Adventures in Moshi: Cape Town: Lion's Head & FIGO

Where to begin?!?! Seeing as how I'm about 3 weeks late in posting about my trip, recounting it will be rather discombobulated but I'll hit the highlights and hope they do my trip justice.

Highlight #1 -- Getting to Cape Town from Moshi is no small feat! We woke up around 3am so that we could make our crack-of-dawn flight to Nairobi in time... then to Johannesburg... then to Cape Town. We were quite the crew -- Bariki, 2 of the 3 Ob/Gyn consultants (attendings) at KCMC, Jeff, Sumera, and their kids Alya and Ilyas. An 11-hour journey not including the travel time to the airport... so you can imagine how painful it was when I got stuck in the middle seat of the Nairobi-Jo'burg flight with this guy to my right who had clearly not flown much. But, lucky for me, I somehow sweet talked my way into first class for the last leg! :) I think the exhaustion on my face spoke for itself when we checked in in Jo'burg!

A Singapore Airlines flight in Jo'burg -- I was a bit excited :)

Views from my (first class) seat

Our first full day, we scoped out the Waterfront area of the city, since it was close to our hotel, which was really comfortable, and quite spacious -- I had my own bedroom. And the most amazing shower with real water pressure AND temperature control! Incredibly how the little things really influence quality of life. I, of course, spied the Mango store nearby and happened to find a cute sweater that I simply had to purchase :)

The weather was perfect -- foggy in the early morning but rapidly clearing into sunny, a sea breeze, slightly brisk at times but gorgeous, and cooling off considerably at night with the fog rolling back in. The setting is incredible, and no picture I took captures the full beauty of the granite Table Mountain towering over the city and the rolling hills running to Table Bay. It reminded me so much of San Francisco, and I realized how much I love (and miss) the city and California. But get this -- it turns out Cape Town and San Francisco are at the same latitude, just opposite sides of the equator! Cool, no?

It's far to my 2 homes away from Moshi... Singapore and San Francisco!

Brightly colored phone booths in Cape Town!

Highlight #2 -- Lucky for me, I was in Cape Town for the full moon... for the werewolves, didn't you know? just kidding!!! Apparently it's a 'townie' tradition to climb Lion's Head on the full moon and watch it rise over Table Mountain, then climb down by the light of the moon.

Lion's Head
(The flat part facing the ocean is the lion's head, the sloping part is towards town,
and another hill, Signal Hill, is the lion's bum!)

This is what it looks like from the car park...

I emailed the only person I knew in Cape Town, Jonny, a Fogarty fellow, who pulled a group of seemingly random people together to go hike with us. Turns out one of them, Daphne, was a former Berkeley undergrad (we had the necessary Cal-Stanford rivalry conversation) and another, David, was a former Duke med student, former Fogarty scholar (like me), and current Fogarty fellow! Crazy small world, he knows a lot of the Duke people I work with here!

Our hiking crew...

Hiking Lion's Head is awesome, and the pictures speak for themselves. The best part is that climbing requires scaling ladders and using chains and footholds carved into the rock to pull oneself up. My heart was pounding so hard I thought I was going to have a heart attack, but it was an awesome feeling of accomplishment to make it up... and in about 50 minutes! We had a delicious spread, with wine, chocolate, and nuts, as we waited for the moon to rise... and waited... and waited. Alas, the fog thwarted us, so we finally gave up and climbed down by torchlight -- probably more challenging than going up the mountain... due to the wine or the darkness? :)

Note the chains...

and ladders!

The Tampon Towers

The fog rolls in!

Some people carried a telescope up!

Cape Town at night..

Highlight #3 -- In case you're wondering, I really was in Cape Town for an academic reason! We were attending the FIGO (Federation Internationale de Gynecologie et d'Obstetrique) conference, which, in one word, was overwhelming. 8,000 people were there, from literally every country! It was close to impossible to figure out where to go, what talks would be interesting and useful, and even though I went to lots of cool talks, I still found it challenging to figure out exactly how to apply those talks to my research.

The Convention Center

And I was appalled at how much these pharma/device companies spend on their displays. Bayer was giving free massages AND some crazy present if you went to 3 of their lunchtime talks (it was funny seeing men carrying huge neon green and pink Mirena bags outside of the conference though); GSK's display looked like a Chanel counter! I thought I was at Neiman's shopping for mascara, not a conference where we are trying to save mothers from dying!!! Thanks, Dean Pizzo, for banning all these companies from Stanford!!!

(Yes, I should have taken picture to prove how ridiculous it was -- I can't imagine the number of people who get onto antiretroviral therapy with the money spent on these displays!)

Overall, I definitely learned a lot about the Ob/Gyn research world, and I learned that OB research so much more compelling -- something about saving babies just motivates me :) ... and more importantly, I realized that I never want a job where I spend all my time talking and very little time seeing patients and doing research! So a productive use of my week in Cape Town.

Now on to the other fun things I did while I was there! Thanks, Fogarty!