More Meetings and Mule Carts

Meetings, meetings, meetings. Note to all who are reading this blog: I am NOT on vacation!

However, please also note: I am not complaining. Nancy and I have accomplished a huge amount of work, in no small part because every meeting we set up actually happened at the date and time for which it was scheduled, with the people it was scheduled with. Believe me, this is nothing short of a major miracle.

SCOPE’s new UW fellows, Kate Pfizenmaier and Emily Robinson, arrived in Gondar Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday, the four of us plus Getahun (SCOPE’s manager in Gondar) met with Dr. Sisay, Dean of the Medical College and confirmed that SCOPE will hereafter fall under the purview of the Medical College which will function as SCOPE’s fiscal sponsor in Ethiopia. That meeting led to a second, somewhat confounding, meeting with the financial manager of the College of Medicine where we received the preliminaries for setting up a SCOPE account. That afternoon, we all met with the Vice Dean of the Medical College and several interested representatives of other Medical College departments. We introduced our new fellows and presented past the project results of past SCOPE fellow, Kristen Savage. Everything was very well-received and we are on our way to partnering with the Dept. of Nutrition.

That evening, Nancy, Kate, Emily and I conquered the 2 mile uphill walk to the Goha Hotel (sitting in meetings all day is doing a number on my physical fitness,) where we had a very disappointing (food-wise) dinner with Getahun and Dr. Shitaye—an old friend of SCOPE from the Gondar Dept. of Internal Medicine. The fellows were pretty much comatose from jet-lag by that time and I suspect they have no memory of the 5 mm-thin fried chicken planks we attempted to eat.

Thursday began with a prolonged (2 hour) call to prayer by the Orthodox priests. The road outside the hotel was packed with white-robed worshippers and we soon found out it was a holy day—St. Michael’s Day—and it looked like the entire city was on the move to one church or another at 6 a.m. Later, we all visited the Woleka Health Center, site of SCOPE’s ANC/PMTCT pilot project. Emily will be working there, as she will be evaluating a year’s worth of results re: the use of trained priest/religious women teams to increase the uptake of antenatal care and HIV testing at Woleka. Following that, we visited the North Gondar Diocese for the first time this trip. Unfortunately, the Archbishop, Abune Elissa, was away in Addis. However, we were able to meet with others there, to re-energize our relationship with the local officials of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and to discuss the possibility of a new partnership to help build out their proposed clinic.

Thursday morning, Nancy and I finally had time for some shopping. Many of you are aware of how much I loathe shopping, but shopping in Arada, the main market of Gondar, is a bit of a different experience than Northgate Mall. Of course, we were the only ferenjis in the entire sprawling warren of tight, dusty alleyways and we were promptly taken under the wing of a motivated, dreadlocked young man named Yohannes (I’m sure he received a cut on everything he helped us buy . . . ) He taught us about Ethiopian spices and incense and led us on a behind-the-scenes tour of the non-tourist part of the market down narrow, dark alleyways full of scrap metal, tool shops and an area where cow guts and abdominal fat pads were laid out on goat skins, being readied for the production of soap. I bought spices, incense and an Ethiopian coffee pot; Nancy bought scarves from a lovely but hard-bargaining Muslim woman who, of course, would not let me take her photo. By that time, we were so turned around by Yohannes’ intense, off-the-beaten-track guiding that we needed his help to find our way out.

Nancy and I hired a mule cart—something we’ve wanted to do since the last time we were here--to take us back for lunch. For some reason, two ferenji women mounting the mule cart in the middle of that crazy market was a hilarious spectacle for the locals, and we were soon surrounded by a crowd of amused shoppers, shop-keepers and children. The ride was fun, though quite a bit slower than a bajaj. The whipping of the mule by the driver bothered us both, but he assured us his mule was a good animal and was well-treated. Who knows if that was exactly what he said in response to our reprimands, but that’s what we choose to believe he said J.

Dinner on Thursday was, finally, a delicious one. The six of us SCOPE’ies had a fabulous traditional meal at the Fasil Lodge, complete with my favorite—very spicy lamb tibs (since it was St. Michael’s Day and therefore a fasting day for the Orthodox, Kefyalew ordered a platter of only vegetables.)

We sat there for quite some time, watching a little World Cup soccer and sharing lots of laughs (somehow we got talking about crabs—the kind that live in the sea—a creature Kefyalew had never seen and Getahun had never eaten.) My drawing of a crab, and then my sketch of how a crab pot works seemed to be particularly humorous to Kefyalew.)

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that in addition to finding Mike (Mickey,) our taxi guy from last year, we also found our trusty bajaj driver, Nur (or, rather, he found us. He recognized us walking across the street our first day in Gondar.) We’ve employed him again for the duration of our stay, and the fellows will carry on the transportation relationship with him after Nancy and I leave.

PHOTOS: learning to walk with a basket on my head, Woleka; lifting weights in the market; Nancy and the fellows, walking to Woleka; worshippers, St. Michael's Day; Emily and Mr. Dagne at Woleka Health Center; Arada market, Gondar; Ethiopian spices, Arada market; the mule cart, Arada market; dinner at Fasil Lodge; brothers, Arada market; Nur the bajaj drivers and the SCOPE'ies, Woleka.