January 10

Hello All,

We are now back in Ethiopia after a wonderful trip to Zanzibar. Our
time there was absolutely great. We had a great time swimming,
relaxing and soaking up the sun.
All good things must come to an end though. It did feel a little bit
like coming home when we came back to Ethiopia. Fletcher and I have
gone back to our daily work at the OPD and Justin spent last week
tying up some loose ends. His time is done here and he left on
Thursday for Europe.  No sooner had he left that we got a new
roommate. In fact the day after he left Jacob showed up. Jacob is a 21
year old from Denmark who just got accepted to med-school but is
taking six months before he starts to travel around Africa. He will be
staying with us for a month, volunteering at the hospital before he
leaves for southern Africa.

The big event of the week was Ethiopian Christmas, which is January 7.
On Christmas Eve we came back from eating out for lunch to find that
an oxen had been killed in our front yard. I was severely disappointed
to find that I had missed the actual execution of the animal, but I
sure did get my fare share of watching it being cut up. The butcher,
who was apparently a professional, was armed with three weapons: a
sickle,   like the kind for cutting grass, a normal looking knife, and
an axe. It seemed to me he was doing quite a fantastic job breaking
the ribs with the axe into nice sections of meat. I've always known
that cows have four stomachs, but I had no idea that they where as big
as the are. Wow! Maybe the most disgusting thing of the whole ordeal
was the some of the kids that were watching got a hold of one of the
oxen's testicals. What better thing to do with a testical than try and
blow it up like a balloon….Some people's kids.

On Christmas day Justin, Fletcher and I where invited over to two
houses to eat. For lunch we were invited to our cook Dinke's house,
and for dinner to the home of the caretaker for our guesthouse, named
Eseye. We knew that we were going to be absolutely stuffed, but it
turned out to be even worse than expected. We showed up to vast array
of food at Dinke's tiny house, and knew that we were done for. You
see, it is considered an insult if you do not eat a lot, and I mean a
lot, of food when you are invited over to someone's house. After the
first full plate of food, Dinke kept telling us "nyatu nyatu" which
means "eat, eat". We did all manage to get a second serving of food
onto our plates, and finish them. This wasn't without sheer will and
determination though. WE WERE STUFFED, but, Dinke seemed satisfied
with how much we'd eaten. Finally we waddled out the door. Thank
goodness, 1 down 1 to go.

After lying down to try and sleep off our food most of the afternoon,
we started to devise a plan for house number two. Fletch came up with
what seemed like a fool proof plan. It was to slow play. In other
words to eat really slowly for the first 20 or so minutes, that way
when Eseye would ask us to take second, we could show her that we
still had food on our plates. After this we would eat more quickly to
finish our first plate of food, then maybe get less for second. We
hoped that this would at least throw her off.

From the minute we sat down our plan was foiled. Eseye apparently
decided that it would be good if she served us, instead of us serving
ourselves. Not Good. So we sat there as our plates grew and grew until
they were heaped with food. Luckily the food was again delicious which
made the task of eating it all a bit easier. The only problem was that
it seemed that every time I took a bite Eseye would plop another
spoonful of food on my plate and say "nyatu." Feeling very sick, I
finally took the last bite of food and shoved down my throat. Nope I
wasn't done. Eseye again got up and plopped food on my plate. This
continued on for sometime until finally I had won. Thank goodness.
Needless to say I wasn't hungry for about 1 full day and also felt
quite sick.

Oh the adventures of living in Africa. Sorry there are no pics but the
internet is too slow right now.

nk