We’re at Makakatana Bay Lodge in the northern part of Kwa Zulu Natal on the banks of Lake St Lucia not far from Swaziland. Having some wonderful viewings of giraffe, water buffalo, zebra, rhino, warthog families and many kinds of antelope with a fantastic guide named Riley who is both very knowledgeable and excited about his work. He’s also a great bartender and cook. We’ve had evening drinks with him on the savannah as well as a fantastic outdoor breakfast at the Hluhluwe Imfolozi Park north of the Lodge in Zululand and surrounded by lovely hillside residences and small villages. We left the lodge about 5 this morning to travel to this famous park where there is lots to see.

On the day we arrived at the lodge we took a wrong turn and before we knew it we had glimpses of giraffe, zebra, warthogs and tons of colourful birds. It was very exciting to see these animals in the wild and protected. We spent one evening with this large lone bull elephant just watching him as the sun set and he wandered the plains. At a couple of points you’d swear he knew he was giving us a thrill – he was only 20 feet from our truck – and he seemed to pose for us. Riley was full of interesting information and knew just how close to get so as not to scare or disturb him but to give us a good sighting.

One of the pictures below is of Dung Beetles which live in elephant dung. Thanks to Louwrena, Riley’s colleague who taught us about these interesting creatures and actually had us hold them and their dung balls. The elephants wander the roads at night near the lodge – they come to eat from the trees and one night devoured the year’s crop of mangoes! By morning their dung is full of beetles which will live and reproduce in the dung – as well as recycle the dung into useful products for the ecosystem…a form of symbiosis. They are extremely efficient. Researchers found that a 1.5 km of dung attracted 16 thousand beetles who disposed of it in under 2 hours.

Having a wonderful trip and meeting many interesting people with lots of insight in to this wondefully complex country.

Those who know me know that I am a mad recycler/composter -have been for 35 years or so. I remember working as a volunteer when the kids were little for a Pointe Claire, Quebec upstart organization called STOP – the Society To Overcome Pollution. Seems a hundred years ago – it fact it was about 35 years ago and far too long ago for the seemingly little progress we have made to reduce/reuse/and recycle our immense piles of waste.

However I remain hopeful for a more conscientious future and one of those hopeful signs is right in the Athletes Village where I go each day and see clean, large recycle bins everywhere. You don’t have to carry your banana peel or apple core very far before you can find a composting bucket with a clean –hopefully biodegradable – plastic bag inside ready to accept your offering. Beside the composting buckets is a huge drum to recycle plastic water, juice and pop bottles.

Some of the waste buckets are solar powered compactors like this one on the right.

Word is that Coke – one of the key Olympic sponsors – has a piece of equipment nearby that takes hundreds of plastic bottles and makes them into a 4x4x4 foot cube in seconds. The cubes are immediately sent to recycling plants.

Other exciting initiatives are:
• Volunteers and sponsor associates are wearing clothing made from recycled PET bottles. Each uniform contains up to 120 recycled bottles. Athletes wear t-shirts made out of recycled bottles.
• Posters, menu boards and other materials used in concessions are made out of post-consumer recycled plastic and will be recycled after the event.
• All PET containers sold during the Games will be recycled. More than 1,400 recycling bins will be available during the Olympics. Coke estimates 7 million bottles will be served during the events.
• Coke is selling its newly designed Plant Bottles comprised of up to 30 percent renewable plant-based materials made from sugar cane juice and/or molasses. Coke will produce 2 billion Plant Bottles by the end of this year.
• Coffee, tea and cocoa is available in 100% compostable packaging including lids and sleeves. Tim Hortons, Starbucks and Second Cup please take note!
• Everything in the meal tents is carefully recycled or composted. Two attendants take trays from each diner to ensure the right things go into the right bins.
• Furniture and displays at many installations are created from blue pine wood salvaged from the Mountain Pine-Beetle epidemic in BC.
• The Athletes Village has been LEEDS certified at the Platinum level and declared Most Sustainable Neighbourhood with Vancouver’s first renewable district heating system, net zero buildings that produce as much heat as they use and toilets that flush using captured rain water.

All very hopeful signs that we can do more than we think we can when we put our collective minds to it. This city is so beautiful and there are so many natural elements to its beauty, it would be a crime not to be as green as we are humanly capable of being – and continually strive for better.

One of the reasons I was very excited about my volunteer assignment in the Polyclinic in the Athletes Village was the opportunity to really experience inter-professional practice in action.

It has been many years since I practiced clinical nursing and worked side by side with other health professionals in the field. Here was the chance to experience this in 2010, and in a setting where many health professionals are actively working together collaboratively to meet individual patient needs.

Like other health professionals in the field today, I use terms like inter-professional practice, collaboration and team work regularly and often discuss the actualities of important current concepts like patient-focused care. This seemed like an awesome opportunity to experience the realities of what many might call “lingo”.

When my assignment first came to me in an e-mail last August I wasn’t even sure what a polyclinic was – I had to look it up on Wikipedia. A polyclinic, it said, is a place where a wide range of health care services, including diagnostics, can be obtained without the need for an overnight stay. Polyclinics are sometimes co-located within a hospital or can be located completely separated from the hospital. A typical Polyclinic houses general medical practitioners such as doctors and nurses who provide ambulatory care along with some acute care services, but lacks the major surgical and pre- and post operative care facilities commonly associated with hospitals.

Apparently polyclinics are popular in countries such as Australia, France, Germany, Switzerland and the former Soviet republics such as Russia and Ukraine and in many countries across Asia and Africa. It is said that recent Russian governments have attempted to replace the polyclinic model, which was introduced during soviet times, with a more western model but this has failed.

The concept of the polyclinic is a good fit with the current North American movement towards stronger inter-professional practice involving a wide variety of specialized practitioners and more focus on health and wellness than on illness care. In the last few years hospital units have become more like intensive care units with sicker and sicker patients requiring 24/7 care taking up available space. Hospitals are busier than ever, budgets are tight and the need for other models of care is high. The idea of community polyclinics seems valid.