22.09.04

Couldn’t bring myself to write tonight by force of will. All I can do is sit and think about other writers, fulfilled I’m sure, I would like to be. It has been an evening of consuming, not producing. Andy finished reading Clinton’s My Life which he started back in May--about 1000 pages!--and is now going over all the photos again. He says he didn’t learn anything new about him. Genius. Stalking genius. (Ok, he just read this sentence, and came up with something: "I learned he was way into the Middle East peace effort. He tried to make that his legacy.")

We’ve both felt kind of trapped tonight. Neither of us is comfortable roaming around in the dark around here, and it gets dark at 7:00pm. That leaves at least two or three hours in our little place to fill. It’s no wonder people go to bars.

We have been extras on the village trips the past few days, and since we’ve got our measuring figured out and standardized and the Community Health Workers generally shoo the kids off by whacking them, or the air or ground very near them, with sticks when they hang out too close or too long, we haven’t done much to invite them around. Besides, we’re tired of it a little. The same show again and again. The other day we pulled out of a village just as school was getting out. Three hundred kids in rags and braids with great big smiles and eager friendly waves swarmed out and around us, shouting and laughing and calling. We called and waved out the window and the sea of little brown heads swarmed us and chased us and called after us, and Andy said, "It makes you feel a bit like Elvis, doesn’t it?" It does. We’re going to feel so uninteresting when we get home.

Andy is on the bed behind me. I notice he gets the good pillow again tonight. That’s two nights in a row. Unacceptable.

We’re going to stay at the office tomorrow instead of going out to the villages so Andy at least can read his textbook about nutrition. And because we haven’t been doing anything on these trips and are bored out of our gourds. I am. That’s why I’m writing about who gets which pillow. When was I last bored? Can’t remember. All I can think about is how I missed our second raspberry harvest and our basil and the grape harvest and the pears and crisp fall days, and the colors changing on the mountains and prepping the garden for next spring. I think I was meant to be a farmwife seventy years ago.

Thoughts from today:

Are people really less happy or satisfied here that they need our interference? Does it really make a difference if you live in a mud hut or a brick house? If all you’ve ever known is the possibility of very bad health, does medicine make a difference? Today Bayleleen scraped "stones" off a woman’s eyelid--tiny little bumps made of the same sort of stuff as gallstone--with the needle end of a hypodermic. She sat there not even squinting or clenching her hands. The only way you would know she wasn’t just being looked at was if you watched her feet--occasionally they would lift off the ground, and you could see in her rubber shoes her toes clenching and unclenching. Bayleleen just kept scraping and wiping the needle on a cotton ball he held in his other hand. I was clenching for her--everything; my teeth, my eyes when it was too much, my guts, my hands and my legs--Andy said he thought I was going to pass out at one point. These women are tough. Really tough. Emily, who has been in Dubai for a conference all this week, says they like medicine, and the more painful the procedure, the better they think it is for them. Andy also says different cultures experience pain differently. Is he saying she doesn’t feel pain the same way I would? This seems possible, I suppose, to a certain extent, though maybe its just expectations of what is or is not "normal," or permissible pain. But then it begs the question again, if you can train yourself to not feel that kind of pain, why do you need people to come treat you? Do studies on you? Emily said every patient was explained and consented twice about this being a study and what it would entail. When I asked her if there was anything she thought these people wouldn’t do healthcare-wise if it was offered them for free, she said she didn’t think so. Maybe that’s my answer. Obviously they think it’s worth it. I guess.

Cultural variations of pain would be an interesting study, though it sounds a bit ghoulish. I must admit, social studies are far more interesting to me than hard number studies are.
And then there’s the question of all the other help and what it does long term. On one of the roads we drove along today there was a line of old men and old women swinging picks and shovels keeping the road’s border distinct and tidy. Alemush said they get food and then they have to work. When I told Emily about what Sister Case had said about people’s predictions for another drought year and already sending word to get food on the boats from overseas, she said, "It’s actually a problem because people find out that food is on the way and don’t bother doing their farming because they know other stuff will be coming." So if you have a conscience, you’re stalemated it seems like.

At one spot on the paved road they have a stack of about 25 mattresses to sell everyday. They are made from old grain bags stuffed with straw probably, because I see people carrying them all up the road on their heads, and you can see printed on them in big block letters: "USA do not use hooks USAID" or "CANADA."

I guess besides the polio and major stuff, I feel like maybe our lives aren’t necessarily any better off than theirs. We suffer from our own crippling diseases: loneliness, lethargy, selfishness, ignorance, etc. Does it make it any better for us to come and in checker-board patterned ways fix here and damage here and fix a little here and damage a little here? Besides, I find it sort of incredible that here, in the birthplace of humanity supposedly, how can people not have discovered a way to keep their wastes separate and in one spot, or a way to make it so their huts don’t fill with smoke?

I’m going to bed. And I’m getting the good pillow tonight. Hmph.

09.21.04

Routine day. Got up. Andy had breakfast of here at Bekele Mole--the cereal, and I crossed the street to have fuul, not special, regular with avocado. That means I’ve had avocado for all three meals today. I thought it would take longer than that to get my fill of fresh ripe avocado. I guess its not the avocado so much as wondering while mushy green is going in, how and when mushy green will be coming out. I may seem over cautious, but dashes to the latrine were a familiarity the first few days in Soddo.

We were late to the office today and Alemush was sharp with Abaina our driver about it, so we made sure she knew it was because of his waiting for us, and apologized to him later. He laughed it off and was sweet, like he always seems to be.

