My New Home

First of all, sorry for how late this update is. It’s been very busy here and the dial up internet is flakey. When I first arrived to the capital, Addis Ababa I spent a couple days with Marion McNabb. While in Addis I had my first tastes of the culture through going to a local restaurant for injera (a type of spongey flat bread that you use to pick up either meat or a some sort of vegetarian mixture) and the deliciously famous Ethiopian coffee, as well as a tour by a taxi driver around the city. After my 2 days I was picked up and driven two hours to my new home in Wolisso, Ethiopia at St. Luke’s.

A little background info: St. Luke Catholic Hospital and College of Nursing School is owned by the Ethiopian Catholic Church and started providing services on January 1, 2001. Currently it is the only hospital in the Southwest Shoa zone and the population served by the hospital is 1.23 million. The hospital has 169 beds total in 7 different one floor wards (maternity, pediatric, gynecological, medical, orthopedic, ophthalmology, & surgical), along with it’s own pharmacy and blood bank (both very rare here). The hospital is run by both Ethiopians and foreigners (Mostly Italians. They have a medical volunteer program that brings Italian doctors and medical students of many different fields for weeks or months at a time.) There are also Sisters here from many different orders and countries (currently 1 each from Ireland, the Philipines, & America, and 2 from Argentina).

The St. Luke compound consists of the hospital, nursing college, dorms for the students, the Sister’s living quarters, and the volunteers’/permanent staff homes. My living situation is quite nice. I live in a one bedroom flat with my own bathroom, living room, and kitchen. I live next door to Kiera, an Italian public health doctor. Two doors down is the Medical Director (Dr. Gaetano, Italian), his wife (Zama, Tanzanian), and their 2 year old daughter (Angela, cutest baby alive). The building next to me is the Guest House for the Italian volunteers. The compound is beautiful, especially at this time of the year right after the rainy season. Flowers are everywhere! The most popular being roses of various colors. We are at about 6,000 feet so it is cool at night and warm during the day.

Currently, I am working on the Orthopedic ward. It is helping me to see what “Ethiopian nursing” looks like, which is similar in many ways, but also very different from what they lack. For example we have to cut & fold all the gauze, clean the equipment before it is sterilized, there are only about 10 or less different medications we give, and (what kills me most) we don’t give pain medication before wound care. It’s partially cultural and also from the limited supply. We have children in our ward…I won’t go into any more detail than that.

Orthopedics has also been very beneficial in helping me to learn the 2 local languages, Oromifa & Amharic. Both are similar to Arabic so they are quite difficult to learn, even for foreigners who have been here for months or even years. My vocab consists of greetings and what to say when helping with wound care (thank you, good morning, how are you, yes, no, enough, more, small, scissors, forceps, do you have pain, I’m sorry). Not very much to make a conversation, but the common ground language for everyone is broken English. I am very thankful to have 2 Americans here with me, Sr. Elaine and Dr. Ken. Trying to learn 3 languages (Oromifa, Amharic, & Italian) has been quite tiring.

Here is my schedule Monday-Friday:
5:50AM: Wake up
6-6:30AM: Run with Kiera & Claudio (2 Italian MDs)
8AM-5PM: Work on the Orthopedic ward
1PM-2PM: Lunch with the Italians at the guest house
6PM: Mass (in English, except for Thursdays it’s in Ge’ez)
7PM: Dinner (either make food & eat in or go out to local restaurants with people)
8-10PM: Lizzy’s free time-> read, e-mail, talk/watch movies in English with Ken (we both need our non-language barrier time), visit with the Italians at the Guest House
10PM: Bedtime!

Weekends are random. Last week I went to a Medical Mission Sister community 1 hour away for their 40th year celebration. It consisted of a 2 hour Ethiopian Rite Mass in Amharic, 3 hours of many many speakers (in Amharic), and a community meal with traditional foods (one is raw ground beef…I have not tried it). This weekend I spent time setting up my apartment, doing chores, going to the market with some of the Italians to get local fruits & vegetables, and I went to the pool with a couple of the Sisters. The next couple of weekends I’ll be in Addis, so it is good to have a nice relaxing weekend.

This blog is much too long, but I will try to write more consistently so they will be shorter. Love and miss you all! Thank you so much for all the encouraging e-mails! To send a letter, it costs 98 cents and you need to write “Par Avion” on the envelope (you can also get stickers w/ this on it for free at the Post Office). Small, envelope packages only (for now).

CD I’ve been listening to most here: Chris Tomlin, Hello Love