Three months!

I have officially been living in Norway for three months, and I'm still alive! No one's chucked me out yet, and I seem to be settling in pretty well. I even get mistaken for being Norwegian by Norwegian tourists, and all the small differences I was noticing before are starting to feel normal to me. I have even gotten used to the 24 hour sunlight, and the fact that the sun has now started setting feels a bit strange. A welcome change, but still strange.

It feels like yesterday that I stepped off an airplane into a new life full of unknowns and new experiences. I have definitely had some high highs and some low lows in the short time I have been here; from feeling lost a lot, to meeting awesome people, doing fantastic fieldwork in the fjords of northern Norway, and landing myself in hospital with a bad kidney infection. So, since I am bored, and lying in bed recovering from said kidney infection I thought I might write a post catching everyone up on my experience of the last 3 months.

I was lucky enough to arrive in Tromsø towards the end of the academic year (up here the year starts in August-September and ends in May-June, and there's a long summer holiday over July-ish), which means that there were no new international students clogging up the immigration office, and I managed to get my temporary residence in a record time of just 4 weeks! So I only had to survive a month without a bank account (note: sarcasm). Life is so much easier now that's sorted out! Note to anyone moving to Norway, especially those from obscure non-EU countries: make an appointment with immigration before you get here, even if you've already been granted a work permit! It takes a while to get your ID number (mainly due to the waiting for your appointment), and without it, you might as well not exist.

During my first week in Tromsø I was thrown in the deep end, and I spent the week on two fieldtrips, the first a masters field trip, and the second a 3-day first year field-mapping trip where I was expected to understand the field guide (in Norwegian), and assist with teaching the first years. The teaching, being first-year level, was fine, and nothing harder than I've done in Cape Town, and even though the students speak english, trying to demonstrate when the teaching material and professor's explanations are only in Norwegian, provides a significant challenge! I learned geological mapping terms in Norwegian very fast!

Anyway, I spent the rest of my first 2 months learning how to live in a new country for the first time, which for me entailed; living in the university guest housing, figuring out how to do grocery shopping in Norwegian (my food vocab improved fast!), learning how the university and the geology department worked, preparing for my PhD fieldwork (i.e. reading lots of papers and staring at lots of maps), meeting new people, getting to know the other PhD students, discovering the climbing wall, and generally exploring the city and forest on Tromsøya (Tromsø island). I also found time to squeeze in a half marathon, and a visit from Åke.

My search for a more permanent place to live was a rather stressful one as the rental situation in Tromsø is a bit dire, with much too little supply to satisfy the current demand. After several "visninger" (viewings) of potential apartments with my now housemate, which always ended with the owners choosing one of the other 30 people who showed up to look at the place, we lucked out and found a fully furnished, really nice, 2nd floor, 2 bedroom apartment, with a big living area and kitchen, perfect for entertaining. It is situated about 2.5 km along the lyslope (ski/bicycle track that traverses the top of the island, through the forest, and which is floodlit in winter) from the geology department, which means an 8 minute cycle to work in summer, and a (probably significantly longer, at least at first) ski to work in winter, and I can also pop out my front door and go for a walk/run/ski in the forest whenever I want. It has fantastic views of snow-capped mountains (I imagine they'll be completely snow-covered soon) and fjords towards the north, and towards the south we can see the top of Tromsdalstinden peeking out over the houses and trees. The fact that our living room windows face north also means that we get the midnight sun streaming into the living area in summer, which feels rather magical, and I'd imagine we will also have rather fantastic views of the northern lights over the mountains in winter.

I only got to live in this wonderful apartment for a week before I left for my first stint of fieldwork in northern Troms and Finnmark with my supervisor, and a constantly changing international group of geologists. Northern Norway is an absolutely spectacular place (see previous posts for more details and photos), and I learned so much during those three weeks that that most nights I went to bed feeling like my head was about to explode. It was, however, a very different kind of fieldwork compared to what I am used to. There was significantly more luxury (from tent in Namibia, to "hytte" with a dishwasher in Norway), and it felt more like a geotourism and sampling trip than the field mapping-type fieldwork I am more used to. After 3 really good, but very tiring weeks of this I had 3 days back in Tromsø to recover, do washing, fetch my hire car, and book accommodation, before heading back up north for more fieldwork, this time on my own for what was supposed to be 3 weeks. Åke joined me as a slightly over-qualified field assistant for the first week, which thankfully softened the blow of suddenly having to do fieldwork completely independently. Several days after I dropped him at Alta airport, and at the point where I was just getting used to being on my own, I got very sick and had my first taste of the Norwegian health care system, 300 km from anyone I knew. Fun! As it turns out, the system is pretty good, and my entire 5-day hospital stay was completely free. Yay for first world health care!