Drove around to different villages and practiced weighing babies in the hanging scale and measuring arms and heads and heights--kids standing, babies lying down. Since none of the babies wear diapers around here, naturally, getting their little bums in and out of the scale’s seat, which is basically like a pair of undies, it going to be a wet chore. Although I’ve smelled a lot of urine in the wraps we’ve pulled off them to get them in the scale, I haven’t actually felt any really wet bums yet. Andy thinks we’re going to get lice and several viruses before we’re through, though he assures me that TB and leprosy are difficult to catch if you’re healthy. TB or not, we’ve both developed a dry smoker’s cough from the horrible air: dusty, smoky, full of thick oil and gas fumes whenever a macchina grumbles by.

When we got back from work, Nadu was hanging out on the porch of the hotel. "It’s my break. You come to my house?" He walked us proudly down main street Soddo (the only main street, the only paved road that comes south out of Addis in the whole country, I’m told) and very few people, even kids, bothered us. More of his story: He is one of six children, the oldest, and shares a room he rents with his sister from a wealthy-seeming family in town. His parents live in a village, "the country," and are farmers. Why isn’t he a farmer? "I made the difference, I have education. I have (something) degree. You want to see?" He pulls a several tiny keys from his pocket held together on a plastic $100 American bill an appreciative woman at the hotel gave him, and unlocks a chest that is one of the three pieces of furniture in his little house. He pulls out three pieces of paper, two with passport photos stapled on. They say he is a certified hotel person. Another paper was his report card, kind of, which showed he had excellent grades and graduated top in his class. Andy asked him how much he paid for his house per month--40 birr, about five dollars--and how much he makes per month--140 birr, about $17.50 per month. Walking home, Andy said, "It’s so weird, I make that in about fifteen minutes." It means that Nadu spends roughly one third of his income on housing, which is actually what we also spend on housing. While the ratios may be the same, the difference(s) is that most of the rest of the world, like airports, is calibrated to our ratio, and the housing we get for our third of income isn’t just a dark, 12 x 15 foot room with dirt flooring and one bed for two people. (Wait--yes it does.) Our third has a great bathroom, lots of rooms, lights, windows, washer and dryer, a great yard and big garden and garage and refrigerator and front porch and back patio and furniture and internet and dvd player and books and dishes and stored food. And a mailbox. And is dry and warm when we want it to be. (And we complain about cats?)

Anyway, Nadu fed us mashed avocado with bread and then pulled out a grimy plastic cup asking if we wanted water to clean our "teas, teas." We didn’t get him till he pointed to them in his mouth. Kind, I’m sure, but what, were we going to all gargle and rinse in the same cup? Uh, no. We let our dirty teeth stay that way.

I do like Nado. You can’t help liking a guy who is sweet with little kids who aren’t even relatives. They climb all over him and he brought in the neighbour’s baby just to show us.

Two new guys at the hotel have their tents out on the goat/turtle lawn tonight. One is American and one European, driving from Zambia on motorbikes. They asked if we do necks as well as eyes. I only do one neck, his, I said pointing to Andy. Let’s get that clear right now. They look like dudes with travel stories. They wear patagonia and have dirty hair and don’t give a care if they’re oil floating on the water of every local culture they motor through. If anyone would know about chat, I bet they would. They seem like the kind of people you want to know or be until you know them or feel like you think they’d feel. How’s that for projection?

I feel particularly uninspired writing tonight. It’s only 8pm and I’ve already finished the two novels I brought with me. It's stare at the cootie wall or dive into the harder stuff I brought--Umberto Eco, C.S. Lewis, and Wendell Berry. Or maybe some of Andy’s political biographies. He wants to get the expense report done for the day, and I’m done, so adieu.

09.20.04

Meet Nado, translator of all things Ethiopian; elucidator of all mysterious fruits; understander of needing all foods "well cooked"; harried, overworked, 22-year old waiter. He is there when we have breakfast in the morning and there when we have dinner at night. He is about my height or a little shorter, skinner and much much blacker with a fuzzy, mostly shaved head, and I admit, he made me nervous at first. He seemed way too eager to hang around our table and our first conversation included a lot of personal information and his question, "How do I get to America?" It is my experience that people who would have a good reason to emigrate to the United States know this information much better than those of us who blithely happened to be born to the opportunity do. This question, in my limited experience, usually leads to guilty excuses of why you cannot bring someone back with you, or sad discussions about how difficult it is and why you can’t give them the money they need to start pressing through the red tape. We also got a personal invitation to spend his day off with he and his friends exploring the area. Another red flag in my experience, and small, sturdy roadblocks went up in mine and Andy’s and Emily’s minds immediately.

But our standoffish suspiciousness was for nothing that night, apparently. He has been nothing but kind and helpful to us, and watching him work so hard makes me at least, feel like a slacker. Where I grew up, you shared work until it was done. It doesn’t seem right for him to be rushing all around while we just sit there.

Tonight he told us how to eat a hard, green fruit about the size of a golf ball that we bought from some women sitting on the side of the street. "You feel it, then bite it," he said. "Feel, feel it." He handed us a knife. I sliced off one end unsure of how to peel it. "No, first you must wash," he said taking it out of my hands, walking it across the room to the sliding opening in the wall where he communicated with the kitchen people, handed it over, brought it back dripping and carefully wiped it clean with a cloth napkin. The we feeled the whole thing and tried to bite it. A little sour, a lot of seeds, and not a whole lot of flavour. But oh man, a treat because it is FRESH. Haven’t had something fresh in awhile. We were both expecting to throw up tonight. Andy more because he ordered fried lamb from the menu ("We’re going to be here 6 more weeks, we might as well try everything.") which I believe we saw hanging in the back corner of the courtyard by the shed where one guy was washing clothes in tubs. It was just the center-most part of a carcass, hung from the back legs?, swinging gently while another man took hacks at it with a curved knife, slicing off thin bits of whatever would come off. Ugh. No Thank You.

