Zithulele – South Africa’s Hotel California

Main building and life line of the Zithulele Hospital. Patients wait in long lines to visit the physicians.

The long lines in the Zithulele Hospital.

Published August 18, 2014, last updated on October 5, 2017 under Voices of DGHI

By Brittany Davis
​Written on Aug. 9

The roads went from tar, to tar roads with potholes, to tar roads with lots of potholes, to dirt roads occasionally occupied with various farm animals, to eventually the types of roads seen in SUV commercials: worn, steeply graded and scattered with large rocks. After a four hour, slightly daunting drive from the nearest airport, the Zithulele Hospital was a sight for sore eyes. Nearly an hour’s drive from the nearest town, Zithulele is happily inhabited by a sea of colorful Xhosa (c-*click*-osa) rounds (circular shaped huts). This makes the hospital a safe haven for those injured with walking as their only means of transportation.

My first impression was that the hospital was nothing close to the general American hospital image I had painted in my head.  The buildings were all one story and some had seen better days. In the physiotherapy ward, there were no private rooms just sheets nailed up to provide more patient privacy. Most patient rooms had as many beds as the room would allot and although the buildings were clean, they lacked the sterile smell that I so often associate with hospitals. The pharmacist to my right instructed the doctors not to prescribe medications A, B, and C because they simply did not have them, to prescribe more of medication D and decrease other prescriptions because they were running low.

The longer I spent in the hospital though, the more I viewed the hospital as not just a conglomeration of sterile buildings but a thriving, compassionate community center. The lines to see the doctors seemed to go on for days but the doctor I shadowed made sure to spend quality time with each patient. She had a translator and would go out of her way to make sure the patients felt comfortable with the prognosis prior to leaving the room. Patients and doctors alike that could speak both Xhosa and English helped direct patients that only spoke Xhosa to different wards, assist with pharmacy transactions and would lend a compassionate ear.  It was readily apparent how strong the bonds were in this community, bonds that looked past skin color and language that tied Zithulele together.

After spending just a week in this South African Hotel California, I understood why so many volunteers keep coming back and they just can’t leave. Simply put, the people in Zithulele make it a very special place.

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