All in all, it's been a pretty action-packed 3 months; I taught myself to drive on the right hand side of the road (including the weird give-way to cars coming from the right rule), which after doing so for the last 2 weeks, I have to admit, now feels like the correct side of the road. Shifting gear with your right hand, if you're right handed, really does make a whole lot more sense! I've immersed myself in my PhD, and after doing lots of reading and a month of fieldwork I still think it's a fantastic project (thankfully!). And after my hospital ordeal, which dragged me sharply into reality, the feeling that I was on an extended holiday and would at some point go back to Cape Town, has disappeared, and I have come away with a very strong sense that I live here and that Tromsø is home, at least for the next 3 years and 9 months.

Fieldwork and Fever

The trip started out well. Having already done 3 weeks of fieldwork this summer, this was the second half of my time in northern Troms and Finnmark, I was already somewhat in the fieldwork frame of mind, and I was lucky enough to have Åke along as my field assistant (at least for the first week). We spent that week hiking around, and mapping Arnøya, an island northeast of Tromsø. It was fantastic, the weather was amazing, the views were spectacular, and we got some really good geology done. Here are some pictures:

Top left and right: Pretty views. Middle left: Giant kyanite crystals. Middle right: Squishy, foldy carbonate. Bottom left: A pretty pool. Bottom right: Yes, that does say 27˚C, in the Arctic! It probably overestimated a bit, but still a warm day at 70˚N.

Unfortunately it had to come to an end, and I dropped Åke off at Alta airport so he could fly off to go run 250 km in Iceland over the following week. We spent a day driving to Alta, said goodbye, and I moved to Storekorsnes (an hour's drive north of Alta) to begin my first fieldwork on my own. I was staying in an old, empty school, partially converted into accommodation, usually used by workmen and fishermen. I say partially converted because it was basically still a school with some bunk beds in classrooms. Much of the school equipment was still there, black boards still in the rooms, and with school desks shoved away in one classroom. The school hall still equipped with a stage curtain, and the basins in the bathrooms so low down that washing my knees would have been easier than washing my hands. All in all it felt like a good setting for a horror story. My first night there was on my own, and then I was joined by a dutch couple, a pair of documentary film makers, who, ironically, were researching a book about a dutch geology PhD student who did fieldwork in northern Norway in the 1960's. They were good to talk to, and stayed for two nights, and for those two days I spent my days out mapping, getting used to doing fieldwork alone, and in general appreciating the fantastic weather.

Gorgeous evenings (actually these were taken in the middle of the night) at Storekorsnes.

Then I got very very ill. Yes, an African, who's been exposed to all sorts of weird African diseases, got bested by a bug in Norway! I hadn't been feeling 100% for 2 days, however when I got sick properly I got really bad very fast. My fever started at about 10pm, and by 12am I had more back pain than I have ever felt, and a fever so high I was hallucinating. I couldn't walk for periods of time, and my vision got so blurry I struggled to see. The hallucinations were actually rather beautiful, swirling rainbow colours floating around my room, and if I hadn't been so scared, or in so much pain, I would've rather enjoyed them. For the next 2 days my back was incredibly painful and my fever was high, but never got as high as that first night, although I was definitely not capable of driving myself anywhere. I also couldn't eat anything. However, I naively thought that if I took enough vitamins, drank enough water, and lay in bed, I'd get better. I hate antibiotics and am not a fan of doctors, and I when I am ill (which is very seldom), I usually fight it off on my own. I also had no idea how the health system worked here, was apprehensive about dealing with a foreign hospital and doctors, and didn't feel capable of driving the hour to Alta. So when I though I was feeling a bit better, I got in my car and drove 20 km to Kviby, a settlement with the nearest shop, and bought myself a lot of paracetamol and a thermometer. That was a very terrifying drive, and involved a lot of pulling over just to breathe and take breaks. When I measured my temperature for the first time I was shocked to discover that it was 40˚C, and that was when I was feeling better! I shudder to think how high it was previously!