Yesterday Nado answered questions about the huge tortoise we had found out in the courtyard. We thought we had discovered it, huge and slow moving and chomping down grass and flowers. I tried to lift it--heavy. Tried to flip it against Andy’s judgement. Wanted to see what it looked like from below. It craned its neck out to watch us and . . . hissed! I flipped it back over and we left it in peace. I swear I’ve had that same reaction. Now I know which former life it comes from. We told Nado we’d tried to lift the tortoise and his smile flipped into a frown on his forehead and he told us very seriously, "Very dan-gerous. You-reen, very dangerous. Hand crack. Break. You-reen hand crack." I had no idea turtle urine would give you a skin rash, if this indeed is what he meant. Why was the turtle roaming around? "Eat grass." Andy asked, "Is that what the goats are for too?" This didn’t translate well into pidgin English. I drew a picture to make it clearer. I showed a turtle eating grass. I showed a goat under a tree eating grass. Nado nodded, hesitating, pointing to each picture, "Yes, turtle eat grass." My goat and turtle did look pretty similar, I suppose. Annie could get it right.

This morning we introduced Nado to boxed breakfast cereal, some All Bran we’d brought down from Addis in the expensive import supermarket, having already had a taste of what our diet would be like while we’re in Ethiopia. It’s Kellogs from South Africa. He mixed us up some Nido milk last night and stored it in the fridge for us. We poured him a handful of it. He reacted much the same way we did to the seedy green fruit tonight; smelled it, asked us how to eat it, tried a flake, added milk, tried a spoonful, and politely left the rest. I told him, "In America, people eat this for breakfast everyday." I couldn’t tell whether his nods and smiles were polite incredulousness, or a smooth cover for not understanding what I was saying.

I don’t know the name of the kind of cows they have here, but it’s got a big, wobbly, jelly lump on the back of its neck like a reverse goiter that jiggles and rocks when it moves. It bugs me.
It’s already 11pm. I have to go to bed. Quickly before I forget:

Out in the villages today I saw a beautiful little girl with the worst lice I’ve ever seen. It was partly because the nits showed up so clearly against her dark tight braids and dark scalp, but they were incredibly thick especially around her ears and neck. I’ve felt itchy all day since. Please no lice. I’ve just got my hair almost long enough to go in a pony tail and I’ve done my lice penance in life. (I still remember how relaxing it was when everyone in my class had to go into the nurse’s office where she one by one went over our scalps with wood sticks looking for nits and giving us each a lecture about sharing hats and hairbrushes.) Next week, measuring and weighing kids and babies all day is going to test my gross out limits.

On Saturday night we had a blackout for a pretty good length of time--the town was silent for once, no music blaring--and we went outside to see what was going on. We could see the stars for the first time since we got here. Thick, with the cloudy stripe of Milky Way directly above us. I didn’t recognize the sky the way I usually do, and didn’t know how or where I could look for the Southern Cross, assuming it even shows here. We’re still nine degrees north of the Equator. This makes sun protection a very real part of our everyday. I try mainly to keep my long sleeve shirt on and my hat. We have every possible factor working against us when it comes to sunburn: lattitude, fair skin, on doxycyclene for malaria, and altitude. Though Andy hasn’t burned yet, his exposed skin has changed color dramatically and quickly. The two women who sit at the entrance desk and who laugh everytime we say anything to them in Wolaytinga brought us a candle. It’s what I’m writing by tonight. It’s somehow comforting and much nicer to write by than the bare weak orange lightbulb above our bed. It softens this place and doesn’t make the cootie wall look so cootie.

Everywhere I go I’m noticing gabis--their colors, their weaves, their weights. Could I make one? Could I weave? Would I die of boredom or frustration before I got good enough to make something I liked? I would like to learn to weave, but don’t have Heidi’s patience or Geo’s drive for superb craftsmanship.

I am also loving the handmade chairs and benches here and want to make some or bring some home or both. Our guidebooks say the Ethiopian post is cheap.

In the villages and in town the street kids wear literally rags. There are a lot of ways to keep rags over your shoulders. Even well dressed people in the villages wear very patched clothes, clothes that would be rags except they’re pretty patched. They’re practically quilted they’re so patched. Men here will wear a three piece suit around, and it’s not unusual to see someone out in a field with their slacks, vest, and jacket on while they plow with their forked hand tool. The kids, who chase after the van like loose dogs on country roads, usually just wear a shirt. Their muscular legs and everything else goes flying as they chase the cars getting way too close to the wheels shouting and laughing, "Feringhi feringhi! Feringhi feringhi!" Although today, we did stop at the compound of a family where most of the little boys were wearing pants. But each of their little flys were WIDE open and out of each was hanging their little privates. It was pretty funny. This place’s understanding of modesty I don’t have a grasp on yet, and I’m still fighting to the instinct to not let any of my hair show.

Now I really must go to sleep. Andy and I agreed we’d try to get up earlier tomorrow so we can read the scriptures together when we’re both not exhausted from the day. I’ll be exhausted from the night.

17.09.04

Today’s innovative use of the corncob: as a stopper in a jug for carrying water. The jug was big and yellow and looked like it had at one time held oil.

Today:
Went into 3 different tukalus
Saw silk worms and balls of unspun silk
Walked through fieilds to get to one of the patients who was sick and
The woman was being treated for blindness with burns--one on either side of her face, beside her eyes, and two on the back of her head, just above the nape of her neck in her hair--big sores with blistering skin. Baileyin explained to them that this was an unhealthy thing to do, not a healthy thing, and the man said "eshi, eshi," but something gives me the impression he doesn’t give a care what Baileyiin says about burning to ward off blindness.

