Saturday, January 10: Lunch with Tadios

My friend Tadios,who I call #1 (since he was the first neurosurgeon in Ethiopia, and for many years the only one), invited me to come to lunch at 1:00 today.

Tadios and his wife

  One of the other neurosurgeons was to pick me up.  With horrendous traffic, and quite a long distance, it took nearly one hour to get to his house.

In the seven years I have known him, and we are good friends, I have never been invited to his house.  Ostensibly it was to meet three of his daughters who are doctors and students in the U.S. who are visiting.  

We entered through an imposing gate to the yard of a very large home with white tents and perhaps 150 chairs around festive white tables. 

All except 2nd from left are daughters; 1 and 3 are twins

Turns out his only son was married a few months ago.  With his daughters home, he wanted to have a large reception for family and friends.  A buffet of typical Ethiopian celebratory food, wine and other drinks and lots of people.  Not a routine lunch.

I had an email from one of the residents who just finished the program on Dec 31.  He is  on vacation for two months (typical after they finish the program) and heard I was in town.  I arranged to meet him for dinner tonite, and he arrived with another of his colleagues who also just finished.  These are two wonderful doctors who Lynn also met in China when we were on a bicycle trip there in April;  they were in China for one month to attend a conference and numerous other neurosurgical related activities.  It was great to see them once again and we talked for quite a while.  In Ethiopian restaurants they will never bring the bill until you ask for it and it is quite typical to linger for several hours after dinner.