I spent that afternoon and night in a haze of paracetamol-goodness, feeling much better, and under the delusion that I was on the mend. However the next morning, I had developed a new symptom, and could consequently not keep any water down. That's when I decided that it was time to go to hospital. I didn't need to add dehydration to my list of woes! I dosed up on paracetamol and drove myself to Alta, where I spent a good half an hour trying to figure out what part of the hospital I needed to be in. On receiving my blood test results, the nurse gave me a very worried look, told me my blood was "bad", and immediately put me on a IV drip (a first for me!). The doctor, who didn't speak much english, poked and prodded at me for a bit, silently, and promptly told me "you stay night.". I asked a nurse what was wrong, the response to which was "I think you have a bad kidney infection". I got an IV bag of antibiotics and moved to the ward for the night, the first night I would ever spend in a hospital since I was born! The relief of finally not having to worry about looking after myself for the first time in what felt like ages made me feel a little better, and for the first time I admitted to myself how sick I really was.

The next morning, a nurse looked very worried when my temperature was 40.3˚C, and immediately called the doctor who examined me, told me (via a translating nurse), that the antibiotics should have brought my temperature down to normal in the night, and that they would probably have to send me to Hammerfest (2 hours drive away), where there was an actual hospital (Alta hospital is actually just a big clinic) that could perform more rigorous tests. They took my blood, and disappeared for several hours. Luckily the blood tests came back showing just enough improvement that the doctor decided I could stay in Alta, but needed to remain in hospital for several more days, under observation, and receiving antibiotics via IV. I should have been bored, given that I left all my books and laptop back at the school, however I spent a lot of time sleeping, and didn't really notice their absence.

One of the funny things though was that I was probably the only person in the ward under the age of 65, and most were at least 70. The older generation here often don't speak much english, and sometimes none whatsoever. However, many of the old people, who seemed to have been there for a long time, and who were used to all the routines, were very curious about my presence, and made several attempts to speak to me. One woman in particular was quite persistent, and would grab my hand and earnestly start speaking norwegian to me. When I told her "jeg forstår ikke", she would just get more insistent, hold my hand tighter, and speak faster norwegian more seriously. Thank heavens for the nurses rescuing me!

A second very funny (in hindsight!) incident that happened was that I was mistaken for a mental patient. On the third day of my stay it was decided that I was okay enough to make a short trip to my car to fetch a bag I had packed with toiletries and some clothes. A trainee nurse showed me out of the hospital, and then left me to fetch my stuff on my own. On trying to get back into the hospital I discovered that the door she'd shown me out of was locked, and I realised I didn't know how to get back into the hospital. All the signs are in Norwegian and so it is difficult to tell which are doors for the public and which are not. Also, my brain was very very foggy, and after having a fever for so long, my thoughts were all quite confused. I ended up going in through the sliding doors at the ambulance entrance, half aware that I probably wasn't supposed to use those. A nurse therefore found me in the emergency ambulance area, slightly confused, in a hospital gown and Nike's, holding a backpack. She immediately asked me if I was lost, and where I was supposed to be, however when I told her "the ward", we had a bit of a language issue, and she didn't understand what I meant by that, and promptly asked "are you a mental patient? do you belong in psychiatric?". After trying to convince here I was not, which I don't think worked very well because I started trying to describe, rather incoherently, what a ward was to her (I think I described it as "the place with lots of nurses and beds"), she dragged me off to a computer where she could look me up on the hospital system to work out where I belonged. It turns out a ward is called a "sykestua" in Norwegian. That's definitely something I'll never forget!

Eventually, my fever disappeared 4 days after being admitted to hospital and starting antibiotics, and the doctor decided I could go home. He (via a nurse) explained to me that when I arrived I had been extremely sick (something no one told me at the time), that he was pretty sure I had a severe kidney infection (something that can lead to fatal complications), however couldn't confirm because they didn't have the facilities to test it, but that my blood CRP level (which goes up when you have an infection) was 320 when I was admitted (it's supposed to be 10!). When they released me it was at 166. Now I am doing much better. I still have a way to go, and more antibiotics than I have ever seen in one place to take over the next 10 days. Two friends drove the 6-7hrs up from Tromsø to fetch me and my rental car, for which I am eternally grateful. Thank you so much Tim and Annfrid (and Mary the dog)! After going through all of that alone, and 300km from anyone I know, it was such a relief to see familiar faces.

All in all it was a rather unpleasant experience, but it showed me how strong I am on my own, and I know now what I am capable of dealing with, with very little support. I guess what doesn't kill me makes me stronger!