Making a Difference

7 Further Studies in the UK and Sweden

FurtherStudies intheUKandSweden After completing my internship and working for six months in Tanzania as a registrar, I was awarded a scholarship by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to study Human Nutrition at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK. I left for London late September 1970 to take the one-year postgraduate course. I needed training in this subject if I wanted to become a good paediatrician in Africa. During my internship I had discovered how ignorant I was in the field of nutrition and if I was going to work in Africa I needed to know about nutrients. Sound knowledge was essential since good nutrition can solve many childhood illnesses in Africa. Examples are kwashiorkor and marasmus, which affect many children as a result of protein deficiency and general food shortage. Thousands of children die of diseases which normally ought not to be fatal, such as measles, but because of the underlying malnutrition their immunity is compromised. In Poland we were taught Hygiene and Nutrition by a very boring, elderly lady professor and we didn’t pay much attention to what she was saying. The payback was a glaring lack of knowledge in Nutrition and I painfully discovered that I should have apologized to the Professor for not paying attention to her lectures. But I was not the only one who didn’t pay attention. There was a student from Cameroon by the name of Isaac Eyuom, who used to sit next to me. He talked throughout the lecture and listened to music through his small tape recorder, using an earphone. One day during class he told me it was his birthday, he wasn’t in the mood to do any studying that day, and he wanted to go to the theatre. That day was 10 December, which also happened to be my birthday, so we became good friends. We used to chat during the lectures on Hygiene and I paid dearly for the lack of knowledge in that 57 Further Studies in the UK and Sweden subject. One of the consultants in Dar es Salaam made fun of my lack of knowledge of tropical diseases and was always asking me about the signs and symptoms of one or the other tropical disease, knowing quite well that I had studied in Europe and didn’t know the answers, but he didn’t put me off. I was very happy that I was given the scholarship to the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and I studied very hard. I also met a Palestinian woman doctor, Radda Garmi, at that school, who was planning to go to Egypt to research Arab medicine. I don’t remember why she was studying Nutrition, but we became good friends. Acclimatizing to Another New Country During my time in London, I learned that Sweden had the best Paediatrics training, so after my course in Human Nutrition I went to Sweden to do further studies in that area. Since Ben had been posted to Stockholm as SWAPO Representative to the Nordic countries, it worked out well for us and we were able to spend four years together in Stockholm. I was once again back to the snow in winter but, to add to the misery there were midnight summers as well. In the Nordic countries the sun barely sets during summer time and they have what they term midnight summer festivals. It was daylight till almost midnight and newcomers to Nordic countries had a hard time adjusting. I had problems sleeping properly while it was so light, but I gradually got used to it. During the long winters the opposite happened; it was dark at 3pm and I wanted to go to bed! Later I found that people went shopping at that time and Stockholm was beautiful with candle lights in the windows and beautiful street lights. The streets were white with snow. It was pleasant to walk around town at that time with the streets full of people strolling around, doing their shopping or just window shopping, and restaurants were also full. Unlike in Namibia, people in Europe like eating out. I started enjoying the winter months in Sweden; I found the tradition of candlelit dinners fascinating and very romantic. After a few weeks in Stockholm, I secured a job in the radiology department of Karolinska Hospital, the largest teaching hospital in Sweden. In Sweden, English is widely spoken and I didn’t have problems in communication. As I mentioned earlier...