The reason my hemoglobin is catching up to my age

Today I woke up at 5am to drive an hour with my running buddies Ngaire and Renaud to Lobatse to visit Ngaire's boyfriend Phillip's farm. It's one of the biggest cattle feeding stations in Botswana, which basically means cattle ranchers pay him to fatten up their cows before slaughtering them for beef. Of course, we did a 2 hr run first in the rolling hills before meeting Phillip and a few others for a gourmet brunch overlooking the cattle. I've come to learn the word "farm" in Botswana is a loose term. While I usually think of fenced-in muddy squares with chickens or pigs, here, it usually involves hundreds of kilometers of empty bush with 200 meters or so of animals or crops. It's not the land that has the real value but the cattle. A man is judged by how many cows he has on his farm, and a woman is worth a certain number of cows in exchange for marriage.This was sadly somewhat of a farewell brunch for Ngaire, because she's going home to Australia for three months. I'm pretty devastated, because I don't think I can routinely get out of bed at 6am on Saturday mornings to run without her overly enthusiastic peer pressure. Luckily, I still have my Frenchman Renaud who's training for Comrades, the 89km survival race in Durban.

I haven't yet mentioned my fantastic news from last week: I FINALLY GOT ETHICS COMMITTEE APROVAL TO START MY STUDY! For the past week, I've been frantically collecting data in the Emergency Department, which gets interesting after 5pm or anytime it's slightly overcast outside, because the office ,with a broken overhead light, gets completely dark. I'm continually learning that headlamps really are a miracle.

Anyway, I feel such a boost of encouragement and energy, and I can't wait to analyze the data. Unfortunately, the data will have to wait at least another couple weeks, because Sarah and I are off to Zanzibar tomorrow in our new matching $2 beach wardrobe. Life is so tough this year.