An Ethiopian Thanksgiving

Another week has passed, this one as quick as ever. This last weekend,
Addis held the biggest road running race in Africa. Not able to miss
up the opportunity of a lifetime, many of us ferrangies at the
hospital signed up for the race. Due to sickness, meetings, and a
hostility threat put out by the American embassy only five of us ended
up doing it. This race was much unlike any other I've done, because it
is Africa you know. About 32,000 runners were all very jam-packed
throughout the 10k race, and me being stuck somewhere in the middle.
It was a lot tougher than I though it was going to be also. Addis is
at an elevation of 8,000ft, almost 2,000ft higher than Gimbie. This
and the fact that it was a very hot morning made it extremely
satisfying to cross the finish line. Afterwards we all sat down and
had avocado and papaya juice, wow was it good.

After returning home to Gimbie it was back again to triage. The most
interesting patient from this week was that of a man with a swollen
stomach. We often have men come in with this problem, there stomach
fills with fluid, for which I'm not sure what reason. The solution is
easy though, they are just admitted to the hospital, where their
stomach is drained by a catheter, sometimes up to three liters comes
out. This man was different though, beyond his stomach was a
cantaloupe sized sack that also appeared to be filled with water. The
weird thing was that he could push the contents of this outer sack
into his normal stomach cavity. I'm not sure the outcome of this case
yet, but maybe I'll soon find out.

In other news this year was the first year that I've been away from
home for Thanksgiving. But, we celebrated it twice, so it almost
evened out. The real Thanksgiving was spent with the rest of the
Americans, about 20 of us, at the Johnsons home. It was great, and had
all the right things for a proper vegetarian thanksgiving meal. We had
mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, rolls, pumkin pie, vegetables,
cookies, guava bread, gluten…. the list goes on and on. It was
amazing, I also got two packages that day which made it especially
good. One from my dad, and one from Walla Walla. That night, a group
of us went to the stadium and played American Football and also some
Ultimate Frisbee. We instantly had our whole field surrounded by kids
watching us play. It was great fun, except for the fact that I rolled
my ankle on a rock.

Our second Thanksgiving was today, Sabbath, up at our house. I would
have to say that it was even better than the first. We celebrated a
second one because the hospital administrator Paul was in Addis
attending meeting during the first one and he felt a little left out ;
). So we had to have another. Man was I ever bummed. This time we had
mashed potatoes, stuffing, amazing gravy, beans, rolls, green beans,
parsnips, roast, amazingly amazing pumkin pie, papaya pie, papaya
cobbler, just to name some of our food. It was amazing.

This week should be another full one. Tuesday, I'm headed to a clinic
for a couple of days, so that should be another great experience,
other than that it should be a normal week…except for those unexpected
things that always seen to happen. So keep me in your prayers, and
have a great week also.

November 20.

A lot of time has past since I last wrote. Almost three weeks in fact.
I've now been here two months. One-third of my time is gone, but by no
means was it wasted. One thing that's new is that I have now watched
my first surgery. It was a C-Section and it was also the most intense
thing I've ever seen. My job was to assist the anesthesiologist by
holding the oxygen mask on the patient. This gave me a great view of
what was going on. All in all the surgery went quite well, although I
didn't feel quite so good. After the baby had come out and Dr.
Annete was checking the placenta, I started to feel sick.
Luckily there was a chair nearby and so I quickly sat down; I was still
still holding the mask on the patient. Nearly fainting during a
surgery is not exactly my idea of a success, but all is well that ends
well.

Last week, was time for a little break. Two of the other
volunteers that were here were leaving and they wanted to see part of
Ethiopia before they left. We agreed to join them, so last week was
spent in Addis Ababa, Bahir Dar, Gondor, and Lake Tana. We had a great
time. Gondor is called the "Camelot of Africa."  It has a whole bunch
of castles from the 18th century. Lake Tana was also great. We went
and visited some old monasteries and also the outlet to the Blue Nile.
We were told that hippos can sometimes be seen there although we
didn't see any. However, one morning on a run on the lakeside I saw a
leopard. Don't worry it was running away from me. The trip was
also full of good times, great food, and all that, but man is it ever
great to be back in Gimbie.