On this walk, saw a well and a child hauling water from it on a long rope with a bucket at the end of it.
Andy and I practiced measuring heads and arms today on the throngs of kids who get such delight out of staring at us and poking us and laughing at/with us and thinking everything we do is fascinating.

One of the language things I’m not used to yet is the inhaled breath, the kind we do to express surprise or fright, that means simply, "yes." The French do it sometimes too, only they say oui at the same time.

Last night we went for a walk south on the paved road and turned right at the Mobil station. A gaggle of boys trailed us laughing and calling and occasionally getting close enough to touch us. Eventually they were up holding our hands (or holding theirs out saying, "one birrrrr, one birrrr, give me money, one birrrrr") and it turns out some of them speak some lovely Italian. A little more than I do, with an accent that doesn’t sound bad to my ear. Tonight we took the same walk, but didn’t get as far as the Mobil b/c we needed to head back for dinner with everyone from the office. I take back almost everything negative I’ve said or thought about Ethiopian food. Today was a "fasting" day--no meat for the Orthodox--so there was actually beans and cooked chard with our injera tonight instead of just greasy meat in a spicy sauce. Happily, we’re finding our gustatory spot here in Soddo: fasting days we will eat good vegetarian Ethiopian food. Breakfast, we have a bean fuul. Lunch: a loaf of bread and peanut butter, possibly bananas. Dinner, otherwise: Bekele Molla’s interpretation of American food, including Ambergers and Veal Cutelet. I’m sure it was. Best thing here is the veggie soup, which at least gives a hint of having good vitamins in it and possibly a tiny bit of soluble fiber.

In the last hut we went into, the subject/patient had just had a baby two days before. They let us see him--a teeny, beautiful little thing wrapped in light cottons in the back, in the dark. The women thought it was so hilarious that I wanted to see the baby, so hilarious that I cooed and cooed over him.

In the first hut, the son’s hut which was just next to the parent’s hut, one of the men asked if I had children. I explained no, but that Andy and I were married, making an imaginary line in the air between Andy and I, and showing the man my wedding ring. When people smiled knowingly, the man informed me that we would have children if we drank coffee. None of the Ethiopians we are working with had heard of this before. "Maybe because it keeps you up at night," is Emily’s suggested explanation. Mormons seem to manage somehow.

The last place we went, where the silk worms were, the kids thought it was hilarious when Andy tried out (not so successfully--"This is harder than it looks!") one of their toys. It’s a ring of metal, this was a 24-inch ring of coiled wire, that is kept rolling by a rod with a hook held in a kid’s hand. The kid runs with it and keeps the wheel rolling. It’s like the thing you see in pictures of kids in the States in the 50s. In front of where we were meeting the adults to be checked for trachoma/trachiasis was a long set of mud buildings with a few spaces between. I slid between to get to the other side of all the people and try to get a good picture of the mountain and greenery. Trailed by eager, obnoxious kids who would not stop leaping in front of the camera, me, or anything I looked at or pointed towards, until it was driving me crazy and I tried to get them all to sit in the crack between the houses so I could take their picture and show them. Once they found out they would be able to see themselves in the camera screen, I couldn’t keep them in front of the camera, they kept getting up and crowding me from behind. Seriously, these children have an entirely different concept of personal space. Or what is acceptable behaviour. Especially around feringhies, whiteys.

With some good stern looks, a snapshot, and some good herding skills, I got them all through the crack again and we ended up in a little herd where somehow we started exchanging words in English and Wolaytinga for body parts. They were entertained, interested, and challenged, and could offer something themselves, and it was fun. It didn’t last long since all the visits had been done. On the way to the car, Andy and Emily were laughing, and Andy said, "That was a Sound of Music moment."

It’s raining again tonight. We’re pretty sure that the clothes on the line outside aren’t ours that we saw hanging there this morning. I haven’t seen the goats that lived in our courtyard in two days, though the roosters are still most definitely there. They start their crowing about 4:30am and don’t quit until about 6:30am. The first call to prayer, about 6:00am, wakes me up every morning. We must be close to a mosque, though I haven’t seen it yet. My best sleep comes after call to prayer and before our alarm goes off at about 7:00. Then I lie in bed until I absolutely must get up at 7:15 so I can be down getting breakfast and in the car by 7:30. It drives Andy crazy.
I was in a bad mood all this mornign. When Andy finally asked me why I was being mean to him in the afternoon, my good reason sounded silly though it had made perfect sense up until I had to say it out loud. He had been a total jerk in my dream and everything he did all day seemed to validate it. He didn’t seem like such a jerk after that.

These days seem so matter of fact in some ways, but it catches me occasionally what we’re doing and it is so cool, even if we’re just temps plugging in for a moment. We are going out every day to rural villages in places where there are no roads, just paths in the deep red dirt, worn down by thick bare feet, and finding people, sometimes in their own homes, and looking at their eyes and participating (even if just barely) in an international research project. it’s just pretty cool.

Our hotel, we found out tonight, is 4 dollars a night--about 38 birr. Cheap, but also seems about right. I’ll have to describe it another night. Our next door neighbour has his driver park his big, white UN truck right in front of us everynight when he gets in at 9:30 pm. I heard him hock two big loogies tonight. The walls are thin here.
Also of interest: Andy and I both showered tonight. The hot water ran out just at the end of my shower, so it worked out well. Our shower head lets down a stream of water about a dime’s width that we stand under and get clean in. It feels wonderful. After climbing around in tukalus today and having my hands all over sweaty, dirty kids measuring their heads and arms, I felt like I needed a bath. I don’t mind malaria, I don’t’ mind a temporary skin disease. I just don’t want tropical lice. Or worms. Oh, gross gross gross, especially worms. Especially blood flukes. They are so foul. Did you know you can get worms in your LUNGS? Oh gross oh gross oh gross.
In a way, even though there are so many ways to be sick, it’s amazing that we aren’t all more sick more often. I’m reading Andy’s Where There Is No Doctor book about village health care. It’s interesting and disgusting and bizarre. Its very real here.

