Kg.   

-          DON’T BUY ANYTHING without talking to my hosts Signing a lease to a flat before seeing it was stupid – the landlord convinced me that it would be impossible to find a flat once I arrived.  Lies!  There are plenty of flats left even now, many of them better and cheaper.  Had I asked my host sponsor (to give myself some credit, I didn’t know who it was until I was already in India), he would have given me the real story.  Plus, Rotarians like the give me free stuff.  I have so far accumulated a tent (not a backpacking one, Mom, sorry, you still need to send mine), a stove, camping dishes/utensils, dish towels, several guidebooks, roadmaps, a wok, dishware, silverware, apricots (those are gone already), a keyboard AND a violin.       

-          Look ALL ways when crossing the street Just looking left and right isn’t good enough.  I would probably be roadkill by now if Eddy hadn’t figured out quite quickly how oblivious I am.  When cars drive on the left, they suddenly become able to appear out of absolutely nowhere. 

-          Don’t worry so much My first few days were actually quite slow.  Not knowing anyone else, I ended up sitting in my flat quite a lot, worrying about how I wasn’t experiencing things or meeting people.  Eddy helped me to get out of this funk.  Journaling, reading the local newspaper, walking around, going to meetings (Rotary meetings especially), helped me to slowly realize that this is where I am, this is how it is, get used to it.

-          Even if it looks just like home at first glance, look again. There is always something new and incredible to find