The hospital did have another crazy thing happen this week. Yesterday a
Chinese man was driven here by some of his coworkers (The Chinese
build roads here in Ethiopia). This man had been hit by a car
36 hours earlier. His neck was broken and he was already
determined to be a quadriplegic, but he was still alive. It was
decided that our hospital did not have the proper equipment to treat
him, so he was loaded into our Ambulance to be taken to Addis Ababa.
This morning we found out his fate. About halfway through the trip to
Addis, which is about eight hours, all the electricity had gone out in
ambulance. This meant no more oxygen for the man. Trudy Squires, a
nurse practitioner whose husband is the Chief Operations Officer here at
the hospital was driving the ambulance, they had to perform CPR on
the man for the rest of the trip; in the dark. I am told that the man
died one hour out of Addis, but CPR continued. When they arrived at
the hospital there was no doctor there. They waited for one and a half
hours before leaving to try and find a different hospital. The second
one was no better than the first and so they returned. Finally, at
4 a.m. a doctor showed up and the man was pronounced dead.

Now for a little better story.  About two weeks ago a lady from Spokane
sent us four hundred US dollars for Fletch, Justin, and I to use to
help kids go to school. A full year at the Adventist school it about
60 US dollars, so there was enough for six kids, plus a little
something extra to help someone else if we could. Yesterday while we
were at work one of the cleaning ladies asked us, through a translator,
if we could help her buy shoes for her two little boys. Fletch and I
decided that this was a perfect project for that extra money. We sent
the boys into town with the purchaser for the hospital, Buressa. We
could not accompany them because the towns people see that we are
helping these kids and not theirs and the end result is not a pretty site.
The shoes were bought, but we told Buressa not to give the shoes to
the boys till today, because we wanted a picture of them to send back
to the donor. Today, as I walked through the hospital the mother
grabbed my hand tightly and pulled it to her chest, then lead me to
where Buressa was standing. He was in a conversation, and while we
were waiting, she would not loosen her grip on my hand. Occasionally
she would lift my hand to her lips and kiss it and say, "galetoma,
galetoma" (thank you, thank you). I soon found out through Buressa
that the kids were ready to have their picture taken. I rallied up the
shoes and the kids and brought them to our house. Most of the walk was
spent with the mother's fingers interlocked with mine, she would not
let go. After we had taken the pictures we found out that this lady
was not even the mother, she was just caring for these two kids,
because they were orphans. With her eyes starting to tear up, she thanked us again before she left with the boys, who had rolled up their
pants so they could more properly show off their new shoes.

It again stuck me just how easy it is to make a difference here. These
shoes were eleven dollars per pair. This may not sound like a lot but
you must remember that this lady is probably only making about $30-$40
a month. For her to buy these shoes it would have been impossible.
This is just one story. There are many others like it that happen.
Just a thought, Christmas is soon approaching. Don't forget that it
is the season of giving.  Maybe go out of your way to help someone a
bit. It won't hurt you, and man it will make you feel good. If you
want, you can even send just a couple bucks here. Fletch, Justin and I
would be happy to find a worthy cause for it. Shoot even get your
families involved. My email is njkinne@gmail.com if you are interested.

November 19.

Sorry I've been slacking with the blog, but I just got back from an amazing trip through Ethiopia.  Here are some pictures from the trip.  I'll update the blog again soon and hopefully put up some more pictures.  Thanks for all your prayers!

November 1

Nov 1
 This week definitely had its share of challenges. The biggest one was
the problem with the water supply. City water had been off for a
couple of days here, so eventually the four water tanks on top of the
hospital had been used up. This is not a huge problem because we have
another 20,000 liter tank out front for back-up. But, they are hooked
up to different pipe systems throughout the hospital. The problem came
we it was realized that there where no more sterile tools for surgery
and the autoclave (a machine that sterilizes instruments) is hooked up
to the tanks on top of the hospital. There where six people waiting to
have surgery, some of them desperately when Paul (the hospital
administrator) came up to Fletch and I and said, "So, we have a bit of
an interesting situation going on." From that statement we knew
something very exciting was happening. The next hour and a half was
spent hauling water in bucket from the one tank to the other. There
were about 12 of us hauling these three to four gallon buckets so that
the autoclave could be turned on.

