In Ethiopia

(forgive poor ipod quality photo!) Toni walking along Old Airport Road, one of the main roads we live off of – you can also see this blue ‘minibus taxi,’ which is how we get around town. The fares are between 1-3 Ethiopian Birr, (so about 10 cents) and they go everywhere in the city, you just have to master a bit of Amharic to understand where in heavens name they are actually going… they’re on an informal system, with routes determined by landmarks and neighborhoods, street names are utterly ignored… needless to say we are still learning :)

We are living in a self-contained bungalow in the back of the house of Dr. Nardos Giorgis, an Ethiopian doctor who lives most of the year in Geneva, but keeps a house here for when she’s in town. Our bungalow has it’s own bathroom, with shower and toilet and hot water, and a nice double bed, desk and bookshelves filled with Nardos’ library. Nardos is away, so we share the house with two 20-something young women, Selaam and Zemzem. They come from the Guraghe region of Ethiopia, and are here in the city so they can go to school (and avoid early marriage). They look after the main house, and like to laugh at my and Toni’s poor attempts at speaking Amharic :) They’re utterly kind and helpful, and I’m so happy they’re here. They can help us practice the language, and we can feel a bit less isolated as two ferenji (foreigners) in a bungalow!

We arrived Wednesday, and I immediately started work at Black Lion Hospital, the main teaching hospital in Ethiopia, in the only cancer ward in the whole country of ca. 90 million inhabitants. It’s a small ward, just 1 radiotherapy room, 1 waiting room, and 1 consulting room. (Truly imagine what that means for such a large country!) With Dr. Nardos’ help, I’ve been granted a desk in the office space they have, in exchange I’ll help them where I can. It’s an amazing opportunity to be at the heart of Ethiopian healthcare, interacting face to face with doctors and patients and soak in as much as possible. Starting Monday I’m tasked as documentary filmmaker for the ward: the doctors want to raise funds to build a proper cancer centre in Addis, since thousands of patients come each month to this tiny ward, almost all in very late stages of cancer, so mostly receiving mere palliative care until they pass on. The patients are nearly all very poor, and have nowhere to stay when they arrive in the city. They sleep on the streets and are robbed and looked down upon: cervical cancer patients for example omit a strong odor, and they are easily cast aside. The centre would be a place where they could receive the dignified treatment human beings in suffering deserve… treatment that ideally would have come earlier so they wouldn’t have had to spend years in pain as the cancer slowly progressed. I’ll film and edit a short documentary, shoot photos and put together materials for distribution among potential funders abroad. Fingers crossed something can be done…

At the same time I’m conducting loads of interviews for my PhD research (with doctors, midwives, health auxiliaries, and many others…), starting Amharic lessons, getting settled in with Addis Ababa University, and trying to coordinate another project with the Gandhi Memorial Hospital, the main maternity centre in Addis. There are heaps of things to do, and I’m so happy Toni and I have so much time to do it. We feel like we’re truly settling in- meeting older friends we already knew, being introduced to others, establishing more connections and contacts and hopefully planting real roots in the country that we can return to later on… We both already have grander plans in mind for things we could do here on a longer-term basis… ah! We shall see :) In the meantime, I’ll write more stories I gather as work goes on. We’ve been here merely 4 days, and already the time has been so rich. Can you imagine what 10 months will bring? I mean, I had to start blogging again, right?

beijos,

joojie.