Emily says I can get a gabi for 80 or 90 birr. They’re beautiful and versatile. Sehel said she’d go with me to bargain for one.

Andy is asleep behind me. I need to go to bed. I hear him breathe quickly and shallowly or stop breathing for awhile and wonder what he is dreaming about.

9.16.04

Too late to write tonight, and I’m not much in the mood. Don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m "removed from every experience" depressed.

There is nowhere in Ethiopia that doesn’t smell like woodsmoke.

We’ll get up and go to the café across the street for fuul for breakfast tomorrow. Also, figured out what has been making me nauseous in the mornings: my malaria pill on an empty stomach.

Spent my writing time tonight reviewing and labeling and sorting photos. Will have to wait to write until tomorrow.

9.15.04

It’s already late, so I’m writing tonight just as a matter of self discipline.

We did 18-month checkups in a village today--I took photos and held specimen jars for the most part. The people who didn’t show up we drove around and tracked down. Remarkably, we found everyone but four people. At one house, there were four women and about 20 young children. I took a couple pictures of them, and they were so excited and funny when I showed them to them on the digital camera screen. They thought it was so hilarious.

We’ve seen some pretty sick children, but there isn’t anything we can do really to help them all. Or any of them, even with their parents right there.

Driving today we saw lines of girls and young women carying huge loads of pottery, lots of boys out in donkey/goat-chewed fields hanging out or playing--a group lying down with their heads in a circle and splayed out like a snowflake.

The countryside is beautiful, green and lush and foggy in the mornings and almost always cloudy on the tip of the mountain that Soddo is built up against. There are tons of birds--bright yellow, pink, blue, orange, and I saw an iridescent turquoise songbird.

At one of the houses we stopped at one of the abundant small yellow butterflies flew in our van. I opened the door up and tried to swoop it out gently. It landed on my finger, so I pulled it out and blew on it to get it to fly away. My audience thought this was very funny.

We came back home for lunch--Andy and I had a loaf of bread each with PB and banana and a Mirinda and I had La Vache Qui Rit cheese. When we went out again, we went to a place nearby where we were yesterday, but in a grassy opening under a big tree, the community health worker had gathered together about 65 children 7 and under. And some of their parents. It was wild. We did more standardizing there, since the old Trachoma grader is being replaced, and for the purposes of the study, the grading has to be consistent. It was pretty fun. One little girl with an old shirt/handkercheif on her head became my special friend because I took a picture of her and showed it to her. For the next three hours she continued to try to be right in front of me, and finally at the end got up the courage to ask quietly, "Photo me?" A crowed gathered and she was a star when I did and showed her again. We kept pretty good, happy eye contact until we were in the car leaving. When I searched her out through the window, she got the happiest big smile to see me waving to her. She put her arm up in the air and kept it there. It was nice.
Andy palpated a few tummies today, because some seemed unusually large. In infants it would have been okay, but these were 5 to 8 or 9 year olds. They looked pregnant, but nothing else looked like Kwashiorkor.

Tonight I showered for the first time since Addis. Our place has water that has never disappears (and hot, to boot!) and pretty stable electricity. Emily ate dinner with us here at Bekele Molla tonight and showered, since they hardly ever have water, and almost never hot, down at the office.

I was tired today and Andy is already in bed behind me. I’ve got to go to sleep now.

09.14.04

Today was our first day in "the field." At 8 am we met at the Orbis office and 7 of us piled into the back of one of the vans and drove to a rural health center (a tin-roof covered mud building) to standardize trachiasis and trachoma grading. This means, we sped at a fishtailing 60 or 70 k for an hour outside of Soddo down mostly pitted mud roads with crowds of children, women with huge bundles on their backs, men behind donkeys or cows or goats, and turned in to a crowd of mostly old women, about 30 of them, which grew eventually to probably 150, waiting to be examined and treated.

Before we arrived, though, we first had a flat tire (I mentioned to Andy that we were the entertainment for the day, and he said, "Of course! This is the equivalent of having an airplane land in your backyard.") and when we had the spare on, we drove to a nearby village where there was a gommista who could replace the inner tube so we had a spare again. We also had to cross a river (which nobody had seen running with water before, only dry) on a very suspicious looking log bridge. The first time over we all got out and walked across, except the driver. Job hazards I guess. The bridge was supported by about six main logs that spanned the river, and had a series of smaller logs crossing them perpendicularly. Stones and mud were stuffed in the sides. Not for structural reasons, I imagine, but incase your cart slips to the side, your donkey doesn’t get a leg caught.

Once we got there, we had everyone line up on the benches against the wall of the one of the buildings. Emily walked down the row, did a quick inspection for trachiasis, and then wrote with black permanent marker on the back of their right hand, a number, one through 26. Each of us got a visor-like pair of loups to wear that we could sling down and look through like glasses, or push up so we could see farther than two inches in front of us. We also got a cardboard clipboard, a pen with a lid (possibly helpful in flipping eyelids--didn’t need it!), and a chart to fill in for each patient. We went from person to person, getting right in their face, holding up their eyelid, seeing if there was evidence of "epilation," where they had plucked their eyelashes out because they were scratching their cornea, counted how many eyelashes were touching the globe of the eye and where, checked to see if there were any areas of the rows of eyelashes that were completely turned in so you couldn’t see them, and finally, checked to see how much, if any, of the eye was covered in opacity, which is where the blindness from trachoma finally comes in.

