Sorry for the absence of posting over the last few weeks. I had an unbelievably busy two weeks at work with medical student exams to write and give, and a resus training proposal to submit (project proposals and budgets have never been part of my job before), which coupled with rubbish internet access and then two weeks lovely, lovely holiday have meant a pause in the blogging. Hopefully I should be back to blogging regularly over the next few weeks, though, to fill you in on my holiday, and life and work in general here in Ethiopia.
I actually wrote the following entry before my holiday but owing to the lack on internet access never managed to post it.....
The pros and cons of a no appointment system
In Ethiopia very little is planned. You don’t get appointments for anything because for most people they can’t be reliably kept. There are a multitude of reasons for this, from things that happen at home to the buses that don’t have a timetable and just go when they’re full.
In some ways this is really frustrating. For instance, when Calum first arrived it took him nearly 4 weeks to be able to meet the president of the University and offer his services to the engineering department, because every time we went to see him, he had just left or was in a meeting or “in Addis”. He’ll be back later today, tomorrow, next week we were told. Can we have an appointment? It’s a possibility (everything is here!) but we don’t know when he’s free...
At other times though it’s a blessing. Last week I went with Biftu, the dean of the college of health sciences, on a little fact finding mission for our planned newborn life support course. Our aim was to visit all 6 hospitals in Harar, as wel l as the Regional Health board to find out if they would be interested in further training for their staff in newborn life support, how many staff they need us to train and what facilities they have at present.
If at home you walked into a hospital unannounced and asked to see the medical director or head of nursing and expected a tour of the facilities then and there, you would get laughed out the door. And can you imagine knocking on the door of the vice president of the regional health board, and him not only being delighted to see you, but immediately summoning the person who has the information that you need. Well that is how it happened here. We were met with a very positive response in every hospital (except the army hospital who didn’t want any foreign nationals anywhere near their base thank you!) I am delighted although now just a teensy bit stressed about just how much we have taken on with this course. While I think it is desperately needed and will be so beneficial for the population here, it is going to be a huge amount of work and I hope we can manage to do it properly given how much we already have to keep us busy here.
Anyway, I’m off on holiday for two weeks as of tomorrow so I can not think about it until I get back. We will be spending time in Bahir dar, Gondar, the Simien Mountains and Lalibela. This means no blog entries for the next fortnight at least, but also lots and lots of blog fodder and photos when I get back.
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