Road Rules

Despite ridiculously high car prices due to import taxes, Garrett and I broke down and bought a car a couple months back.  We bought a 1992 Suzuki Vitara that had been nicely dressed up by the previous owners in a Mercedes costume.

While it hurt to shell out the money upfront, I think it was a good investment (and as long as they don't drop the import tax we expect to be able to get our money back).  The car has allowed us to take a few trips outside of Addis and now provides me with daily transportation to and from the hospital, which is about a 30-40 minute commute depending on traffic.  It has not been as stressful as we thought it might be.  There is only one group of intersections where traffic regularly gets backed up.

At this intersection, I try to do my best to relax and listen to my podcast or music and not get too irate at the taxis or drivers that are trying to make 5 lanes out of 3 then cutting back in front of me.  Some days I am more successful than others.

In fact, before today, I would have said that there are no traffic rules in Ethiopia.  If you want to creae lanes, turn left from the right lane, drive the wrong way down the street or go around a traffic circle backwards, you are free.  Unfortunately, it seems the one area they really stick to their guns is the new No U-turn signs on Bole Road.  Good news, the fine is only about $7.50.  Bad news, what they lack in terms of monetary penalty they make up for in inconvenience.  Forget online or mail-in payments, payment can only be made at one traffic office in town.  And only after that is paid can I retrieve my confiscated driver's license, which of course will be at a different office.  Although to be fair, I cannot complain too much since after returning home, I just gave money to Tsegaw to sort it all out tomorrow.  And despite the frustration, I have to begrudgingly appreciate that the police followed the law strictly without any of the "wiggle room" that you often encounter in southern Africa.

Krempt Is Upon Us

Krempt is one of my new favorite Amharic words.  It is the local name for the rainy season that lasts from June until August.   I don't think it would be considered an onomatopoeia (although English was never my strongest subject), but the one word for me seems to encompass every description I have heard of the rainy season as cold, damp, muddy and a bit depressing.

That being said, the first few weeks have not been as horrible as the anticipation and descriptions.  While there have been some heavy downpours and rain almost every day, there have also been dry and even sunny times during most days.  If the downpours increase in frequency and length though I can see how things might get miserable quickly.  Below is a picture of the access road/river to the hospital where I work after only a brief heavy rain. We will see how it is holding up by the end of August.

Luckily, it seems our landlord has successfully fixed the indoor water feature we had in front of our fireplace for the last few weeks.  Every day we came home with our fingers crossed that the ceiling tiles had not fallen and converted our living room into an indoor swimming pool.

Now we just need to buy some wood for the fire place and we are ready to wait out our first krempt (at at least until we get to escape in August for our trip home).

A Little Party Never Killed Nobody

Garrett and I have decided we want to try to entertain at our place at least once every couple weeks.  It has been more difficult since I have started working, but so far we have managed to meet this goal.

The last two gatherings included:

1. Barbecue on the Downfall of the Derg Day, the Marxist regime that ended in 1991. We found out the day before that it was a holiday so it was a very last minute decision to have the party.  Garrett insisted that we needed a tent, which I initially thought was a bit extreme, but for $30, including delivery, set up and take down, how could you refuse a circus tent in your yard.   It was the perfect setting for our new Ethiopian tiki torches and my imported World Market lanterns.  Next time we will have to look into hiring the Addis Ababa circus.

2.  A brunch, inspired by Philadelphia Cream Cheese I found at the store, complete with a delicious egg scramble, pancakes, homemade bagels, fruit salad and an assortment of pork products, imported by our Irish friend Peter.  It took us all day to recover from that food coma.

Working 9 to 5 (and Saturday mornings)

I apologize for the long break in posting.  Gary and Sherry recently gave me an incentive to start again, so here goes.   We have a couple of months to catch up on so hopefully there should be a few more posts coming out over the next week or so.

The biggest news since my last post is that I am officially employed!  I am about to complete my first month at Bethel Teaching Hospital.  Unfortunately, I have failed to take any pictures so stay tuned.  Everyone from support staff to nurses to doctors have been really welcoming and while I have been working long hours, it has been great to get back into clinical practice.  I am hopeful that as I get used to the systems here that I will be able to get myself out of the hospital at more reasonable times.  Currently, I am primarily doing adult inpatient medicine.   It has been a great refresher considering I did very little adult medicine while in Swaziland.  In addition to the clinical responsibilties, I have also been named a visiting assistant professor for the medical school.  The first year clinical students started a couple weeks ago and we are just completing a short course in basic history taking and physical exam.  Next week they will start on their hospital rotations.

