Long Live The Sar

Here are few pics from the past week. This cave church in Lalibela predates the rock-hewn churches by nearly 100 years - Yemrehanna Kristos (The skeletons are off the R side of the picture) The entrance to one of the churches in Lalibela One of the largest churches in Lalibela - Bet Medhane Alem (I think) Bet Giyorgis - Lalibela's pride and joy. The picture is a bit misleading b/c it's actually 30m tall The Debre Damo monastery resides on this mountaintop. (Possibly) the oldest church in all of Africa, dating to ~6th century. The view from on top of the mountain. The landscape was very similar to the canyon lands of the American southwest, just with more green. Just climb to the doorway above the kid in yellow. (This picture cuts off the last few feet at the bottom) I'm sure the "safety" rope on the L was up to industry standards. The leather didn't look too worn or twisted... Victorious, post-descent smile.

It has been a few days since I last wrote because it has been an action packed six days. I'm now sitting in an internet cafe 125 km from Eritrea, along the palm tree lined streets of Axum. Rather than give a day-by-day accounting of my past week, I'll focus on the three highlights listed in the title of this post. Pediatric Rounds at Black Lion Last Thursday I spent the morning at Black Lion shadowing the pediatric residents and interns as they did rounds. When trying to set up a study on pediatric Hodgkin's Lymphoma, I emailed with a pediatrician at Black Lion, Dr. Haileyesus Adam. I met him during my previous visit to Black Lion and I was able to finally get him on the phone and finagled an invite to shadow. We started the day with coffee in the hospital's shai bet (which is really just a few tables in the main lobby with waitresses shuttling trays of macchiatos and juice). Dr. Haileyesus explained that there are no "specialists" among the pediatricia