Off With A Bang

My day in Addis started quite early this morning as I was awoken around 1am to the sounds of a wedding send off outside my bedroom window. There is no such thing as central heating or air in Addis and so a cracked window provides a nice breeze to the heat generated throughout the day. Startled awake, I heard Ethiopian chants, claps and cheers as the bride and groom were whisked away from the hotel. The party had been literally shaking the hotel all night with music and dancing and I was relieved that it had come to an end. However, as we all know, my insomnia can be a devilish thing, and I ended up tossing and turning and attempting to read until 2am before finally falling back asleep. A few hours later, I was up getting ready for the day and hurrying down for breakfast and my much needed macchiato. Dr. Dawit met Abed, the OB/GYN resident who is here as part of the MEPI grant Emory has with AAU, and I in the lobby and we hurried to Black Lion for morning report and Abed’s final lecture to the residents. 

On our way to the hospital this morning, I requested the Dr. Dawit put on Teddy Afro, my favorite Ethiopian pop star, as I often do when we are driving together. I think he finds it amusing how much I love the music and my bad white girl attempts to habesha dance. As we were talking about the concerts Teddy Afro had been holding in the area, Dr. Dawit mentioned that his next concert is a week from Saturday in Awasa, just south of here. Turns out the Dr. Dawit will be down in that area next week and has invited me to attend the concert! I could not be more excited. I’m not 100% sure it will work out, but I think it would be amazing.

After our academic responsibilities were done, Dr. Dawit and I met to go over the “to do” list for the trip. Unfortunately he is going out of town next week so we are cramming a lot of the work into this week. I think I grossly underestimated how much work there is to be done while I am here. There should be literally hundreds of patient data forms that I need to input into our online database in addition to whatever else needs to be done. One of our goals is to interview all of the residents and nurses we trained in an effort to get feedback regarding the usefulness of the training. The only issue is that all of the chief residents are on educational leave as their OB/GYN boards are coming up in December. Suboptimal, but I am confident it will work out. Also, Dr. Dawit suggested that I give a lecture to the medical students rotation through on OB/GYN so that they can potentially help in the VIA/Cryo clinic, which I think is a great idea although now I only have a few days to pull one together. Finally, we are hoping to set up Dr. Dawit and Dr. Hezkiel to hold another training in a few weeks with the rising chief residents so as to implement the training into the final year curriculum. In other news, Dr. Dawit is expanding our VIA/Cryo clinic to now run two days during the week at Black Lion instead of just one afternoon, and Dr. Hezkiel has brought one of the cryotherapy machines to his clinic in Debre Markos, a small town up north, to screen women from more rural villages. It’s so exciting to see so many efforts being put into place to maintain continuity and to sustain the program, and really gives me the confidence that we will have created a lasting impact at least in Addis.  Now I just need to find out how to fund it!