This rainy morning, the ILoveBoobies team was headed for the town of Stellenbosch. On Helshoogte pass were two venues who asked us to do breast screenings for them at their locations. The one is a cute little restaurant and coffee shop called Le Pommier, and the other was a wine estate called Thelema. With relatively small teams of women working at each location, we were able to do both on the same day. In the morning, we headed to Le Pommier, which was being pelted by rain and strong winds by the time we got there. After making contact with the manager there and figuring out where to set up our screening facility, they were kind enough to give us a cup of coffee to warm us up. I took to setting up our screening gazebo, to give the ladies privacy while being examined. We then got to screening, with our nurse, Gail welcoming each lady before doing a thorough examination for each of them. We highly encourage each woman to take her own breast health into her own hands, by teaching the ladies how to examine themselves and what the warning signs of breast cancer are. At about lunch time, we had checked all 13 of their staff on site. After the examinations, each woman is offered one of the bras that ILoveBoobies has been collecting to give out at our screenings. After thanking the staff for attending and the managers for letting us use their venue and staff, we packed up and left for the next venue, which was just down the road.

Thelema was a slightly harder place to find than Le Pommier. Situated off the main Helshoogte road, Gail and I had to drive a short way in the pouring rain, on a dirt road. The place was pretty, despite the downpour. I went inside to meet the manager there to figure out where would be the best place to set up. As I was walking through, a number of the ladies gave me anxious looks. I turned to them and told them I wouldn’t be doing the examinations, and that a nurse was on site to do those, and that seemed to put them more at ease. The manager showed me the options, and we chose to set up in their tea room; a central location that everyone knows and where they are comfortable.  Some of the ladies did opt to not have an examination originally, stating that they would rather not know. But after a little convincing, that with early detection, cancer was beatable and would be a much bigger issue if left alone, most of the ladies who opted out decided to join the screening. Handing out bras also didn’t hurt! The nervous ones came out saying that the process wasn’t as bad as they thought it was going to be. We checked the 13 Thelema women on site and then packed up for the day. It was a bit of a smaller screening day, but considering the weather, it was a good turn out. On Wednesday the 10th, we have a screening in KZN, and we will continue to do breast examinations for places around the country.