The End of the Road
A great last few days and only 1 more to go! Saturday we had Rick's regular saturday clinic. Lots of spine patients (TB and Scoliosis), heart problems (mitral/aortic stenosis/regurg), a case of Dermato Fibrosarcoma Protuberans, and one case of Lympho-Epithelial Carcinoma. Lunch consisted of a fried tortilla filled with lentils (11 cents on the street) and soft-serve ice cream from a fancy italian restaurant near the mission...best ice cream in addis.
On the walk home we ducked into a "gym" off the main road. The sign for the gym should have been an omen of what was to come (faded, cartoonish, and nearly hidden), and maybe the treacherous staircase/mud slide down the hill was a warning, but the gym consisted of a shipping-container-sized room full of guys, benches, free weights, and an unspeakable stench. Not interested in embarrasing anyone with the size of my muscles, I kept my shirt on but did notice that the weights used for bench pressing consisted of a metal bar and then two giant gears that had been ripped out of factory machines....ethiopian improvisation at its best!
The night commenced with a drink with Helen and her friend Hermon, two 18 yo Ethiopians that Jake insisted on chatting up while we sat at a cafe Friday afternoon. Quite certain that they were prostitutes (the informal kind), we tried to duck into a shady bar to grab a quick drink and then ditch. The ladies had ideas of grandeur and I ended up buying their tuna sandwich dinner. The highlight of any encounter with sketchy Ethiopians is the battle of wits between our mastery of the English language and American humor and their oft-paltry attempts at deciphering the small bit of movie-line English they know from the yarns we spin. Some kids believe my name is Frankenstein, the girls last night were made to believe that Zev was deaf and so when they wanted to talk to him they had to yell and that Jake's muscles are so big, that in order to keep up his physique, he eats 1 kilo of beef for lunch every day. All of these are bold faced lies, but they accept our stories with only mild disbelief....it's a joy to see just how much we can make them believe.
We split with Helen and Hermon to go meet Rick at the Sheraton. I can't say much about the Sheraton other than it is the most ridiculous, over the top, extravagent, out of place structure in Addis. Imagine a world class 5-star hotel built for $165 million+ in the middle of a city of 4 million people who live on less than $1,000/year (prob. closer to $400) in a country ranked 170 out of 177 for the world's poorest countries (life expectancy is 48 yo....that's probably generous). Ridiculously unbelievable is the only appropriate word (there are sensors in every parking lot space and a sign that updates how many spots are free in each parking section). But spending a few hours lounging in the lobby and walking around was enough to make us forget we were in Addis. The "free" dessert buffett turned out to not be so free, but for the equivalent price as my hotel room at Taitu I had a delicious champagn flute filled with liquid chocolate pleasure. Rick finished his swim and we spent the next 4 hours enjoying the company (Jake, Zev, Rick, and I), sipping on drinks while sinking into the plush couches, and exchanging dirty jokes; a fantastic evening.
Today I slept in, rising only to finish Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah - amazing. A wonderful pizza/lasagna lunch topped of with soft-serve ice cream (Italian contributions to Ethiopia = macchiato and italian food). Rick picked us up at the ice-cream place and we all drove out to Entoto (the mountains N of Addis mentioned in a much earlier post) and went for a walk; a sobering reminder of how most of the people in this country live - substinence farming. Shopping at the Entoto market and now down to Rick's for dinner.
One day left and then I board the plane for home, to return to my life of luxury, leaving these people in muddy squalor. I'm excited to get back but it's impossible to even imagine what America is like when you walk around this city every day. Maybe one more post tomorrow if I can manage, and then my next update will be from the Mei Guo (=America in Chinese = Beautiful Earth).
On the walk home we ducked into a "gym" off the main road. The sign for the gym should have been an omen of what was to come (faded, cartoonish, and nearly hidden), and maybe the treacherous staircase/mud slide down the hill was a warning, but the gym consisted of a shipping-container-sized room full of guys, benches, free weights, and an unspeakable stench. Not interested in embarrasing anyone with the size of my muscles, I kept my shirt on but did notice that the weights used for bench pressing consisted of a metal bar and then two giant gears that had been ripped out of factory machines....ethiopian improvisation at its best!
The night commenced with a drink with Helen and her friend Hermon, two 18 yo Ethiopians that Jake insisted on chatting up while we sat at a cafe Friday afternoon. Quite certain that they were prostitutes (the informal kind), we tried to duck into a shady bar to grab a quick drink and then ditch. The ladies had ideas of grandeur and I ended up buying their tuna sandwich dinner. The highlight of any encounter with sketchy Ethiopians is the battle of wits between our mastery of the English language and American humor and their oft-paltry attempts at deciphering the small bit of movie-line English they know from the yarns we spin. Some kids believe my name is Frankenstein, the girls last night were made to believe that Zev was deaf and so when they wanted to talk to him they had to yell and that Jake's muscles are so big, that in order to keep up his physique, he eats 1 kilo of beef for lunch every day. All of these are bold faced lies, but they accept our stories with only mild disbelief....it's a joy to see just how much we can make them believe.
We split with Helen and Hermon to go meet Rick at the Sheraton. I can't say much about the Sheraton other than it is the most ridiculous, over the top, extravagent, out of place structure in Addis. Imagine a world class 5-star hotel built for $165 million+ in the middle of a city of 4 million people who live on less than $1,000/year (prob. closer to $400) in a country ranked 170 out of 177 for the world's poorest countries (life expectancy is 48 yo....that's probably generous). Ridiculously unbelievable is the only appropriate word (there are sensors in every parking lot space and a sign that updates how many spots are free in each parking section). But spending a few hours lounging in the lobby and walking around was enough to make us forget we were in Addis. The "free" dessert buffett turned out to not be so free, but for the equivalent price as my hotel room at Taitu I had a delicious champagn flute filled with liquid chocolate pleasure. Rick finished his swim and we spent the next 4 hours enjoying the company (Jake, Zev, Rick, and I), sipping on drinks while sinking into the plush couches, and exchanging dirty jokes; a fantastic evening.
Today I slept in, rising only to finish Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah - amazing. A wonderful pizza/lasagna lunch topped of with soft-serve ice cream (Italian contributions to Ethiopia = macchiato and italian food). Rick picked us up at the ice-cream place and we all drove out to Entoto (the mountains N of Addis mentioned in a much earlier post) and went for a walk; a sobering reminder of how most of the people in this country live - substinence farming. Shopping at the Entoto market and now down to Rick's for dinner.
One day left and then I board the plane for home, to return to my life of luxury, leaving these people in muddy squalor. I'm excited to get back but it's impossible to even imagine what America is like when you walk around this city every day. Maybe one more post tomorrow if I can manage, and then my next update will be from the Mei Guo (=America in Chinese = Beautiful Earth).
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