There are so many ways to be sick. Andy pointed out two children slung on their mother’s hips who had huge round, puffy faces, bulgy eyes, and one of them, with his tongue kind of sticking out. Andy said it was probalby malnutrition or thyroid disease. I might have also guessed the thyroid one because I recognized the symptoms from a photo quiz in one of the pediatric magazines that comes through our house.

So many brown, wrinkled women with pussy eyes, short stubby eyelashes from plucking them. The local language is not Amharic, it is Wolaytinga. In Wolaytinga, lo?o means hello. (In Amharic, salam.) Once I got that and a few other words figured out, I at least felt like we were dealing with people as people, not specimens. I would say lo?o and the women would take my hand in both of theirs and hold it and say something back. Occasionally, I would go for one of their hands to see what number they were, and they would think I was going to hold their hand, and do the same thing. Sometimes, when I said hello, they would just nod, as if to say, "Yes, you are here too. Let’s get on with this."

(I’ll be frank, there was one point where during a wave of particularly bad body smells--the people smell like a mixture of B.O. and goats, but not like goats smell like goats, goat that has expelled itself through their skin after being eaten and digested--while I was close up on a particularly gooey eye, that I gagged. I was embarrassed to be so rude, and tried to look away and turn it into a cough.) But I loved occasionally stepping back and watching Andy. Gooey gross stuff doesn’t make him gag like it does me. By the way he was gentle about holding their heads and pulling open their eyes, and patting them on the arm or knee or saying sympathetic things to them in English, or clucking and making clicky noises, which is what he does when he wishes to show concern or get the attention of either older people whose language he doesn’t speak, or communicate with young children--I could see that he saw these people as people, and was not only interested in learning how to treat them, but had genuine compassion for them too.

It was quite a sight. At about midday the children got out of school. An enormous crowd of them gathered laughing and staring, mainly at Emily and I, I think, the two white women, until Emily asked The Lion, can’t remember his Ethiopian name, to go round up about twenty of them who had trachoma. "This is what they get for hanging around," she said.

So twenty children were chosen and lined up, all of the adults who had accumulated over the morning thinking this was a clinic, and not just, essentially, an announcement for a clinic that would be held the rest of the week, and then the rest of the kids who wouldn’t leave because this was all too interesting, were crowded in this fenced in compound, squeezing and moving, and trying to get themselves in front of one of the people wearing the magnifying glass thing on their head. By the time we’d gone through 16 people, we were done standardizing. I stopped doing it near the end, because I wasn’t getting it right, and didn’t have the patience to learn it right, especially when I wasn’t going to be doing it anymore. I let out about 10 of the thickest, worst smelling farts ever, felt woozy and like I was going to need a toilet, or was going to throw up, and staggered over to lean on the car for awhile, hoping no one would trace the smells to me. I took off one off the long-sleeved shirt I’d been wearing (but didn’t want to take off because I hadn’t put sunscreen on all of my arms--I could see Emily burning before my very eyes) and felt somewhat better. Once the standardization was done, we decided to look at everyone so they wouldn’t feel left out, and made the general announcement that anyone who wanted could show up at the clinic the next few days and be treated.

It was madness, chaos. Finally people started to trickle out, and I started feeling better, and finished helping everyone else look in eyes, and mark hands with an x or a check suggesting surgery or not.
I have to go to bed, we’re starting the real thing tomorrow, and will be out in a village again all day tomorrow. Andy is already in bed behind me, our first night in our new home, the Bekele Molla hotel.

Quickly:

The day we moved in to the Sheraton in Addis, we couldn’t bring ourselves to leave it. Pathetic, but true. One of the first things we did was put on our swim suits and dash down to the pool. Andy was particularly eager and adamant about it, despite that the sun was only showing occasionally between tropical downpours, but I remembered why when he laughed gleefully in the middle of the pool and said, "Ready?" and dunked his head in to hear the music.

Couldn’t bring ourselves to leave the next day, either, though I can’t remember if that is the day we went ot church or not. Church was really great. Genuine, gracious, warm people. It made Ethiopians individuals for us instead of a haranguing mass, and us individuals instead of just rich whiteys. We were both really touched by the sincerety and Spirit we felt, and when there were 10 minutes left at the end of the program and they asked if we would bear our testimonies I was touched again to hear Andy bear his about the First Vision, and his search for truth and conversion to the gospel.

Sunday night we had dinner with Emily at an "Italian" restaurant. When we got back to the hotel, New Edition, a band who was there for New Years and who Andy going crazy over, was just leaving for the airport in their limos. I knocked on the windows to see if we could have autographs while Andy ran in ot get paper and a pen. He’s going to give it to Bob as a wedding gift.

Monday we drove down here with Emily and our driver, A(l?)baida. When we got here, we toured a couple hotels and ended up for the night in the Baltu, scummy sort of place that seemed like dirty business goes on there. Can’t explain why. Tonight, and likely from here on out, we’ll be in this room at the Bekele Molla. We spent equiv. of 25 dollars on it tonight--a big woven plastic mat and two pairs of flipflops so we don’t have to touch the floor, new sheets, and a new blanket. I intend to save a Miranda bottle and have fresh flowers in here.

Must go to sleep.

Day two: 09.10.04

09.11.04--Day Three

Jet lag again. Andy and I were both lying awake at three this morning. I hit sleep so hard yesterday at 10:30pm (woke up with my clothes still on) that I thought for sure I wouldn’t wake up early.

