Cougar Hunting

So I sat in an office most of today trying to format someone’s university level paper on Microsoft Word, so as a way to not stab myself in the face with a pencil, I decided that I would write my next blog entry to pass the time. I went away this past weekend to Hluhluwe Game Park and St. Lucia, which is a small beach town north of Durban. It’s sort of like West Palm Beach Florida, but instead of Jews it has Hippos and Crocodiles. I went up to Hluhluwe (pronounced shloo shloo way) with Ingrid, Thami, and his mom D. We woke up around 4 in the morning to drive up there to catch the animals out and about but arrived to see that there were very few that woke up that morning. We saw about a thousand zebras and antelope, but no lions, leopards, cheetahs or elephants. Ingrid and I wanted to see elephants and lions the most but of course we saw zero. I was really hoping to see some sort of cougar, but I guess it’s better I didn’t. So we drove around this massive 94,000 acre park looking for the animals, but saw very few. Why don’t they just tell you where to drive to see the animals? You pay all this money to look at trees basically. They tell you, “But it’s part of the fun to hunt them down and it’s so rewarding to see them after all of the hard work.” Totally false. It’s only rewarding if you actually get to see the animals after hunting for them for 12 hours. Instead, we drove around like schmucks watching trees pass and deer shit on the road.

But I guess being out there was awesome enough and D’s criticisms of the “coward animals” that wouldn’t come out to face us was just enough humor to get me through the day. At one point our car got stuck while we were watching a rhino lay in his own fecal matter and I had to get out and help get the car out of the muck. As I tip toed around piles of shit to do this, I realized how scary being in a game park really can be. If I were in the animal kingdom I would definitely be dead in ten minutes. You really just notice that at any moment something can just swoop you up and kill you. You really just feel so vulnerable. It’s kind of like accidentally soiling yourself in class last year and having to walk to your car while trying to avoid anyone you know so they won’t pick up your scent and tell everyone in Austin that you pooped yourself. That never happened. I swear.

Moving on…We drove around most of the day and at about 5 o’clock we arrived at Dave’s Backpackers near the game park. Dave is about 40 years old and runs this backpackers lodge where he does tours of the game park during the day. He sort of reminded me of someone you would see on “Dateline NBC” running away from the guy in the kitchen, only to be tackled moments later by the S.W.A.T. team assembled outside his front door. 8 year olds dude. We all ate dinner that night, which was prepared by a man drunker than Matt Ables on his 20th birthday in Eagle River (21 shots and the ship went down!), but it was surprisingly very delicious. After eating, Dave continued to tell us how amazing he was at doing this dance with a stick that had fire on the ends of it, so we humored him and asked him to do the dance for us. What happened next was just fabulous. He popped on an old Seal song that he thought was just absolutely amazing and started to dance in place with this stick on fire. He then started to twirl it around and try to flip it around his back, which is where he lost control of the stick and just missed setting himself on fire. He blamed the wind or the rotary gerter, 8 7 niner for the miscue. The looks on the faces of us in the crowd were astonishing. We were literally all hoping for this idiot to stop because we had this terrible feeling that he was going to fling the fire stick into the crowd. We then snuck off to bed early to escape the pyromaniac after the long day in nature. I worried the entire evening that a snake was going to crawl through the window so I slept on the top bunk. We walked into the cabin and I announced to the group, "I got dibs on top bunk." They replied, "Okay."

The next day we drove to the Jewish Florida South African town to go on a crocodile and hippo cruise which was great. We saw a bunch of animals in the river, but what fascinated me was everyone’s interest in seeing all these different types of birds. I mean, who fuckin cares. It’s a bird. They fly. They eat fish. They shit on your windshield. What’s the big deal? We stopped on this boat like ten times to see all these different birds. Each time we would stop D would look at Ingrid and I and just start laughing at these idiots taking twenty photos of these birds. These people were for the birds (Coach Bob joke). After the cruise we ate lunch and walked on the beach there a little bit. It was a nice way to end the weekend. It took us about 3 hours to get home, and when I did I crashed hard.

I had work this morning at 8 again, which just reminded me how much I hate to work. I got to work around 7:45 after Jeeves dropped me off and I got to make my first rounds with the doctors in the hospital wards. I basically walked around with a clipboard listening to the doctors diagnose patients waiting for them to acknowledge that I existed and ask for my opinion. I’m still waiting, because they said nothing to me. I really don’t understand why doctors have this smug attitude towards other workers in the hospital. Like, just because they have rectal thermometers in their pockets they feel like they can talk down to you. In their heads they say, “I can shove this up your ass, so stand there and keep your mouth shut.” I was really disappointed because I thought this would be like Grey’s Anatomy and I would meet a nice doctor broad in the utility closet at lunch like a big bowl of wrong, however all I got was a simple head nod from all the doctors. One doctor was wearing sun glasses. Fuckin prick. The only people who wear sunglasses indoors are blind people and assholes. I think we all know which one he was.

After rounds I went back to the office and had training on how to fill out intake forms. It took 2 hours. The form was 1 page. Now, for everyone that knows me, you know that I think of myself as a total putz and should be treated like an idiot. But this was just too much. I was shocked at how slow everything moved within the hospital and it really just pissed me off. I swear I could have seen like 30 people today and did intake forms with them, or just talked to them about their issues. This form is done after someone receives their diagnosis of HIV positive, and on it, it asks if you think that the client has psychosocial issues to deal with. And most of these forms are filled out with the “No” box checked off. Are you fucking kidding me? I shat my pants twice and I had psychosocial issues. Well, not me, it was someone I knew, but that’s not the point. These people just received news that they have H4 (as Coach Bob likes to call it) and they don’t need to talk to anyone about it? I know people in extensive therapy because they didn’t get asked to homecoming for three years of high school. Again, not me. I know people who need therapy because they think Martha Stewart is a sexual icon. Also not me. And these people just got the HIV and are just totally okay with it and don’t need to talk to anyone about it? It’s just mind boggling to me. I sat in an office all day and literally did nothing, and all of these people just go home without speaking to anyone about their diagnosis. It’s just very sad to me. For multiple reasons actually. One is obviously because I think they are clients that just fall through the cracks because the system here is lazy in a lot of ways. And another reason is because my caring shows that I actually want to do work, and this is a side of me that has never come out to play. It’s a side that wants to do nice things for people, which is just so rare. I tried to do one nice thing in my life when I was younger and it didn’t work out so I stopped after that. I was walking down the street and I saw an older lady crossing the road, but a car was coming at her and I yelled, “Hey watch out,” and she said, “Don’t you tell me what to do!” I mean, I just think that instead of seeing 10 clients a day, you should want to see 20. And anyone who gets a diagnosis should talk to someone, not just about the next steps of a drug regimen, but also how they are doing mentally with coping with this massive ordeal. Maybe I can bring it up in a staff meeting with Dr. Schmuck and Get the Fuck out of my way R.N. So that was basically my weekend and day. I posted some photos from this weekend and will add the rest soon. You stay classy planet earth. I’m Rooney Kaufman?