December

If I had to choose a memory that I think will stick with me the best
for the rest of my life, I would have to say that it would be what
happened to me this last clinic trip. The plan was for me to meet the
hospital Land Cruiser on it's way back to Addis and meet up with
Justin and his dad, Fletcher, and some others and head out to the
Greenlake Clinic. On this trip we were to do the inventory and payroll
for the clinic. After a very antagozing trip on the Ethiopian public
transportation system, if it could even be called a system, I arrived
in Bako, the halfway point between Addis Ababa and Gimbie. That's
where the fun began.

Paul, the hospital administrator, decided that he would also like to
go out and have a look at the clinic. So we drove the first leg of our
journey, to a town called Kada, no problem. There, generally everyone
gets out and puts there stuff on pack mules for the 12k hike in. But,
it hadn't rained for a month and the natives said the road was again
passable, as it is not in the rainy season, so we decided to give it a
shot. Another factor was that we had arrived too late to make the walk
in before dark.

The road to drive on is about 5k longer than the donkey trail, so we
knew we had a lot of four-wheeling to do. It started out extremely
rough, but doable. So we continued. After about a half hour had passed
we noticed some dark rain clouds coming our way. Not good. By the time
we had reached a large meadow, where the road was now just grass, it
started to rain. So here was the problem, most of the "road" was made
out of the typical Ethiopian top soil, clay. As you probably know when
clay becomes extremely slippery when wet. Kind of like snow and ice in
fact. I think I also neglected to mention that our land cruiser was
packed full with nine people, and three of them had all there bags
from the airport, seeing has they had just arrived in Ethiopia. Two of
them, Jen and Heather, were PA students from Union College, who had
come to do there tropical region rotation for two weeks. They had come
straight from the airport and this was their first look at Africa. The
other was Justin's father, who also had just arrived.

To continue my story, because the Land Cruiser was so full five of us
where half the time running, half the time standing on the back bumper
and holding on to the roof rack. This was to lighten the load when the
going got extra rough. We continued on, getting more and more soaked
by the second, but we where still driving, that was the good part. The
road went through many small creek beds, and at most of them everyone
would also have to get out so as to lighten the load even more.

After about thirty minutes of this kind of driving two things
changed. One the road got considerably smoother, and the rain had now
soaked in to about an inch of earth so we started sliding. It soon
became that at every small incline we would have to push, and at every
decline, we would just slide, it didn't really matter what way the
wheels where turned. We finally, got to one hill where it looked like
we weren't going to make it. We had tried three or four times, but to
no avail. Paul, who was doing an absolutely amazing job, decided to
give it one more try. I followed him to the bottom of the hill, and
checked out the situation then was off. We had decided that the car
could maybe gain a little bit more speed if one set of tires was on
the grass on the edge of trail. When the land cruiser finally came off
the grass to dirt embankment, I watched in awe as it stayed on three
wheels for a good solid second. Needless, to say it did make it to the
top of the hill and so our journey continued. Not for long though.

Soon we found ourselves in another predicament, a long sloping hill
that went down into a creek bed where it took a sharp right turn and
went up the other side. The problem was that the hill was slightly
tilted, and in the direction of the tilt there was a deep rut. If
this rut was follwed into the creek, the car would head directly into
a 6ft water fall. Not good. Because of the slippage it seemed
impossible to keep the car our of the rut. After many attempts, we
still hadn't made it.

Finally Paul was able to take the jeep to the far side of the road the
swing back across just before the creek. From there he was committed
though and had to try and make it all the way across. No luck, the
jeep hit some kind of rock or rut and slide into the creek sideways.
No the Jeep was in the middle of the creek, parallel with it's
direction of travel. By now it was pretty much dark, and still
raining. We tried everything we could to get push, pull, or whatever
to get this thing out, but to no avail. The trouble was that there was
no room to back up, because we would back right over the waterfall.
After, we were all out of ideas, and now even more soaked because of
sloshing around in the sometimes knee deep creek water, we gave up and
decided that we would walk the rest of the way.

The guard that was with us told us that it was about a fifteen minute
walk to the clinic. What he did not tell us is that that is in good
conditions. But, after everyone had what they needed for the night we
set out. It was an interesting walk. Our shoes couldn't help but
picking up what seemed like pounds of mud with each step. I walked
with Gadisa, who had lost one of his sandals to the mud, and now
walked barefoot. He also had a newly split toenail. Not fun. To make
matters just a little bit worse one of the PA student had an asthma
attack, probably mostly due to the fact that we where at around
8,000ft. Finally we arrived at the clinic and settled in for a nice
and wet nights sleep.

The next morning we did our work and also go the Land Cruiser out. We
though we might have to enlist the help of many donkeys but it ended
up being that about 20 Ethiopian and a couple of shovels did the
trick. And praise God we did make it back out that day, and shoot, I'm
even still alive to tell about it.

nk