Six Days to go....

It's hard to believe another summer in Africa is coming to a close.  My days are packed as I try to fit in everything I've put off and then some...  Yesterday was an especially busy (learning) day as I started the morning with

~Grand Rounds @ Black Lion Hospital - a 20 yr old female patient, known Type 1 Diabetes, with very short stature and discussed possible reasons for her short build

~Hip Hop class with Tesh - the whole classed learned a combination, almost 10 8-counts, I'll post video when I get back to the states - and then

~nursing class with Abebe at night - we learned about Trichuriasis and Strongyloidiasis (two intestinal worms endemic in Ethiopia)

 

So I learned a lot and stayed very busy. Because this is my second summer here, much of the day-to-day craziness ceases to strike me the way it did last year and for whatever reason, my stay has been essentially bereft of any deep "Africa revelations" like I had weekly last year.  Luckily such malaise is wearing off in light of my impending departure and I have lately experienced cascades of thoughts on Ethiopia's condition and the daily struggle.  I have had two main thought trains in as many days:

 

1) Opportunity - The biggest difference between Ethiopia and America is opportunity.  I happened on this last night while sitting at dinner with Abebe.  It is the thing most Americans don't even know we take for granted and yet it is the most frustrating, infuriating, and depressing reality of life here.  Abebe has been very lucky to come to Addis for medical care 8+ yrs ago, to meet the sisters @ Missionaries of Charity, to then be sent to Nursing School and even though he is already 28, he will be a full nurse in ~2 yrs.  His brother Milaku, who came to live with him in Addis, is 24 years old and will be entering the ninth grade in September.  If everything goes as planned he will graduate when he is 27 and then enter either a trade university or one of the larger state  universities.  For these two it is better late then never but they are in the lucky lucky minority.  It goes back to the dinner I had with Bob Gurevich almost four weeks ago, during which he told me a story about one of the primary schools his NGO was working with.  They asked the children what they wanted to be when they grew up and they got the usual parade of known professions - Doctor, Policeman, Teacher - but one kid said he wanted to be a Guard (a regular security guard at a building) and what struck Dr. Gurevich was how few professions the children even knew about.  The child wanted to be a guard because he simply didn't know of any other professions and he probably has a neighbor who is a guard somewhere.  This story is a weak example of a problem so entrenched in this society that its common acceptance leaves me with a lack of tangible examples.  It is simply a way of life here that most people will never have a shot to live up to their potential.  

 

2)Raw Emotion - This I noticed while walking under the Ring Rd. bridge in Tor Highloch.  I passed a beggar "sleeping" on the ground, wrapped in a blanket.  Unremarkable except for the strange position of the body (quasi-fetal), my ability to count the person's ribs through at least 3 layers of cloth, and an overbearing sensation that this beggar was more likely dead than alive.  I walked past, as everyone here does every day, but the image wouldn't leave me and more the omnipresent reminders of the cheapness of human life here.  It is strange to work in a health clinic all day, wrapping every manner of ulcer/wound/whatever, and then to walk out the gate and still see people lying prostrate on the sidewalk simply reminds you of the small (although not totally insignificant) impact you are having.  But I digress...the subject of this thought is that nothing here is routine.  There is no normal day.  Not by Western standards.  When I get angry or frustrated, the emotion always goes to the extreme.  When I am happy, it is a sublimely pure simple emotion.   Something about the extremes in which daily life here is conducted reduces (enhances?) the emotions such that everything is felt/experienced/tasted/touched/lived to the nth degree.  It is completely possible that this sensation exists only in my mind and everyone else thingks I'm crazy and such heightened emotions do live in places like America, but this is my story and I'm sticking to it.  If you want to test these ideas, please come join me in this wonderfully strange place. 

I apologize for the increasing time lapses between posts, but it has been busy trying to tie up loose ends and fit in all the things I have put off until this last week.  If the last few days are any indication, it is going to be a jam-packed 120 hrs.