GLOD

(You think I just misspelled either God or Gold), but NO, GLOD is a real word, in fact it is a Romanian town.
It is one of the locations where Borat was filmed (I did not watch Borat...it looked stupid, but I do know what it is), anyway I just watched "When Borat came to town" a documentary about the town.
Basically, the small town was depicted in an unpleasant way in the movie and a lawyer came and told them to sue and they could get millions, a bit of a kerfuffle and nothing much materialised from that promise.

BUT, what was amazing and truly tugged at my heart strings, was (two things actually)

1. I was struck by the fact that the town of Glod was deceived by the movie people so that the movie people got what they wanted and the town of Glod was left disappointed. BUT the lawyer ALSO came and made promises that he failed to fulfill.
And again I saw the problem that we as humans sometimes put ourselves in, we decide that others know better than we do and we let ourselves get sucked in. Learned Helplessness: we reach a point of such despair that we cannot see an end to our suffering and we rationalize that the answer must lie in others and we disempower ourselves
I don't know the agreement that the movie people and the lawyer made with the town but ultimately the town was dissappointed. I hold hope that in fact the town was actually playing stupid in order to get more publicity, and sometimes you just never know.
Anyway, it was basically,  I was just sad for them for getting dissappointed and let down in such a major way...twice (that is assuming what they said in the movie was real, and they aren't actually rolling in the dough somewhere)

BUT
2. There was a man, who owned a shop, who spoke of bringing running water to the town. He had a vision, and when he thought of filing the lawsuit he was thinking of bringing money to the town and changing it. He had a vision, a dream, he was passionate and he was going to take the whole village with him.
When it fell apart he said, 'I don't dream about anything anymore. Too much dreaming, It's not good. If you don't have money to back you up dreams are in vain"
And this broke my heart, and definitely not for him, for ME.
What if my dreams never materialise, what if I die with all that I have seen in my mind, remaining in my mind and never really helping anyone.
I guess we never really know though, it's way better knowing you tried and failed than you never tried at all.

BUT in the end he decides to start all over again, he decided that even though his village hated him he was still going to try and build his vision. AND his daughter is pregnant, and that child represents their future, someone how will continue on their road but go further.

And when I think about it a bit longer, I know that my vision will not be impossible because I am not the first, Zambia is currently filled with amazing people doing amazing work, I have the benefit of existing being alive at such a time as this, and this is the right time for me. Additionally, I know that my life and what I will be capable of doing is only because of the battles that were fought and won by my forefathers before me. They paved the road, all I have to do is take a few more steps.

3am

Sleep comes in cycles

Something kind of like this, which means at anytime during the night you are more or less likely to awaken.
Generally in my light sleep phases I can wake up check the time and go back to bed.
But every once in a while during these moments of light sleep my brain is sooo excited about an idea that I just can't go back to sleep.



Last night I was in light sleep around 3am, and my brain was just shooting forward about going to Zambia and building a hospital (this will probably be a reality in my 40s!), about being able to visit for the first time in 5 years next year!
My mind is soo excited and it is so hard to have to tell myself to cool it because I have to successfully make it through today, this week, this year, etc. I told my brain to chill, it didn't work...

So I managed to stay in bed for a few more hours, not really sleeping...
But I thought I would share what was keeping awake tonight, because if you get excited about it maybe you can start and I can come and meet you half way in a few years.

Let me start by discussing some of my motivations.
1. specialist care is hard to come by in Africa especially in rural areas
2. Machines and tests and all other shiny equipment needed for new millennium medicine are expensive and also hard to come back
3. I believe the current borders in Africa are not of our own making and I would like to blur those borders.
4. There are a lot of skilled Africans not working in Africa

So I was thinking
1. Building a hospital at a border and in Zambia we have a few pretty epic borders either the Tanzania/Malawi border, or Malawi/Zimbabwe, or the Botswana/Namibia/Angola area (although I have never been there and google says it's very filled with national parks).
Anyway, by building at a border we can pull resources and build a tertiary hospital that all surrounding countries can refer to. But we can all claim it as our own, it can be staffed and resourced by the best that all surrounded countries have to offer.
2. Zambia is currently discussing dual citizenship and if they are smart and let it pass through the new constitution it will mean that more Zambians will be coming back even if it's just to visit. I truly believe there are enough foreign trained or foreign working Zambian doctors that can come and work for a month or a week and volunteer or even be paid (too far ahead to know) for their specialist skills. I don't know the dual citizenship rules of the other countries (and the wee hours of the morning are for dreaming big, not researching). But I KNOW there are enough people in all those countries to build, equip, and staff a giant tertiary hospital.
I laid awake seeing visions of helicopters bringing patients, of specialist care centres, of patient and family residences.
3. I like the idea of building in a non-city. Cities, are already built up with rules of transport and roads and overcrowding, but to build a new city. To start from scratch incorporating all we now know, that is amazing. To start with roads wide enough, to lay a foundation for an effective public transport system, to plan ahea for open areas, for residential areas...
4. Additionally, I had visions of setting up a program to encourage African students studying elsewhere to come and do a placement for a few weeks and show them how exciting medicine can be in Africa, that we can have amazing equipment and they can live comfortable lives.
It can be the beginning of reversing the brain drain, giving them a reason to come home.

I kept seeing this building in my head, kept seeing parts added to it, initially just a clinic, then an emergency department and then a surgery department, then infectious disease, cardiovascular disease wards...obstetrics (that should probably come earlier).
Allowing students from the neighbouring countries to get excited about medicine, facilitating research, answering locally relevant questions.
PLUS tons of OTHER people come to Africa to research on us and then answer questions that matter to them and go back and make their healthcare better, imagine if we were testing new medications, new ideas, new equipment in order to better our own health.
I have images of preventative care, of sexual health clinics, vaccination, exercise and diet information sessions,

Then I thought about a name, I thought Border Hospital but that's already taken.
And then I thought it should be a unifying name something that incorporates either the languages of the relevant countries or their values in some way
Or even something like ZBNA (just the countries letters), but that's not very creative and I think they might be issues with letter order. So just something cool and unifying....I still haven't though of anything...but then it was time to actually get out of bed, and I only got 5 hours of sleep and I have about 7 hours of lectures today...hopefully I can be awake for it all.

*sigh* These are the visions that keep me up at night...