Welcome

 

My name is Kizzie and I will be living in Ouro Preto, a colonial town in Minas Gerais for two months. My husband is a geologist who has bagged a two-month sabbatical in Brazil and I have come along for the ride. 

This blog aims to describe my experiences as someone who is ‘hanging out’ in a small Brazillian town. I am not taking buses around this huge diverse vast country and laying on beaches drinking cocktails. I am instead staying in a beautiful historic Unesco heritage site called Ouro Preto which is a town where time forgot.

There is limited internet access so this can’t be an every day blog though I have adopted a coffee shop which has wifi as my local which happens to specialise in chocolate so while writing I will be loaded with caffeine and sugar which may mean that my posts won’t be boring – lets hope so anyway. Hope you enjoy it.

NOT the sound of silence

 

On first impressions based on the size of Ouro Preto one would assume that it is a calm laid back gentle place..almost quaint. This  is true to a certain extent, however noise levels seem to be on the higher end of the scale.

Drinking a beer in the main square outside in one of my favourite bars involves being blasted in one ear with a car stereo (which earlier I mistook for a live band as I approached the square) and in the other an actual live acoustic performance in the other (courtesy of bar).

We live in the centre of the city, but if you were to blind fold someone and lead them to our apartment they could be forgiven for thinking we reside on a farm. We have dogs barking all night who seem to end their shift at around 4am which is when the roosters start. This is obviously unique to our apartment, but at eight in the morning we are lucky enough to ‘overhear’ or get rudely awoken by builders who are working on an extension adjacent to our bedroom.

I think I have had about 7 hours sleep in the last three days. Being an experienced insomniac this may be close to a record.

Bird gets ill in Brazil

This was not at all intentional ...we were not on another exciting adventure, although we were discovering new things...in a hospital in Ouro Preto.

I was taken ill a few days before we were due to fly back home...I had intense pain that I tried to delay sorting out until I got home but it became so painful that I couldn’t actually walk. I then decided I had to see a doctor...this led me to casualty and lot of tests. This involved lots of pressing down on my stomach and releasing it quickly (just try it and then imagine it with a stomach ache) and a misdiagnosis of appendicitis. It also included lots of crying on my behalf due to a lack of effective painkillers, a big language barrier and feeling so alone in a hospital far away from my family.

The tests eventually revealed gallstones and I was put on antibiotics and admitted on to the maternity ward due to lack of beds...with another woman who had no baby and a lack of pregnancy. The ward was so much nicer than the small room I was in for 36 hours which was packed tightly of four beds...and a very loud screaming baby. Although at night when the mister and G left me I was left with a feeling of complete isolation as the pain soared and nurses would come and tell me in a language I didn't understand what they were injecting into my body. Luckily G was around during visiting hours and was able to translate and inform me of everything that was happening but out of hours it was a different story.

It was my fault that I didn't learn Portuguese. Being English, I am guilty of laziness, and an ignorance that expects all nations to adhere to the English language as if it was an essential part of everyone's life around the world. I had no idea that Brazil consisted of so few English-speaking people. Some doctors spoke English but very few nurses did and I felt like I was a huge inconvenience for them as I wasn't able to answer any of their questions. I did make their jobs difficult and it resulted in them having to administer drugs through the veins of someone who had no idea what was happening.

After assessing me further, and a slight reduction in pain, which I exaggerated, in order to catch our flight, I was discharged about an hour and a half before we had to leave for the airport, on the condition that I sought treatment in England. We made the flight thanks to the huge kindness of our friends who assisted us in everyway possible including driving us the two-hour distance to Bele Horizonte.

After 14 hours of an extremely uncomfortable flight, we flew into Heathrow. I have never felt so relieved and grateful to see the grey sky and muddy fields beneath us - I don't think I've ever felt grateful for that at all actually.

I start 2014 with no gall bladder and an enormous appreciation of the NHS. I challenge David Cameron to a week in a foreign hospital with a frightening condition where he has to shed out loads of cash...then he may rethink his plans of ruining one of the greatest institutions in the world.