At breakfast yesterday we met another American couple and their son who are staying here. They’re from Portland, their son’s name is Hawk, the man, Mark (?), works for a food NGO, and the subject of their midwife and doula and yoga classes that the woman, Elizabeth, teaches already came up. Despite all these, they seem really neat people. They invited us to go to dinner with them, but we got home too late. Then we thought maybe we’d bring home dessert and share with them, but yesterday was New Years (Happy 1997 in Julian terms) and we got trapped in a restaurant that wanted us to be there doing the elaborate coffee ceremony and then dancing until midnight. It was an Indian restaurant, and though the food wasn’t terrific, it was way better than the Ethiopian food we’d had the night before.

Yesterday was difficult. There’s a lot of self-judgement that goes on when you’re traveling, I think, at least in this head. “How should I be experiencing this? How should I be interpreting this? How can I be not fitting into (my own) stereotypes?” It’s such a slow down. I have to remember to let this experience be its own experience and that I’m going to fit into somebody’s stereotype, and that its ok for me to feel uncomfortable and lost or just bugged by some things here.

The people asking for money thing is the hardest. Not because I feel so sorry for them, or even guilty, which I promptly feel guilty about, but because you start to feel so had, so targeted. And because I really don’t know what to do. There are people that everyone would give to, other Ethiopians included, and then there are the kids and some women, and old men. Oy. Its frustrating to know you’re really not making a difference anyway.

A group of young girls came up to me yesterday all in white (for Ethiopian Orthodox New Year) and clapping and chanting with a drum. I smiled and they were encouraged and surrounded me and sang the song so earnestly, I stayed put and kept looking in to their little upturned faces. I knew they would ask for money afterwards, and we were in an awkward place of being on a busy road sidewalk in front of a long line of guys just hanging out and leanign on their cars. The girls finished their song, and then immediately held out their hands for money. Ah! What do you do? I gave them a 10 cent piece each--which is about 2 or 3 cents American--and clapped and told them Bravo! and then walked passed the group of old men on crutches who started coming in at us like geese when you’re holding bread, when the money was pulled out.

We also discovered that the beautiful little begging boys know how to say more than, “Mother father dead.” We heard, “no shoes,” and “hungry.” Sigh.

We tried to find a massage place, and ended up in a steamy room of all men, who looked like they were there for physiotherapy. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a token translator, so we decided to wait until today or tomorrow for the massage.

We went to the National Museum and looked at Lucy and other fossils. Coming back, the cabbie asked if we really believed the whole story about Lucy being the first homonid. Obviously he didn’t, and when asked why not, he explained how he had converted from the Orthodox religion, which was just tradition, just culture, to a religion that made sense, that had logic, I can’t remember the name of it, some new sounding Christian church. He said, “They say Lucy is 1 million years old, but in the Bible, it says the whole world is only six thousand and something years old.” Anyway, he also explained the blue taxis (road taxis) and yellow taxis (airport and hotel taxis)--different licenses. He had a yellow one, but it beats me how he knew we wanted to head back to our hotel, and not just go somewhere.

Stopped for a drink at a little café type thing and got glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice and grapefruit juice. All over people are selling 8-foot bundles of thin sticks they will burn tonight at their New Year’s celebration to bring in a better year.

This trip is a strain on Andy and I, neither one of us being familiar with how to travel and have to reference someone else the whole time. Also, Andy hasn’t really relaxed here. I’m a little worried about him, but I guess he is still waiting to meet Emily, his “boss,” and see what his work will be. In two days we’ll be in a routine that will last for two months. I have to remember that we’ve really only had two days here, a day and a half if you consider that we slept for most of the first day.

Andy’s down having breakfast already. I think I’ll join him.

Day one: 09.09.04

09.09.04: First day


Jet lag is real. I wouldn’t believe it at first--we were only tired because of three days of flights and sitting in airports, but now I’ve been lying in bed for two hours trying desperately to fall back asleep and it’s not happening. It’s nigh on to 5:00 a.m. now. I’ve heard three big airplanes go over, lots of dogs, and Andy getting up to see if sitting downstairs and watching some Ethiopian TV will help. It will not, apparently. He is back and couldn’t get it working. And, “the British newspapers are horrible. They’re impossible to understand.”

Yesterday morning we arrived at our guest house here at 4:30 a.m. or so. The taxi from the airport drove us crazily swerving down pitted roads to avoid the deeper potholes. I didn’t even think at the time about our “rolly bag,” as they say on British Airlines, slung on the top of the car and sitting there w/o anything attaching it. It survived, obviously. So did we, though I felt bad for the other people staying here. Everything here is marble stone and tile, so any move you make echoes tremendously, and the keys in our doors are loud and rattley. Although we have a private bathroom, ours is the only room with it across the hall. I wish the whole place didn’t have to know when we were getting up to go to the bathroom. We’ve both been twice tonight. I think our bodies are digesting at their daytime rate.

Morning is finally getting on here. Outside, the first of the day’s call to prayer just sounded. “Allaaaaaaaaaa-hu akbar!” God is the greatest.

We let ourselves sleep in yesterday, though I argued the best way to deal with jetlag was to make yourself get on the local schedule as soon as possible. Andy argued we hadn’t had more than bite-sized chunks of sleep in 72 hours and we needed what we could get. At 8:50 am (breakfast closes at nine) we went down for breakfast. Basil, one of our fellow guest housers, a British man who told us upfront “I don’t know much about the Americas,” was still eating. He assured us we weren’t too late, that he has come down much later than this and still gotten breakfast. He explained the straw strewn all over the hardwood floor in the foyer; it was a tradition that came from having earthen floors. It was put down in times of celebration. The day before had been the owner’s birthday.

