Blood banks

Thanks to Globalisation, you can travel across the world, and still sometimes feel like you never left home. You expect to feel like you're a world away, but a lot of things are, disappointingly, the same. The same shops, cars, foods, programs, etc. We even have a Nando's less than 1km away from our apartment, for God's sake.

But every so often, if you're lucky, you'll experience something that will remind you that you're not in Kansas anymore.

I had one of those moments this morning at our bank. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but in Joburg, if you're about to walk into a bank, and the door is flung open from the inside by bank employees running outside, you're quite likely to beat a hasty retreat. I was in Northgate once when bank robbers were fleeing FNB and shooting up the place, and when the bank staff started to run, no one hung around to question why. They ran too.

So, when two of the RBC staff members charged the door, I smugly thought what all patriotic South Africans think when they're overseas and shit happens: "Aha! Banks don't only get robbed in SA, they get robbed everywhere! So much for South Africa being dangerous!" and then I rushed inside hoping to experience my first Canadian bank robbery.

I was most disappointed to not find any guys wearing balaclavas and waving guns while yelling, "Get the cash oot or the moose gets it- and don't bother with none of them loonies and toonies!"

Instead, I found a really old lady, sitting on a chair... bleeding from her big toe. It looked like she'd stubbed it on the bank door - silly old goose.

"What a bunch of sissies the tellers are here," I thought. All running at the sight of blood. A second later, I saw that they'd actually rushed next door to the dentist to get an emergency first aid kit. They returned and then started to bandage the old lady's toe up.

Now here was the first mind fuck. They held her bleeding toe, cleaned it, got bled on more and never once mentioned wearing gloves or not touching blood. Now guys, as many of you know, we looked after a few HIV positive kids in our time in South Africa. And the ignorance of the toss fucks who made an issue of this was enough to push me over the edge. I'd hear things like, "Now Shnookums, don't let that little black girl drink from your juice box or you can get AIDS."

Or, "I just wiped your little girl's nose. Can I get the HIV virus from that? Should I go get tested?"

And don't get me started about the hysteria that the sight of a drop of blood could cause.The fact that the virus dies when it comes into contact with air was a concept more difficult to comprehend than quantum physics to most of these people, and I've been offered latex gloves more times than I count. Once even when I went to pick up a crying HIV positive baby. WTF people?

And yet here were these Canadians, touching blood with their bare hands, and not looking at the bleeding person like their blood was about to murder them.

Just when I thought my levels of astonishment could not reach any higher, up pulled an ambulance and out rushed two paramedics. To tend to a clumsy old lady and her injured toe. And they'd arrived within minutes of the bank manager calling them.

Well, slap me silly and call me gobsmacked. That's pretty damn impressive.

Mind you, what's also impressive is that a South African Tannie in Krugersdorp in the same boat would just have pulled out some Klippies from her bag, chugged it back for the pain, and damn well gotten on with it without all the damn fuss.


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