i have no idea what term week this is anymore. oxford? wha?

toni and i have officially one more day in ethiopia, fitting in all last minute appointments we can. i'm starting at 8am with the head of the Gandhi Memorial Hospital, a maternity hospital built in the late 1940s by indian missionaries. (cutting for stone!!) i'll then pay a visit to the Empress Zewditu Hospital up the road... in both cases i'm keen to see if any records remain at all on-site from the early days of operation, though i'd be frankly shocked if there were, since nothing really exists anywhere else... the military government which ran ethiopia for 2 decades after a coup in the 1970s were pretty systematic in their destructive mission, leaving the whole country with scattered archives at best. this means several things...

1. i completely understand why there is virtually no medical history written about ethiopia (as compared to nearly every other african nation), it's a diligent mission of detective work to piece together what happened pre-1976....

2. in addition to working through some files about a british-funded hospital (thankfully) housed in london, i may have to spend a great deal of time combing through archives in OSLO. can you believe it? norway of all places? (mom will totes visit me then. hehe) but their lutheran mission branch ran a host of hospitals and clinics in the southern region of ethiopia, and i talked to the guy today who personally took all the boxes and boxes of files out of the country once the military revolution occurred... so there they are, safely stored up in oslo. (ran.dom.)

3. aside from that, it'll be tons of oral histories. over lunch today with an ethiopian friend we found out he was born in one of the hospitals i'm looking at, so hurrah! i can interview his mother! and all her friends! toni and i sat over tea with richard and rita pankhurst yesterday (if you don't know who richard pankhurst is, DO google him - it was an amazing privilege) where for 2 hours they just sat and blurted out random old doctors, nurses, or missionaries that they knew who were around at that time that i could talk to.

anyway. research aside. yesterday after hopping off the minibus to come home, a young mother with her infant on her lap were begging for money on the side of the street. it is admittedly everywhere in addis, and i am constantly aware that these early maternity wards i'm researching have had so little to do with the majority of ethiopian women. the truth is that they were and still are for the elite, and are a real sign of privilege beyond anything else. (ok so these hospitals are now state-run and mostly for lower middle class, with wealthy women going to private korean clinics. but still. even the state-run are by no means serving all.) it's a strange and frustrating position to be in, to see so blatantly these two worlds. here i am in limetree, this comfortable cafe with $2 wheatgrass shots (and wifi), surrounded by such a small segment of such a massive country. the privilege is staggering to say the least.

so sigh! there you have it. a hugely productive week. lots learned, but many more questions and roads to discover than anything else. it's truly its own world, ethiopia - it's been lovely to be an observer of it all for the last 10 days...

much love to you all.
jooj.