has been exceptionally terrible. Due to the fact that in early
December someone chopped through the phone cable, and now, that all of
Ethiopia is having internet problems, it's been awhile. In any case, I
hope you enjoy these blogs.
This week was again filled with both fun and action. For instance, I
got to help deliver a baby. Fletcher, Justin, and I have all become
decent friends with the amazingly upbeat Danish midwife named Belinda.
I really didn't do all that much, but believe me I was right there in
the thick of it all. I even got to cut the umbilical chord. Thanks to
God the baby was a healthy one. Here, at least one in ten does not
survive.
Tuesday was the start of another adventure, a three day clinic trip.
There where six of us that went on the trip. The plan was two spend
two days at the Guliso clinic doing both patient care and maintenance,
then the third day traveling to two other clinics and doing their
payroll and inventory.
The clinic head had done his job of advertising in Guliso and there
where about 160 patients signed up to see the doctor we had brought
along. There were also many who needed to have teeth extracted. That
is where I spent most of my time. I worked with the Ethiopian dental
nurse that we had also brought from the hospital named Siguy. It was
great, but also at times very disgusting. After each patient I
severely wanted to go back and brush my teeth again. Virtually every
patient had rotting teeth. When Siguy would check them with his probe,
pieces of tooth would always come out on the end of it.
Really the only thing that I didn't like about the whole dental
experience was when small children would come in. They hate needles.
Like really really hate them. So I would have to help hold the poor
kids down. Not fun.
On the second day, a young girl about the age of fourteen came in.
After a short examination it was decided that like many others she
would need and extraction. When Siguy told her this, she said she had
no money to pay for it. Being in a charitable mood I decided to pay
for the extraction for her. No big deal, it was about $2 US. They
funny thing was that then all of the sudden the next patient also did
not have money. I quickly realized what was going on and told Siguy
that I was not going to pay for this extraction also. After Siguy had
relayed this message, it was found that this second patient did indeed
have enough money to pay for the extraction she needed. Weird huh??
The food situation was a very lacking on this trip. But we survived I
guess. For lunch the first day we had three day only cold chiro (kinda
like a bean dip) and enjera. We vowed never to go back to that
restaurant again, you can be sure of that. From then on our diet
consisted of almost exclusively bread, bananas, and Ethiopian cookies,
which are hardly cookies at all, more like sweet crackers. No worries
though, I survived, and am even still healthy enough to write about
it.
Nk
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