Long Live The Sar

Today after work/lunch, Jake, Zev, and I decided to sample 3 cafes on our way home.  The first was a local joint, my favorite of the 3, where they served local tea (w/the mandatory 1/2 in. of sugar in the bottom) for 1/18 of $1 USD (7 cents or so).  The 2nd stop was a cafe built into a hillside overlooking our small section of the city which was nice and quiet, and a great place to observed the slow but steady pace of life here.  The final cafe was a chic, pink, modern cafe near our hotel that served a variety of cakes, teas, juices, and cookies.  The sub-par tiramisu was over-priced and the ambiance felt a little too much like imitation America.  Tonight is another small shabbat at rick's and then sleep before an anticipated very busy morning tomorrow.      

The past two days have been relatively quiet, with a lot of exploring the city.  Work at the mission has been pretty quiet, and we were mentally preparing for the ~30 nursing students departure after today, and the rush that will be tomorrow morning.  Additionally, all three of Rick's main oncology patients started another round of chemo, a new regimen of medicine, or had some other tweak in their care every day.  The afternoons have been especially quiet and so I've been leaving around noon for lunch, internet, macchiato, and juice, and then some wandering.  Yesterday after work, lunch, etc...i decided to drop into the National Museum down the road from the mission.  I saw many interesting things including: Lucy's skeleton, Haile Selassie's Throne, and other cool, old items.  The most interesting/frustrating/amusing part of the visit was when I became an exhibit myself - 50-60 first-year history students at some university way up in the north were visiting Addis and I

To reply to the newest set of questions: ~Internet costs between .15-.40 birrh/minute ~13 birrh/hour ~$1.5 usd  - it's probably tied with food for my second biggest expense (hotel is #1 @ $13.5 USD/night...expensive!) ~I am receiving calls from skype (other ppl. calling me), but there is nowhere with fast enough internet to skype.  All of the internet places advertise 'broadband', or as it would be known in the US - 33 kb/s ~There is not much italian influence outside of the delicious macchiatos and cafe culture so readily apparent.  ~I may try to go to Lalibella for a few days (lots of gorgeous rock-hewn churches), but I'm hesitant to spend time away from the mission because I enjoy working there so much.  Also, any trip to Lalibella would take ~4 days, and finding a good 4 day window is tough ~I did see the NY Times article about Ethiopia the other week and I feel as though the NYT is actively trying to negatively portray Ethiopia b/c of the the issue w/their writers

to answer some of the questions asked in the comments (thank you ari): ~I am not taking pictures of the gory stuff...yet, but I do want to document the range of things we see every day ~My amharic is poor, but I can greet, bid adieu, order some food, and other things like that....i'm trying to learn but it's a wee bit difficile ~I am working 6 days a week, 9-12 & 3-5.  The mission shuts down around 6:30-7 for the night. ~I usually give to about one beggar/day or <1% of all the beggars I encounter each day ~Most nights I get back to the hotel around 7, spend an hour reading and then go out to find dinner.  Then I usually go back to the hotel, read, write, and asleep by 1 AM.  ~I went out for the first time Tuesday night...interesting.  Was by myself but quickly met Daniel, an Ethiopian who has either emigrated to Israel or is going to visit...he had lots of hebrew inside his passport.  The 2nd bar we went to was a hotel/brothel (the prostitues aren't very subtl

One of the most interesting things about practicing medicine here is that you see a lot of textbook cases. Because most of the patients don't seek care until their disease/infection has progressed to a very severe stage, most of the cases we see, when we look it up in the Merck Manual, are exactly what the textbook describes (if the disease goes untreated). With the two newly arrived med students - zev and jake - we've been looking up many things in the Merck Manual, which is only mildly helpful because the cases are only covered by the last sentence of every entry that starts, "if left untreated..." It is very interesting to see what can happen to the body if nothing is done to help heal it.

~The people are genuinely kind, respectful, and friendly. ~I feel very safe. ~The juice store beside the mission sells the world's greatest manguo chemaki (mango juice/pulp/puree) ~There are more places to buy pastries here than in France, and delicious, fresh bread is available all day long. ~There are palm trees growing in the alleys behind the storefronts and the city has lots of greenery (too bad you can't see it when a car drives by leaving you in a cloud of black fumes, thinking that inhaling the exhaust from a greensboro bus would be fresh air) ~The rain as it pounds away at the tin roof...it makes me feel like i'm living in 1800's usa (or so i imagine) ~a steaming macchiato with a big scoop of sugar, while I watch the people walk by. ~The mini-taxis which can get you pretty much anywhere in the city for <$.25 I could keep going but I'll leave more for later. To let you know that not everything is peaches and cream here, the things I dislike about Addis (

I went to the Mission for the first time at night, last night. I know I've written about what the mission is like during the day, but at night, the main difference is that on every empty space of cement under a roof, people are sleeping on thin mattresses, packed so tightly together that they overlap. As I've said before, the conditions here are like something you would see in a picture, but not in real life...it's amazing what the people consider a normal standard of living here.