David
Olayinka (Yinka) is a
 Consultant Orthopaedic surgeon working, at present
(1996), in Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Maseru, Kingdom of Lesotho,
Southern Africa. Monisola (Moni), is his wife. They have three
daughters – whose names all start with an "M" like their mother and so
we call them Yinka and the 4 Mos. Yinka describes his work and life as
follows:
We are a Christian family and
are close knit. I get ‘bullied’ quite a bit as the only male in the
house! But I’m used to it by now. Lesotho is a small country with
extremes of weather and mountainous terrain. Winter temperatures can go
as low as minus 6 degrees centigrade with snow and ice. That was a
major adjustment for us coming from Nigeria with a hot and humid
climate. I work very hard as there is a lot of trauma due to the
terrain. But I really enjoy the challenges. The kids love their school
and are doing very well. Basothos are relaxed laid back people who
welcome foreigners. We are also able to visit South Africa easily. All
in all it’s been nice.
August 2001
We’ve now been here 4yrs plus and our views have changed a little. We
still find the winters quite tough especially as there is no central
heating! We have tried all the methods; a roaring fireplace – nice and
warm but you can’t carry it into your bedroom! (Quite messy the next
day too). Paraffin heaters – averagely warm but the smell! So we
settled on a combination of electricity plus the others. It’s still
difficult to believe that we are in Africa when we hit minus 10
degrees! We will post up some pictures of snow in Maseru. Lesotho was
nice until Sept 1998.
The demon of African politics
hit and there were post election riots. Maseru’s CBD was gutted and the
people woke up to the reality of lost business and jobs. We got out of
the country for a few days and took the opportunity to visit the
Province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Durban is a hot city with
West African type humidity. Richards Bay is just the quaintest little
coastal town ever. We’ve also been to that other kingdom, Swaziland a
couple of times. Lovely place, also mountainous with picturesque
scenery and a most interesting monarch and his many wives.
There’s been a lot of rebuilding
of Maseru but It’s never been quite the same. Then there is the "big
bad wolf" of Inflation. Not quite on a Nigerian scale but it’s still
the dreaded “I” word in any color. Work? Increasing as always. AIDS
is a big problem but injuries from road accidents and personal violence
still form the bulk of my work. Its good experience. I have rapidly
become a fracture "guru".
Quality schooling has been a challenge but
God always make a way. All in all, God has been very good to us.
Moni has started a small
computer training business and it’s proved challenging and interesting.
It’s still growing and is teaching us all management skills, the ups and
down’s of business and the |
varied nature of God’s greatest
creation "the human being". Being able to visit home every
couple of years is so nice especially for the food. I tell
you folks nothing beats the variety of Nigerian cuisine.
The food here I think is quite boring. Moni has become quite innovative in trying to keep us
motivated to eat. I usually don’t need motivation!
I turned 40 on the 24th June.
I’m still not sure how I should feel but I’m starting to notice a little
“Michellin man” spread around the middle and I feel some muscles now,
that I did not know I had, after a hard day in the theatre. But we just
give glory to God for all His mercies.
November 2006:
We've been long overdue for an update. At our last entry we were in the
Kingdom of Lesotho.
In August 2005 I was offered a
post in Umtata in the Eastern Cape province of the Republic of South
Africa. Umtata is the largest town in an area known as the Transkei in
former apartheid South Africa. Transkei was a homeland created by the
apartheid government as a so-called independent black homeland within
the South African entity. This area provided a lot of the manual labour
for the mining & other South African industries and was also neglected
in terms of infrastructural development.
Since independence in 1994 there
has been an effort to bring it up to the rest of the country.
The University of the Transkei (now known as Walter Sisulu University) WSU
after one of the icons of the struggle for independence) has had a
medical school for some time. About five or six years ago, the former
president Nelson Mandela raised funds to build a state of the art
training hospital for the university. I work as an Orthopaedic Surgeon
at the Bedford Orthopaedic Hospital which is the Orthopaedic unit of the
Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital Umtata. It's much like the work in
Lesotho in that the patients are poor rural people but this time we work
with better equipment. Staffing remains a constant challenge.
Umtata is
a quaint bustling little city surrounded by rolling hills and only an
hour away from the Wild Coast - a South African tourist paradise with
breathtaking coastal scenery & beaches.
Moni and the girls have settled
in nicely. The girls attend a Christian school in town and Moni
volunteers at a pre-school serving the children of one of the
surrounding shanty towns. There is still a lot of poverty around the
Eastern Cape - a legacy of the past policies but the current government
is doing a lot to alleviate the situation
We fellowship at a really
wonderful church, the Rhema Umtata Christian Church. They have really
made us feel very welcome and have reached out to us as the body of
Christ should. They run the school the girls attend and most of the few
friends we have made are from the church.
We are grateful to God for the
opportunity to watch our children grow and also to relate with family
members all over the world. |