A beautiful young woman brought us each a glass of fresh orange juice (yowee, on the tart side) and three delicious slices of fresh pineapple. Then she brought Andy four slices of toasted white bread and a plate of curly butter slices with a thin jam in a puddle to the side, and another plate with a perfect little round omelet in it. Basil noted out loud, “Notice how they serve the men first, here.”

I wasn’t’ sure how much English the young woman knew, and didn’t want to make her feel awkward (maybe it wouldn’t have) so I only said, “Yes, I read that.” So? Tradition is tradition. I read the whole of The Da Vinci Code on the airplane(s) coming over and am a little tired of the whole worshipful feminine stuff right now. I can (finally) acknowledge that there are fundamental differences between men and women, but I can’t handle the whole natural superiority of women thing. Equality is equality. Union is only meaningful if both parties bring similar-sized offerings of. . . well, everything, I guess. (The book’s other two main flaws: 1. Despite going on and on about the divine feminine and having one of the two main characters be a woman, there wasn’t a single female perspective throughout. Even the explanation of secret society’s way of experiencing god, through sexual union, was only explained for men. 2. The romantic subplot was weak. This was somewhat inevitable because the whole book takes place in a frantic 36 hours or so, with very little of that time free of action, providing a space where romance could flower. So when at the end the two characters kiss (even though as soon as Sophia is introduced on page 8 you know what is going to happen) it seems too odd.)

Not long after, the beautiful young woman brought me a plate of toast, a plate of butter and jam, and a plate of omelet. Plain, but so good, with sauteed onions and chopped tomatoes cooked in it. Basil called to a woman he saw through the door, headed outside. “Aneesa, come meet our new guest mates!” Aneesa is a warm, focussed looking woman with short brown hair and very few angles. I can’t place her accent, though she said she is here studying from a British university (I can’t remember which). She wears heavy-rimmed glasses like mine, is probably 5.5, and wears loose, knit clothes. She is here following a (rare) successful NGO whose mission is to prevent/stop/reeducate about female genital mutilation. She is in Ethiopia for two and a half months. She asked us what we were doing here, and I passed the question to Andy, “You want to explain what were doing?” He did not. “I can’t explain it now, I’m too tired.” Aneesa graciously excused us, “I know what jet lag is like. I’ll ask you again later.”

When we were finished eating, we came back upstairs and went to bed again. I slept until 2:00 pm, when Andy woke me up with the valid warning, “We will be up all night if we keep sleeping.” I think it’s just been so long since I had all the sleep I wanted, that I forgot you could get enough and want no more.

We showered, (it’s a handheld shower head and Andy drenched the bathroom somehow), dressed, and then waited until a HUGE downpour stopped, then went walking. The road we’re just off of has about 20 embassies or ambassador residences (they’ve all got huge handpainted signs pointing to them) so we figure we’re in a fancy part of town.

There were a lot of people, mainly men, of course, out and about. Groups of young boys connected shoulder to shoulder with their arms crossed over each other’s shoulders, marched in laughing lines making weird noises as they got closer to us and laughing when they’d passed. Tiny boys with big beautiful eyes look deep into ours as they skip along and keep pace and say, “mumble mumble mumble mother father dead mumble mumble,” until some nice teenage boy says something to them sternly, and they skip away. There is a song the begging boys sing, and it’s lovely. I’m going to record it before I leave. These kids are really so beautiful. Most everybody is beautiful. It makes me feel pasty and bland and ugly.

The birds just started outside. Daylight must be coming.

There were herds of goats on side roads, and men and boys carying them around on their shoulders or dragging them unwillingly on ropes. There are chickens in big boiling over pens in markets and cats that pick their way through muddy streets, and dogs that wander seeming aimlessly. We only saw a few dogs (of all different mutt breeds, unlike on the reservation where they all looked somewhat the same) but last night about 11:45 when we got up the first time, this whole quarter of the city’s dogs were communicating and there were barks and howls and yips and yaps and woofs; it crescendoed after about 10 minutes and you could tell there are many dogs in Addis. I don’t know what set them off or what eventually calmed them all down again.

We wanted to eat Ethiopian food on our first day here, and found ourselves in a restaurant on a little side street where the guard at the entrance saluted Andy and shook my hand warmly. Then more beautiful young women offered us coffee (no thanks) and a menu. After three or four tries at ordering and being turned down with, “We don’t have that today, you should try our lasagna. It is very very good,” we tried the lasagna. The young women turned on some loud reggae music for us, which Andy thought he recognized as a famous South African musician.

We walked some more and found another restaurant that had Ethiopian food. The place was really neat; we sat in a yurt looking thing with goat-skin stools around the outside, and each got a little round basket table. Our waiter brought is a big platter of injera with a sampling of dips and sauces. Unfortunately, neither one of us liked it, really. This is a big disappointment and a bit worrisome. I’ve only had Ethiopian food once before (Dave Buehler’s house) but I loved it then. Andy’s had it several times, and liked it the other times, so we’re hoping it is just this restaurant. For me, it was just too greasy or meaty or both. Ugh. I’m in trouble.

When we came home, we went pretty much straight to bed. When I woke up to go to the bathroom at 11:45, I was starving, I don’t know why, so I ate one of the granola bars we brought with us. I’ve had three others tonight, and Andy has had two, so we’re going to be out soon.

The curtains out to our balcony are beginning to show light through them. I can hear someone down at the entrance/driveway walking around and moving things and talking quietly. We have two more days in Addis, then we go south. We’ve got to make these days great.

andy figures out the camera

lips

the question remains, do we have space for this program on the laptop?

Lips

still figuring this out. . .

more (test) driving

More test driving. Bangladesh, not Ethiopia.

Test drive

We leave in 2 days. At least the potatoes are dug. They came in three colors, red, white, and blue. Mostly blue.