This wasn't the end of it. That first episode was on Wednesday and by
Friday the backup tank was empty also. We now had a much more
interesting problem because there was no water to be had. The city had
now shut off our water because we had not paid our bill, because the
hospital is out of money. They would also not give us an accurate bill
until we paid yet we could not pay our bill till we had an accurate
account of what we owed. There were now two options. One was to take
50 gallon barrels and go to the stream to fill them up and the other
was to send someone to go and talk to the Chinese, who are hear paving
roads, and ask them if they could fill our tanks with there tanker
trucks.  Justin, who had just gained connections with the mayor of
Gimbie Town earlier this week, called him to see if we could have the
water from the Chinese for free. He said we could, so Justin and
Henock (an Ethiopian Accountant) set out to find the Chinese. While
this was happening, Luke, Joel, Zach and I had left for the stream to
fill the barrels of water. After we had fill them and returned to the
hospital, we set out to figure out how to transfer the water. Just
then Justin and Henock arrive in this huge tanker truck. And so the
pumping began. The truck was about 10,000 liters and was a bit over
half full. We found a big fire hose and started pumping the water into
the tank. After about a half hour, a second truck showed up, this one
was about 20,000 liters. Needless to say we got the tank full on
water. Here at Gimbie God is constantly reminding us that He is in
charge of the hospital, not us.

October 26

Life continues going very well here in Ethiopia. This last Sunday I
got my first opportunity to speak. I was asked by the youth leader for
the division, pastor Ljellum (pronounced like flagellum with an "l"),
to speak at a youth conference small village not to far away. I agreed
and so the date was set. Sunday morning came, but with rain. Because
of this we were not going to be able to ride a motorcycle out there
like previously planned. So we rode in a truck out of town. About 10
kilometers out of Gimibie we turned off the paved road. What we turned
onto didn't look much like a road to me, put in from the US I guess.
Ljellum got out to check the "road" condition and found that it hadn't
rained there yet. So up we went in the truck. After about twenty
minutes of rough riding, the road got to bad to continue by truck, so
we started walking. We arrived at our destination after about fifteen
minutes. This "youth" conference turned out really to be for all ages,
but considering many people die here before age 50 it was a decently
young crowd.

When we walked up the first man had already started to preach, so we
just walked up and sat on the stage. The stage meaning a slightly
raised leveled off section of dirt with a cloth hung for a back drop,
a tarp for a sun shade and two benches set behind what looked like a
dresser that had been converted to a pulpit. After the first pastor
finished it was then my turn. I spoke about the love God has for each
one of us and how he desperately wants to be in a relationship with
us. To illustrate this had a volunteer to a whole bunch of push-ups
and squat jumps to receive a soccer jersey that I had bought in town.
I drew the connection that just as the Mankale (the volunteer) did
many things to get the jersey; God has done many things to be with us,
including dying for us. After I was done there were a few special
music features then Ljellum spoke. When he was finished it was time to
head back out. While we were leaving Mankale ran up to me with the
biggest smile his face. He told me that he now knew how much God loved
him and he wanted to share God's love to everyone. It was very
encouraging to here that the point I made was clear to the people.

As soon as we left it started pouring rain, so we knew we were going
to have to walk all the way back out to the road. It wasn't too bad
though, It took just over forty minutes of fast paced walking to reach
the paved road. After arriving back at the hospital I found out that
there was a patient in desperate need of blood. She had just had a
baby and had lost a lot of blood complications. It just so happened
that my blood type was the same type, so I went down to give. Let me
tell you, giving blood in Africa is nothing like giving for the Red
Cross. They stuck the biggest needle I've ever seen into my arm then
set the bag on a scale so they would know how much blood I was giving.
There was no stress ball to squeeze either so it was a bit more
difficult than usual.

Here's a fact, blood=life here in Gimbie. There is no such thing as a
blood bank, no extra units of blood anywhere to be found, mostly
because Ethiopians are afraid of giving blood. Because of this if
someone is in need, a donor immediately found and it goes from one
patient to the next, still warm and everything. I guess life is just a
little bit crazier here in Africa, and I'm getting used to it.