Time is passing and I’m half way through my time at the hospital! The last couple of weeks have consisted of me learning more about leprosy, and now starting to plan the self care programme for the patients. I’ve learnt tons about leprosy, which has been great. My two nursing colleagues are brilliant teachers, and I have also had the opportunity to join the dermatology ward round with the lead consultant. The dermatology cases here are pretty advanced. Sadly, the range of treatments here is not as extensive as the UK, though there is still quite a lot of cross over.
Leprosy patients get completely free treatment but other patients have to pay. They get it cheaper if they have a ‘poverty card’ from the government. However, receiving free treatment still incurs other costs which can result in patients being diagnosed late with leprosy, such as payment for the very long bus journey (if travelling from a rural area), having to look after children, hotel stays whilst in Addis, and not being able earn money that day. Therefore, I suppose it is inevitable that some patients already have some disability by the time they get diagnosed.
I am trying to improve the self care programme that the hospital has for the patients who have leprosy, teaching them to look after their feet, hands and eyes. After reading a medical paper, it seems that the percentage of patients With leprosy who actually perform good self care is depressingly low. It seems to be worse in older people, and people who have had less schooling. Therefore, I decided to make a picture leaflet for the people that live in the rural areas, explaining how to look after themselves. As it is too far for them to come to Addis every month, they get the majority of their treatment in their own region. They mainly only come to our clinic once, when they get diagnosed. So the past few days I have been happily drawing people washing their feet, applying cream etc! I have found the feet the most difficult to draw… I am also going to put some English and Amharic on them, but am aiming for them to be understood by an illiterate person.
In terms of fun outside work, I discovered the Hilton hotel swimming pool last week. It is apparently on a volcano, so the water is really warm. It is the warmest water I have been in a month! Much warmer than my shower! I floated around in absolute bliss, admiring the beautiful trees all around the pool (Addis is good for trees – they put them everywhere) and then got out and had an extremely hot shower by the side of the pool. I suspected that the shower would be better than my own so had come prepared for a really good hair wash. My enthusiasm for the hot water clearly showed, the woman on the sun lounger next to me immediately said ‘I think you don’t have hot water where you are staying!’
I’m quite enjoying testing out the swimming pools, I went to one in the ghion hotel a couple of weeks ago. The hotel apparently has the nicest grounds in Addis – beautiful tropical gardens with flower beds full of succulents. However, the pool (the only Olympic sized pool in Addis!) was absolutely freezing! Though the bougainvillea were amazing.
Security was mental all across Addis on my Hilton swimming pool day, I had to go through airport security to get in and got my bag searched by the federal police at the gate. Apparently there was a big Africa UN meeting – it became apparent when I was in my taxi going home – loads of roads were blocked off and there were lots of uniformed people (more than normal!) with enormous guns. I don’t think I will ever get used to seeing people with guns! A tank rolled by through one of the busiest bits of the capital with a bunch of soldiers all with long guns lolling casually out of the tank. The soldiers looked very bored.
I am very slowly learning Amharic, but still being mistaken for being Chinese everyday. I reckon someone yells ‘Oi, China!’ At me at least 5-10 times a day! I managed to stump the poor children who live near by telling them I wasn’t Chinese. Their other guesses were Kenyan, and American and then they looked completely blank! Amharic is difficult – all the words are either long, or have difficult pronunciation. The word for thank you has 6 syllables, and the word for good morning changes dependent on whether you after addressing a man, woman or crowd.
I had a nasty incident with some coffee in the dermatology nurses’ staffroom. They very kindly invited me and my nursing colleague along for afternoon coffee (afternoons are significantly more lax than mornings) and gave me the strongest coffee I have ever had! I had a twitchy sternum for 8 hours after! And then a very unhappy stomach the next day, which may or may not have been induced by coffee… They then started to ask me about my life, the two most common questions I seem to get asked are ‘are you married?’ And ‘which religion are you?’
Unfortunately I am unable to provide the optimum answer to either of these questions! I have lost count of how many times I have been told I should ‘have children SOON’ (mainly by men, interestingly) and I’m generally met with complete bafflement when I say I’m not particularly religious. I was very sweetly informed, that the way to solve this problem is to simply ‘read the bible and love Jesus very much’.
Today I went to a market area full of stalls selling traditional Ethiopian dress and scarfs. Most are made on looms, and are mainly white with panels of embroidery. They were very nice. I struck up a conversation with two girls about what price I should pay for a scarf, and then they helped me along with some bartering. I didn’t actually end up buying anything that they had helped me with, because the stall holder refused to budge because I had ‘spoken in English’. So after an amusing session of bartering, and some discussion as to why I was not going to marry him, I left that stall empty handed. However, I had already bought 3 items from others so didn’t feel too bad. I also think I had scarf fatigue!
This evening I treated myself to a nice cafe trip. Union cafe is above Mesquel square and has views across Addis and the mountains behind it. The sun was starting to set, and I discovered that Addis has even more trees than I thought, and quite a lot of sky scrapers. One of my taxi drivers told me they are all banks. Mesquel square is the square that Mengitsu (the communist dictator) used to speak at. now it is mainly used for running practice, having a chat with your friend, playing football, drying your washing, looking lovingly into the eyes of your boyfriend etc. It is said if you run down every tier of seating you have completed a marathon! ‘Household names’ practice there every morning at 5am!
Union cafe was the most upmarket place I’ve been, and also the most expensive. It had great views, incredibly strong cocktails and a pretty good plate of nachos. All in all, a nice end to the day, marred only slightly when the taxi driver told me (after some miscommunication about where I was standing), that OF COURSE the Red Terror Museum (written all over said museum in massive letters) wasn’t called the red terror museum, but the ‘Addis Ababa museum’. Silly me.
Anna’s adventures 