Downtime

Photo of the week. We meet Lucy again

Highlight of the week: Leopard heaven. We renew acquaintance with our feline friends. Lucy and Lady Wakumba.

Lowlight of the week: Our orphaned elephant succumbs. His broken heart breaks our hearts. He was just too young.

Maximum temperature: 26 degrees Celsius

Rainfall: Nil

Balance. We all seek it. Work and life. We need excitement and stimulation. As well as routine and chore. A contrast between ups and downs. Between highs and lows. Whilst working as Valley doctors, we are on call 24/7, for 3 months. Always potentially busy. But often quiet. The only doctors amongst a population of 35,000 souls. We are not lone clinicians, but the buck stops with us. We share uncertainty with each other. And via WhatsApp with our friends and colleagues in the UK. We need to escape from otherwise constant responsibility. We crave downtime. Want it. Need it.

Retirement doesn’t always come easy. It might be dressed up as a time to take it easy. But as you give up one role, nature refuses to permit a vacuum. It’s a time for creation. Decades of delayed hobbies and roles bubble up and become viable. Or doable.

Downtime is an agenda that shouts softly, but insistently, at me.

It may surprise many of you, who are yet to retire, that us retirees need downtime. It surprised me. I thought retirement was all about downtime. Pre-retirement, downtime came when I left work. It follows that following the end of a working career that retirement is, by definition, downtime. A clinician at James Cook once described his retired neighbour to me. With disdain, they told me that Tuesday was the neighbour’s car washing day. Without fail, on a Tuesday, the neighbour lovingly soaped up, rinsed and then polished his BMW. Come rain or shine. The clinician suspiciously asked me what I will do on a Tuesday. They dreaded the void. Preferring to prevaricate. Maintaining that they love their job too much. Citing indispensability. Avoiding hanging up their clogs and joining the ranks of the has-beens. Seeking eternal youth, or at least trying in some way to cheat the option of moving to the next base in the game of life.

Routine has emerged in our Yorkshire lives. My blog in May summed this up. Not a list of chores. Not a timetable of daily activities. Instead a flexible list. And many erstwhile chores are now pleasures. Our weekly supermarket sweep. An occasional afternoon ironing in front of Taskmaster. But I do draw the line at cleaning. Debbie, my cleaner is welcome to keep our house in order. Her wages, a small price for my aversion to paying attention to domestic hygiene. Debbie’s son, Ashley, is also welcome to Kwetu’s infinite windows. Especially after they have been strafed by birds’ target practice.

But what about Zambian downtime? What do we do after work? What is a chore? What is a pleasure?

You might call us repeat offenders. Suckers for punishment. Two tours of duty have not put us off. We are invested. The incumbents. With nine months of devotion to the Valley under our belts. The ropes feel familiar. Friends. Colleagues. Patients. Apparent self-reliance surrounds us. But in reality we are all co-dependents. Learning from one another. Leaning upon one another. We offer supervision in the clinic. But the clinic supports and nurtures each Valley doctor in turn. We treat the ailing safari providers and guests. Whilst the safari providers and guests are our allies and our friends. Our natural escape from intense work is something of a busman’s holiday. We jump on a game drive to quiz our guides about the bush. And our guides and guests can’t resist but to quiz us about our barefoot doctoring and bush medicine.

The standard formula for Valley docs is a single 3 month stint. Barely time to say hi and bye. The social scene sometimes needs a prod. Friendly faces abound, but time is short. Many do not quite find their groove. Slow down to the Valley pace. Meet up with their kindred spirits. They take up the challenge. Learn and grow. But they rarely return. Burnt out? Jaded? Who knows? Professional isolation can take its toll. A single doc without form or community can founder. But in truth most docs do not have the luck to renew their contracts. Sabbaticals are hard to come by. Retirement our secret weapon.

COVID times gave us our South Luangwan baptism by fire. Six months of swabs and quiet camps. The clinic busy. But free afternoons and weekends. Downtime in spades. An opportunity to put down roots. Find friends and allies. To understand who to trust and who to be wary of.

This month the favoured suite has changed. We are in the Valley early to look after hearts. We toil by day, to share our vision of healthy hearts. Our Nyanja website nudges willing changes. Sure doc, I’m happy to stop smoking. My life is at stake. Even the national staple is fair game for change. Nsima a national passion. No belly being full without breakfast meal. Yet a tiny nudge and unrefined, but healthier, roller-meal happily takes its place. We like it, but we hadn’t realised that it is better for us than Nsima.

Chores are pleasures. Cooking a joy. Joe Wicks by our side. But Zambia nudges us to make do. We swap out for seasonal fare. Joy, but occasional frustration. No power. No microwave. No air fryer. A gas hob and oven. Reliably unreliable. The temperature high or low. The gas may fail. Tins rare. Fresh veg despite the drought. My bread recognisable and edible, but not a patch on Sarah’s sourdough in Yorkshire. Cakes an occasional treat.

Reading is a suppressed passion. A luxury saved for retirement. Pre-retirement, reading was an activity done just before sleep. Or on holiday. Ten pages was the height of indulgence. A book could last a month. Thanks to the bookworms amongst you, my Kindle is heavily laden. But here I struggle to even turn a page. Reading is near the bottom of the pecking order. When there is nothing else left to do. So far this year, there has always been something else to do. No sooner have I rediscovered the Kindle’s on switch, but the baboons announce the stealthy arrival of a hunting leopard. The Kindle abandoned, we search the scrub and the trees. On foot! What could possibly go wrong? So the books stay shut for now. Downtime has us peering through binoculars at pecking creatures. All above the bottom rung of my pecking order.

Up the pecking order: I download game-drive shots. Editing photographs a treat. The camera captures images of delight; or frustration. Blurry snaps belie a treasured sight. A missing leopard’s whisker consigns an image to the bin. But light, colour and composition are redeemable. And then the real challenge: which will be the photo of the day? My Memento app needs feeding daily.

British down-time is hoovered up by a box in the corner of each room. A vacuum emitting cathode rays that hypnotises and indoctrinates. We have two, or so, in Yorkshire. The three channels of our childhood have fornicated and multiplied. Yet South Luangwa seems immune to these strange creatures. Despite Elon Musk’s Starlink and constant sport, real life holds more sway. We arrive in Zambia fully armed with a VPN. A mystical virtual box of tricks that apparently allows us to access the gogglebox from afar. Yet the VPN stays dormant for now. Below the bottom rung of the ladder. At least until Wimbledon starts.

Without the VPN I might be bereft in July. Wimbledon fortnight. In 2022, when COVID was still a thing, I had my first positive COVID test. It was Wimbledon fortnight. I felt a bit tired and headachy. Nothing serious. But I lacked energy. I plonked myself in front of the TV and put Wimbledon on. I refused Keith’s requests for walks and bike rides. Even though the weather was stunning. Keith assumed my addiction to Wimbledon held sway. He pushed and cajoled me. But I stayed put. On day 4, he too started to feel rough. A fever. Keith is something of an expert when it comes to being ill. His temperature hit 40. A COVID test confirmed his suspicions. My test matched his. A golden ticket. My permission to sloth.

Downtime. It might just be the secret of South Luangwa. Life goes at a slower pace. Time stretches to fill the space. Boredom not in the vocabulary. There is never Nothing to do. We look back at the end of each day. And reflect. The contents of each day are somewhere between: We just got on with life; and I feel we have never stopped.

Lady Wakumba. 3 months old. 2021

Trying to read. Too many distractions