#1 backpost: Nekemte

I realized that I haven't really been keeping up with this, and my 3 loyal readers must be really upset. I'm going to catch us up to speed on the past couple of weeks, which were marked by week #1 in Nekemte, Ethiopia, and week #2 back in Mtwara, Tanzania.

We went to Nekemte to work in their hospital's HIV clinic, where CHAI already has 2 hopital management fellows and 2 clinical mentors. There are so many people there because the hospital is a total mess, far worse than any other clinic I've been in so far. Nekemte is about 300 km west of Addis, which equalled an 8 hour drive through lush valleys and farmland. I even took a photo! The yellow is meskal, which is a popular flower in Ethiopia, used for decoration and celebration.

So we did an analysis of the hospital's clinic and made some recommendations to them for how they could continue to enroll patients in the clinic without adding more staff. We're pretty much becoming full throttle consultants, which is okay, but I think in the next phase of our work we're going to take our findings from clinics around Ethiopia and work with the Ministry of Health to make broader changes throughout the country.

A non-work related highlight of the trip to Nekemte was talking with a lot of kids in town. Although it's the biggest city in western Ethiopia, Nekemte is pretty small. It has 2 main roads that intersect, and everything is pretty much within a 5 minute walk. The first night we were in town, we noticed a sign saying that there was bingo in the center of town at a park every night, so of course the next night, we were there right at 6pm to start playing. Unfortunately, the announcer announced the numbers at lightning speed and in Amharic, so we couldn't follow too well. Fortunately, there was a big group of teenage kids who was more than willing to help us play. We didn't win, but we found out that in Ethiopia people think that bingo is an acronym which stands for Best International Numbers Game Organization.

Later that night, we were walking home from dinner when 2 kids came up to us and engaged us in the standard Ethiopia kid/white foreigner chat, which went like this:

kid: Hello! How are you?

me: I'm fine, how are you?

kid: I am fine, what is your name?
me: My name is Kate, what's your name?

kid: My name is China.

me: No it's not, what's your real name?

kid: My name is China!

kid's friend: His name IS China.

me: Why is his name China?

kid's friend: Look at his face!

[I looked. He looked like a regular looking Ethiopian kid.]

Eventually, China told us he wanted some food, and we found him endearing, so we said we would buy him something from one of the sellers on the street. We found one, and China picked up a package of cookies, then put it down and told us that he actually wanted a real meal, not just cookies. Well, you can't deny that it's a better investment, so we bought him tibs, which is basically little chunks of meat eaten with injera, and we went on our way.

The next night, we ran into China again, and Adam decided that we should buy him some pants and shoes, since he was shoeless and wearing some big sweatpants cut at the knees and tied with a rope. We ended up buying him a whole outfit of pants, a t shirt, and a jacket, then some rubber shoes. We left Nekemte feeling like we helped one kid on a very micro level and started the process of improving the hospital's system of providing ART on a more macro level.

After returning to Addis for about 10 hours, we were off again for Tanzania.