Long Live The Sar

I haven't yet posted an update on my daily life this summer, so here's a brief summary of the past few days. Monday - I woke up Monday and had to move out of the JDC house where I've been staying into a hotel because the house was being fumigated for suspected bedbugs. I don't think we had any, but I wasn't the one getting bit so I can't say for sure. After breakfast, I went to the " Red Terror " Martyr Museum near Meskel Square. This new museum commemorates the 2 million people killed during the regime of the communist Derg (1974-1991) and the 500,000 killed between 1977-1978. The museum has many photos and some interesting points, but is unfortunately a little light on details and doesn't give enough background information. However, it's still relatively new (1 year), so I'll give it a break. My pseudo-tour guide was a nice middle-aged man who had actually been imprisoned for 8 years by the Derg, and he had shared a cell with one ...

A small collection of some of the funnier things I've seen in the past three weeks. Note the "Customer Name" on our dinner bill from the other night. Apparently they missed the memo about NOT calling your charity a "scheme" The "Complaint Desk" at the Ethiopian Telecommunications office. Obviously customer service is not their highest priority. Toby, the newest addition to the JDC's stable of dogs. This was taken at a "puppy play date" we attended two weeks ago.

Looking back, I realize the tone of my initial post about the epidemic may have seemed a bit alarmist. To clarify, the disease we were dealing with was not ebola, bubonic plague, or malaria (even though a few of the prisoners may have had that too). Administering fluids was sufficient treatment for almost all of the patients; the issue was when the nurses neglected to check the patients' fluid bags, IVs, or other basic vitals. Now back to the story... Thursday morning, Dr. Aelaf stopped by the prisoners' ward before morning rounds. During the night, 3 patients had become unstable and the rest were doing ok, not great. Of course vitals had not been checked in about 5 hours and patients were running low on fluid. The situation got fixed and patients returned to borderline stable condition. We went on morning rounds and then I went back to my hotel for a nap and an extended (but ultimately victorious) battle against slight bout of food poisoning. The highlight of the night...