So far the thing that has made the biggest impression on me in my short tenure is the family support.  It is unlike anything I have experienced in the US or Swaziland.  In the US, you often had one, maybe two, visitors at a time and the visits were short.  In Swaziland, there would be a caretaker, often a female member of the family, who was there 24 hours.  In Ethiopia, every patient is surrounded by family from morning until night, including young and old, men and women.  It is not unusual to have to ask 5-6 people to leave the room so you can even get close to the patient.  Even when the patients have been hospitalized for weeks or months, there is not a day where they do not have multiple people at their bedside.  It is quite a testimony to the importance the culture places on family.

Fasting

Fasting, or self-restrictions, seem to be a common element among all religions.  The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is no exception.  In fact, it has a total of 250 days a year, which are supposed to be fasting, including every Wednesday and Friday. Currently, we are in the middle of a 55 day fast for Lent.  For the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, fast generally implies not eating anything before 3 pm and complete abstention from meat, fats, eggs and dairy products, basically a vegan diet.  

This seems, from my limited exposure, to be practiced widely and faithfully.  I have stuck my foot in my mouth a few times making what would seem to be very tempting offers, such as coca-cola before noon or birthday cake, only to be reminded of the fast.  This is such a large part of the culture that every restaurant has noted on the menu fasting and non-fasting dishes.  Luckily for Ethiopians, injera is acceptable during fasts!

House Warmed and Ready for Visitors

We have worked hard over the last two months to get our house organized and have finally reached a point where we feel like we can start to entertain again.  We have had a couple of dinner parties and last saturday we had our official house warming party.  Over the course of about 12 hours, we had about 30 new and old friends join us to celebrate our new home.  Tsegaw had the brilliant idea to rent tables and chairs.  So for less than $10, we got tables and chairs that we were able to set up in the lawn and enjoy the garden.  Now, we are getting ready to welcome our first official guest, Laura Plattner, a friend from Swaziland, who arrives tomorrow.  Book your trip now before it fills up!

Here is a quick tour of our nearly furnished house.

Our front patio now with grill and Garrett's great Mozambican chairs.

 Our living room with our Chinese couches, my little Baobab Batik chair and our Habesha coffee table.  This was made to order and a steal.  I did not even bargain, his first price was so reasonable.

The house was obviously built in the seventies so has a lot of character with its dark lacquered brick wall and lighting fixtures.  All of these little touches have become more endearing as this has become our home.

We found a young man, Nebiyou, in Piazza who crafted the dining room table for us.

We visited a number of different shops including one in a mud and stone workshop.  Where we saw first hand that all of this furniture is constructed with hand tools.  

Nebiyou was the nicest though and gave us the best price.  This has paid off for him as well because he did such a nice job and delivered on time that we have not only used him again, but gotten him other ex-pat business. 

Another Nebiyou creation are the cabinets below, which gave us much needed counter and drawer space.  We are still not sure what to do with that back corner, but we are discussing putting a traditional Ethiopian coffee table and chairs there. 

I am enjoying our new gas stove.  I have even gotten use to the big gas canister standing directly next to it.  It looks a bit excessive with six burners and a large oven, but the other ovens were tiny.  It was only after getting it home and having the delivery man run through the features with me, that I realized there is a rotating spit in the oven.  Who even knew this was a possibility?  Can't I just have another wire rack?  Guess we have some experimenting to do.

 Our bed and side tables were also made by Nebiyou.  It is the largest bed I have ever owned.  Garrett's feet don't even hang off the end.

 For our guest room, we ordered a bamboo bed.  This was our only bad experience with a carpenter.  It required multiple days of me calling and almost two weeks after his initial deadline for us to have the bed and both bedside tables.  The bed is fine, but the bedside tables are pretty crap and not at all what we agreed upon.  They were supposed to match the weaving in the bed and have a door below the drawer.  I paid him because I was ready to be done with him, but I kicked myself for it later.  We were happy to be able to get our mattress off the floor and it served us well until we got our new bed.

 Finally, our game room, which may some day be an office.

The house still needs some finishing touches, like hanging pictures on the walls and finding duvets for the beds, but it is already home!

Keeping Me on My Toes

I set out today to buy a blanket for our guest bed and a few more adapters for our electrical sockets.  This wasn't my first rodeo so I strode off confidently knowing exactly where I was going.  Only, since my last visit to this neighborhood, they had torn down an entire row of shops.  Because there were some stores already opened behind the original stores, it took me almost a entire block to realize that this large scale demolition had occurred.  I guess large piles of rubble on the side of the road no longer seem out of the ordinary so do not catch my attention.

This is a planned line on the light rail system that is currently under construction in Addis and scheduled to be completed in a couple of years.