New Year's Eve (but not in Ethiopia, where New Years is in September)

Our last day before beginning work at the hospital tomorrow, and quite a remarkable day.  Walked to Rick's house in the morning and we drove, with three of his kids, to the Sheraton to pick up Jeff Medoff, his wife Debbie, their daughter Jenna.  They have been touring  Ethiopia for the past week and had rented a van for the day to go hiking with us in the Entoto mountains outside Addis. Jeff is a gastroenterologist in Greensboro, N.C. and went to college with Rick at Middlebury.



On the way we stopped at Mother Theresa's Mission.  The head nun immediately took me to see a patient with AIDS who was having some peculiar symptoms.  Rick then took everyone on a tour of the entire Mission in the course of which we were stopped repeatedly by patients who needed his attention.

After considerable time there we climbed into the van for the 30' ride to Entoto, a church high in the mountains outside Addis with an adjacent tiny village.  We hiked 3 miles through the forest playing with children along the way, to an escarpment overlooking a small village known for its healing springs.

We rested, shared snacks, played soccer and other improvised games with children living in remote shacks in the woods.  Then hiked back stopping along the way to observe copulating sheep, women filling their 50# water jugs with water from a mountain spring, play soccer with a large group of children tending their goats, sheep and cattle high up in the mountains.

Returned to Addis and the three of us (myself and two students) went to dinner at a Turkish restaurant with Rick.

Tomorrow Tsega (one of our former residents, now a neurosurgical attending) will pick us up at 7:30 for morning report beginning at 8.  Am anxious to see their new operating rooms which were undergoing construction for 3 years.  We used to have surgery 2 days a week.  Now with 42 residents (the most popular residency program in the country) they have operating rooms 5 days a week at the Black Lion (Tikur Anbessa) and also cover four other hospitals.  It has now grown to be a huge program.

Day 4

We all slept and finally felt recovered from our jet lag.  Arose late and ready for the students to experience a minibus for the first time.

  Actually 2 minibuses to get to the campus of the Addis Ababa University where there is an ethnographic museum.  The campus is the former palace of Haile Selassie.  Lovely campus, an oasis in the city with palm trees, and other exotic flora.  Weather in Addis this time of year is ideal.  Bright blue sky all day, every day, never rains and 75 during the day; cool 45 at night.

After that we waked to the National Museum,, home of Lucy, the oldest known hominid, now 3.2 million years old.

Minibus back to our guest house.  Electricity in our neighborhood has been out for 12 hours,  but the Washington Hotel across the street has an emergency generator and therefore available wifi. 

If we can figure out how to get there, we will likely go hiking in the Entoto mountains just outside of Addis tomorrow, before work begins on Monday.

Day 3

Arrived in Addis after an uneventful, albeit long flight of 13 hours.  I am usually the first one off the plane and first in line for a “Visa on arrival”.  However, 3 flights arrived essentially simultaneously and I was behind 200 people in line.  2 hours later I claimed my suitcase with $50K of equipment and anxiously approached customs where they had detained me a few years ago and tried to confiscate the equipment.  However, this time I walked casually for the exit, making pleasant eye contact with the customs official, and emerged unscathed with equipment intact.

One of my former residents, Tsega, now an attending, met us at the airport and took us to our guest house.  Plan was to try to stay awake, take a nap and go to Rick’s for Shabbat.  We walked just under a mile to the Telecom office for a SIM card and to activate phone service,  There 6 desks, 5 with people doing meaningless work and one person doing phone activations,   10’ or so for each person.  We were at least 15 or 20 in line.  I was next to a wonderful Ugandan fellow, now working as a software engineer in South Africa.  He was becoming increasingly restless as I was fighting fatigue and trying to stay calm.  We advanced to 5th in line when suddenly all employees exited for lunch.  Exhausted we walked somewhere for lunch and decided to return to Telecom, but for no more than 30’  They were still at lunch after 1 1/2 hours, but slowly returned.  At this point we got a little aggressive, advanced to the front of the line and finally emerged with Ethiopian phone service.

Shabbat at Rick’s was remarkable.  Wonderful people from all over.  A family from Toronto via Dallas just returning from safari in Kenya.  A fellow from San Francisco who had come here from Europe when his 1 year visitor visa expired.  Now in Ethiopia just handing out.  Michael O’malley, a former attorney from Chicago now living in Croatia, and volunteering at Mother Theresa’s here in Addis massaging backs of the poor and ill, walking with them, and just doing something different in life.  TThere were probably 30 or more in all, including six children leaving for Ghana tomorrow with 18 other children for 3-9 months of traction, then incredibly complex spine surgery for some of the worst scoliosis that one can imagine.  Rick has raised $22K for each child for their surgery (yes a total of $530,000)!   One child walked 300 miles in 8 days from Gojam to get here in time for his surgery.  He could not afford the $20 bus fare.

Here we go again

Thursday, December 27.  En route to Addis

On my way back to Addis Ababa for my ninth year in Ethiopia.  Needed to skip last year as there was some ethnic strife which I had not known to exist in the past,  There would have been no problem working in Addis, but i like to travel and explore on weekends and the government was not allowing any travel into or out of the city, and internet was unpredictably and inconsistently unavailable with more than the usual amount of censoring of email, even when it was possible to do so.

Addis has been dramatically transformed in the past 10 years with literally hundreds of 10 and 15 story buildings replacing slums.  For the people living in the slums that was the only life they had ever known and they resented being sent from their city to newly constructed undistinguished high rises on the periphery.  Furthermore, the land on which these new buildings were constructed was land belonging to the Oromio people, the largest single ethnic group in the country with their own distinctive language and culture,  Essentially all land in the nation is owned by the government, but to these people it had been their land for at least decades and likely centuries. 

While Amharic is the official language of the country, it only spoken by 45% of the population.  There are at least 87 languages spoken in this country of approximately 100 million people, and Oromo is the most common other than Amharic.

This year is different. While there are still occasional brief outburst of conflict, it is my understanding that government restrictions have, for the most part, been lifted.

I have with me, for the first time, two pre-med junior college students from Rockhurst University, Daniel and Sierra.  Neither has ever been out of the country before.

Yesterday we flew from Kansas City to Toronto with delays of the plane and our van pickup at the airport.  Arrived at our hotel just as the restaurant was closing, so ordered in pizza which we finally ate at midnight.

Boarding Ethiopian Airlines today in Toronto was much less eventful.  There is a nine hour time difference so we left at 10:45 am., but will be arriving in Addis at 7a.m. local time.  Traveling during the day is not a good idea on a trip abroad, but that is the only schedule of Ethiopian, the only non-stop flying to Addis.