Hello there,

 I am a second year medical student at the university of glasgow, and I was curios, if there is any chance to do any intercalated degrees abroad, and if there are any universities, that enable UK medical students to have a intercal in their uni?

I arrived last week in Gudulur, in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu, India.

The district is home to around 28,000 adivasi or indiginous tribal people, who populated the area's forests as hunter gathers long before the British arrived to plant tea in the days of the Raj. Many were displaced from their original areas by settlers and government leglislation and are among the poorest groups in this state.

ASHWINI (www.ashwini.org) was set up in the late 1980s as a health care system for the adivasi population, which is made up of diverse ethnic groups. The programme consists of 8 rural centres and one 20 bed hospital which is staffed mainly by adivasi staff who have been trained as nurses, accountants, administrators and health 'guides' working in the villages.

This is my final reflection on my time here and before I begin I would like to say that I have really grown to love South Africa, and Cape Town in particular. I had heard so much from so many people, which is what made me want to come here in the 1st place; and I have not been disappointed. All the people had good and bad things to say, but always in the end there was a deep love of the experience they had had, and this is not just people doing research but a huge variety of people; medics working in hospitals, backpackers travelling into Africa, climbers on road-trips, people visiting relations, medics working with AIDS orphans and someone on a Christian ship bringing aid to rural areas. This huge variety of people had a range of experiences, some of which overlapped, but all very diverse. I guess this is a reflection of the kind of country that South Africa is.

Well, another 24hrs of the strangest stuff you could believe, but I am getting used to that now.

I am sitting in a church listening to the most amazing mix of hymms and traditional African music whilst around me weep and cry the hysteric masses of the township. I am sitting near to my friends, the only white faces in the crowd. I also notice that I am one of the only men in the Church, mostly because of the hangovers preventing them from getting here. I also know that some of the boys in the choir, who dressed in full Catholic costumes, were the week before bragging to me about their initiation ceremonies. Hardcore Christians and hardcore Xhosa. Another thing I notice is that the Church is the only building around here to have plumbing and electricity, but my whining about the Church can be saved for another day.

A little odd, but still pretty cool. I had gone to the internet café to submit my last article, and check a few emails. I had been out in the morning, so had a shower and grabbed a T-shirt and headed down.

So I was sitting there, pretty happy in my own little electronic world when a woman asked me what I had to do with loveLife. Now I had pulled on my loveLife T-shirt as it was lying there, I hadn’t worn it for any purpose. So I got chatting to her, she worked for loveLife and had for a while. So we talked about HIV/AIDS, challenges that needed facing, positives and negatives of loveLife. Then I found out she was a paediatrician, so I talked about medical careers, and how she had ended up working for loveLife. It was then I found out that she used to work for the UN, and had at one point worked for Kofi Annan. Pretty cool.

South Africa is a country divided, well more shattered. That is broken into hundreds of fragments each one unique. This is a great strength, as it means that you can see and do so much here. There are two ocean eco systems where you can surf, SCUBA or chill on the beach. There is city life equal to any in Britain with a huge divide between rich and poor. There are mountains teeming with wildlife, but home to huge townships nestled close to fruit plantations.

I could go on and on about all the things to do here, but this would read like a brochure. The saddest thing about this diversity is that is never seen as a strength, there is always conflict. South Africa is at war with itself. Okay, a war of culture and class, but still a war. The groups that exist here are totally out of communication with each other, only looking inward.

The bin-men are out, which means there are loads and loads of tramps. Not quite like a morning bin-round in Britain. They flock around the trucks like flies, all carrying all their possessions in shopping trolleys. Now I am all for recycling, and it is pretty cool that these guys manage to find a use for all this stuff that has been thrown away, but the way they get their stuff is unbelievable.

They wait until the bin-men have finished loading up the truck and all the rubbish is the back. Then they hop on, scavenge what they can, throwing it out of the back of the truck, then before the compressor comes down and the truck drives off they leap down. So it is a pretty dangerous occupation for two reasons. One, they could get squashed to death or run over by the truck. Two, they then have to fight with the rest of the homeless guys for what they have chucked out.

Most of the time I feel really lucky to be a medical student in Britain. Most of the time it is challenging in lots of ways, professionally and personally. It is not a static career path with lots of opportunities to work and travel together, and has hundreds different facets each one suiting different types of people. But sometimes I get a little fed up with it all. The early starts, the revision at exam time (especially OSCEs) and the sneers of other students when you mention the word ‘medic’.

The other evening I was however humbled into silence, which is something that rarely happens due to my opinions on just about anything and everything. The guy I was talking to is a medical student, of my age and at the same point in his medical training. Instead of being from the British medical system, he had lived all his life and was now being trained in Zimbabwe.

Exploring G8 proposals for debt relief - The report highlights the current G8 proposals for debt relief, but makes it clear that much more is needed. In particular, it draws attention to the following issues: >Debts must be cancelled as a matter of justice: creditors must accept their share of responsibility in creating the current debt crisis, and cancel debts on this basis. Cancellation must be available to all countries that need it: our analysis of the financing required to meet the Millennium Development Goals [Millenium Development Goals (Eldis)]

“Apartheid was a good thing?” I was almost dumbstruck. The guy I was talking too was a black Ethiopian who was in town for a few days before a conference started. The conference was about professional exchanges within Africa, for skill sharing. These included Dr's, nurses, lawyers, teachers and a whole range of other occupations. This was because it was felt that African countries faced a whole range of problems, and some countries tackled problems differently, leading to some successes and some failures. A good example of this, he had told me earlier was Uganda’s relatively low AIDS rates. But what he was talking about now was the benefit of an apartheid system.