Wednesday

After morning conference I elected to make rounds with the residents on all the neurosurgery patients.  I like to do this at least once a week.  We saw probably 30 or more adults and another 15 children.  A neurosurgical museum all in one morning.  Conditions I never saw in 40 years of practice and other more mundane problems but taken to the extreme.

Surgery today was a giant acoustic neuroma and a thus far undiagnosed huge tumor in a 40 year old woman (insert photos)

Waited for a minibus, but in the fashion of the Shanghai subway, locals kept edging us out so we took a taxi back to our guest house.  There is a new cafe practically on our door step, “Step Up” that turned out to be our best lunch yet.   A huge tray of Lasagna and drink for $3.50,

Had been talking for the last few days with Camilla, an academic from Sweden who comes to Ethiopia once or twice a year and is doing research at ASU (Addis Ababa University) having something to do with the “greening” of Ethiopia; i.e. efforts at environmental improvement. We invited her to join us for dinner and we decided to try a different restaurant.

Turns out that a 5 minute walk from our hotel are three outstanding spots: 1) Le Grand Reve; a Belgian restaurant where we actually had an excellent dinner.

Dinner at Le Grand Reve

2) Immediately next door to it is a new modern casual place, Savoy, where we had some gelato after dinner. 3) Just around the corner is perhaps the fanciest restaurant I have seen in Addis (not including the many new westernized hotels), Attica. An Italian restaurant that gets outstanding reviews. In the course of findings these I have also learned about “Five Loaves” that i am going to try next week.  In summary, a lot of my previously favorite restaurants have been closed, but some new wonderful restaurants have opened.

Addis has been undergoing enormous change in the past five years.  You cannot go anywhere, look around you, without seeing at least 3 new skyscrapers under construction.  There are at least 30 new hotels just in the last few years.