T.I.A

T.I.A is a saying that we have come to know here in Durban. The meaning of T.I.A is This is Africa. One would use this saying when something does not go as planned, something is broken that should not be broken or something just does not make sense. Let me share with you a few TIA examples from our first three days in South Africa.

• When we arrived at the Durban airport one of the things we needed to do was obtain our World Cup match tickets. When we got to the place where we could get them both of the automated machines that despensed tickets were broken and there was only one person helping people. (You knew a lot of people were going to come to get tickets and many of them were going to come through the airport. Please have more than one person to help. Ohh well, TIA.)
• After getting our rental car the night we arrived in Durban we drove to McChord Hospital, where we were going to stay for the three weeks. It was about 8 o'clock before we found the hospital (after driving around the city for about an hour, getting partial directions from people and using a really poor map, we found the hospital). Rachel was instructed to go to the main security office to obtain our keys for our room. The first security person we came to did not have us check in, even though it was after working hours at the hospital and it was not a great part of town. He just directed us to the doctor's quarters. When we got to the doctor's quarters there was no security person there that we could see and no office to check into. It made us feel really safe when Rachel could just enter the quarters without a key and no one stopped her. So on the way to find the original security person in order to ask where we might pick up keys, we found the main security office. They had no idea we were coming and had no keys for us. So they made some calls and finally someone acknowledged we were supposed to be there but they were not expecting us until Monday (even though Rachel plainly stated in her emails that we were coming on the 11th of June). So we get to the quarters and Momma Jane (she is a house mother. I am sure we will have stories about her in the future) is there to open a room for us. Momma Jane also told Rachel that we were expected to stay for 7 weeks. (So out of three pieces of information vital to our stay; first that we were coming on the 11th, second that we were staying for 3 weeks and finally that there were two of us, they got 1 correct.....ohhh well, TIA)
• While we were at the USA v. England match in Rustenburg, we wanted hot dogs and beers. There was no line created or any sort of organization at all. There was only a huge mass of people trying to get to the front. It was chaotic to say the least. When we got to the front there was one person helping eveyone. At first-kick of the match there were still probably 100 people in a mass trying to get food and more than half just left to watch the match. Fairness in conversation, we attended the Germany v. Australia match last night in Durban and it was a lot more orderly there. Hopefully it was just the venue. (You are hosting five matches where many thousands of people will want to eat and drink but you did not think to create a line in order to serve everyone in a timely manner??......ohhh well, TIA)

Those are our TIA examples for now but I have one other story that is just funny. After arriving at the doctor's quarters at McChord hospital we showered and sat down to watch the France v. Uruguay match when three other interns came in to watch with us. They sat and started to smoke Huka (I might have misspelled that but it is an apparatice to smoke "tobacco"). About 30 minutes into the session one of the guys and I are having a discussion about some of the teams in the World Cup and he just throws up, mid-sentence, into his hand. It was the craziest thing I have ever seen. He was not acting drunk and it seemed like he didn't even know he was going to throw up. Just kind of funny.

Thanks for reading. It is harder than I thought it would be to find and use the internet here. So tomorrow I will post game re-caps and thoughts for both the USA v. England and the Germany V. Australia matches that we saw. I am also going to try and post my predictions. I know that quite a few matches have already happened so they will not be true predictions but I am going to post them none the less. Looking forward to reading everyone's comments.