Bush Doctor OFF ICE - L37 - Antarctica vs Madagascar - Imagine A Place With No Flies, Mice, Rats or Mosquitos?
And GOOD NEWS, Antarctica was not Ground Zero for our next pandemic! Well not on my watch anyway.
Dear Family, Friends, Mentors, Colleagues and Jane-Your-Younger-Self,
I hope you are well? We are well today. Mum is not well, so we are taking things day by day.
It’s been 2 weeks since Rory and I returned to Madagascar from Antarctica where I was working as a replacement doctor for a friend and where Rory was incredibly fortunate enough to be given permission to join me for work experience where he worked as a General Hand & Cleaner.
What 14 year old kid gets to say that their first non-entrepreneurial job experience was in Antarctica? Zero, I am pretty sure.
ABOVE: Rory & I raising the Madagascar flag - thanks Papa Be (spelling intentional) for donating your flag xxx
Although, having just finished the book “Finding Endurance – Shackleton, my father and world without end”, there were some pretty young deck hands who joined Shackleton’s crew.
However they were not eating salmon, eggs and bacon for breakfast, nor had a Fine Dining Chef or Pastry Chef cooking and baking the most amazing meals and spoils.
Comparing our brief visit to the Antarctic, we cannot really compare our voyage to Shackleton, Scott and the other Adventuring Heroes of the early 1900’s who suffered scurvy, frostbite and literal madness from the isolation and months of darkness over winter when the sun never rises.
Living and working as an expat doctor in Madagascar since 2010, every time I return to Madagascar from a trip I might not suffer scurvy or frostbite, but the madness my chimp brain experiences (reference to “The Chimp Paradox” which is brilliant) is questionable.
It takes me 2 weeks to get my head back into this mad life we live which can be a prison and a paradise all on the same day.
I have noted most expats experience the same madness on their return to Madagascar so I am not alone in my Mad moment of madness.
More so after Antarctica, which was an experience like no other.
There are the obvious differences, like a slight temperature differential - -5 degrees to 5 degrees, compared to our 35-40 degree Madagascar summer we are currently enduring.
The smell – other than the tantalizing warm odor of the Chefs daily wonders, and the squeaky clean anti-septic of my clinic and the bathrooms, the ice is fresh and clean with no particular smell, making it all the more agreeable.
NO FLIES, MICE, RATS OR MOSQUITOS!!
Can you begin to imagine a place with no flies, vermin or vectors which transmit rabies, toxoplasmosis, malaria and the like (which cause millions of deaths worldwide).
Funny story, one of the Base crew showed me a skin rash which looked like a few mosquito bites all in a similar spot.
No no, it’s not what you are thinking, the rash was on his FOOT.
You know when you’re watching a movie from the 80’s and suddenly there is a dramatic pause followed by a heavy “DUH DUH DUMMMMMM!!”
That is what went on in my head… “WHAT THE HECK CAN CAUSE A SKIN ERUPTION IN ANTARCTICA? THERE IS NOTHING HERE TO BITE”.
Obviously, my next thought was, “Jane, trust you to be at Ground Zero for the next pandemic”.
As an aside, I regularly ask myself what I would do if I was the first doctor to treat Patient Zero. In Madagascar there are bats and caves (Marburg & Ebola are linked to these) and all wildlife is pretty much on the local menu. Hence you can begin to understand my thought process.
I reeled myself back from my uninhibited thoughts of the next global and lethal pandemic, looked at all the options, and considered that I had seen a few birds in the snow where my Ground Zero patient frequented, and these birds MIGHT carry something which could be the cause of the bites.
In fact, it was the only thought I could come up with.
In contrast, in Madagascar, small skin rashes and bites go septic quickly due to the heat and humidity, to the point where I have had to evacuate a 22 year old with severe septicemia which all started from an insect bite that got infected.
It is the first medical contract I have ever worked where I never treated even one fever, cough, cold, flu, diarrhea or vomiting. Infection would have to be imported and no one imported any while I was there.
In my clinic in Madagascar I call it “sexy salmonella” when the tourists succumb to travelers diarrhea and vomiting. It’s sad for them, but it generates revenue for our clinic. Long live Robin Hood.
Antarctica is pristine, well our Base was anyway.
No rotting rubbish, no discarded plastic or paper lying around, no rubbish dumps smoldering in the Madagascar heat, with kids and dogs scavenging anything edible.
Nothing rots and everything is preserved much longer than normal because the temperatures are so low.
There is really so much to write about Antarctica.
I have come to realize it is an addictive country like none other I have visited, It is extreme, harsh, wild, stark, seemingly never ending and lends itself to my crazy imagination. Antarctica feels like it is a time warp.
It is a land where one could go back in time to meet explorers still wondering the planes of the pole lost in their time and place.
There is no official time zone so every base in Antarctica chooses their own.
Antarctica is a “unique territory” which has never been inhabited by people and it is not considered a country.
There is no one political power, there is a joint treaty (signed in 1959 - as of 2024 the Treaty has 58 parties), and thus no passport control.
Theoretically we could all move there tomorrow if we wanted…however a word of advice, check on relocation costs as well as food and energy sustainability before committing.
And as mentioned, you take your shit back from whence you came. We flew back to Cape Town with ours.
ABOVE: Our sweet snow ride. Majestic.
I haven’t even got started on how important Antarctica is as our global barometer and thermometer.
When a butterfly flaps it’s wings across the world, or, 8 billion people (who aren’t exactly as subtle as a butterfly) produce carbon emissions and global temperature changes, it causes cataclysmic ice melts in the poles, and freak weather patterns globally.
I could go on about all of that, but actually, like all really good stories, it was about the people not the place.
ABOVE: Hardcore Ice Men helping Rory raise our flag. Special memories.
The Russians, Canadians, Argentinians and South Africans. Hardcore professionals, extreme, quirky, fun and funny, despite being in their last month of contracts and fatigued from their months of summer on ice away from their families.
Anyhoooo….getting back to my over active uninhibited chimp brain imagination and dramatic suspicions of our Antarctic Base being Ground Zero for the next potential pandemic, the itch and bite-like lesions were nothing a bit of anti-histamine cream couldn’t solve in a jiffy. All’s well that ends well.
BTW, it’s a very first world requirement to come up with an actual diagnosis. Remote doctors don’t have the benefit of fancy diagnostics. When all else fails, always wash your hands, use common sense, and treat the symptoms. Good rules for life really.
But just imagine having to self-isolate in Antarctica for the whole of winter….because of an Antarctic bird?
ABOVE: These birds are so persistently inquisitive they could be AI….
You see, that is just where my chimp brain goes when I’m given some fresh air, lots of ice, really good people, a 360 degree horizon and a potential time warp. Anything is possible.
Bye Antarctica, maybe we meet again.
Bush Doctor and son off ice.
Lots of love,
Mad Madagascan Mum and Medic,
Jane
