Hi everyone,
It's been a few days since we have posted anything. I'll try to summarize our last few days now.
We were very excited to have passed our goal of 120 patients. Before we left Israel, we had thought that if we only were to get 100 patients, that would be fantastic because it would be a third of those who were treated by SACH from Ethiopia. Now we have crossed 120 and we are still climbing. It seems that things are slowing down now. The biggest problem is that many of the patients have changed addresses and are not reachable. I think that over 50% of the patients we see live in houses built of mud. Interestingly, many of them have cell phones, but I am not sure how long ago that started so contact information for many of them is simply not available. In any case, we will finish out this week and see how many we can get in total.
Thursday of last week, the head nurse, Salamnish, brought us lunch. She was really excited to feed us (it turns out Ethiopian mothers are very similar to Jewish mothers). She piled food onto our plates and when we said that we had had enough, she literally fed us with her fingers (which is a tradition in Ethiopia). Needless to say, we were absolutely stuffed, and still had to finish out the rest of the days.
We have had agreat time with the staff here and they have been extremely accomodation and welcoming to us. They have gone to great lengths to make us comfortable and make sure that we have everything that we need. We are all having dinner tomorrow (tuesday night). We actually invited the two doctors and the head nurse for dinner but thety insisted that they would treat us.
On the weekend, we went to a nearby mountain range outside of Addis. We went with some of the other hotel guests and it was about 3 hours from the city. best would be to show our pictures, but we can't do that from here because it's too slow and the picture files are too big. Bottom line is that it was an absolute paradise. It was untouched fileds and lakes with horses grazing and drinking from small brooks. It looked like something from pre-historic times. Dinosaurs should have been there. It was outrageous. There were hot springs too, which we indulged in.
So now we are on our way to the hospital and getting ready to get this day crackin.
This is our final week so we are trying to make sure we tie up all loose ends and try to get everyone into the hospital that we can. We are going to bring flowers for the nurse and the resident helping us and we bought a laptop computer for Dr. Etsegenet who has been enormously generous with her time. We have been using the computer up until now too, so it will work out well. For every child that we have seen, she has done an echo exam, which takes a long time and is also physically demanding.
So that is all for now. We are excited to see which number we will reach in total.
Hope everyone is happy and healthy...
Will (Liad and Liora)
It's been a few days since we have posted anything. I'll try to summarize our last few days now.
We were very excited to have passed our goal of 120 patients. Before we left Israel, we had thought that if we only were to get 100 patients, that would be fantastic because it would be a third of those who were treated by SACH from Ethiopia. Now we have crossed 120 and we are still climbing. It seems that things are slowing down now. The biggest problem is that many of the patients have changed addresses and are not reachable. I think that over 50% of the patients we see live in houses built of mud. Interestingly, many of them have cell phones, but I am not sure how long ago that started so contact information for many of them is simply not available. In any case, we will finish out this week and see how many we can get in total.
Thursday of last week, the head nurse, Salamnish, brought us lunch. She was really excited to feed us (it turns out Ethiopian mothers are very similar to Jewish mothers). She piled food onto our plates and when we said that we had had enough, she literally fed us with her fingers (which is a tradition in Ethiopia). Needless to say, we were absolutely stuffed, and still had to finish out the rest of the days.
We have had agreat time with the staff here and they have been extremely accomodation and welcoming to us. They have gone to great lengths to make us comfortable and make sure that we have everything that we need. We are all having dinner tomorrow (tuesday night). We actually invited the two doctors and the head nurse for dinner but thety insisted that they would treat us.
On the weekend, we went to a nearby mountain range outside of Addis. We went with some of the other hotel guests and it was about 3 hours from the city. best would be to show our pictures, but we can't do that from here because it's too slow and the picture files are too big. Bottom line is that it was an absolute paradise. It was untouched fileds and lakes with horses grazing and drinking from small brooks. It looked like something from pre-historic times. Dinosaurs should have been there. It was outrageous. There were hot springs too, which we indulged in.
So now we are on our way to the hospital and getting ready to get this day crackin.
This is our final week so we are trying to make sure we tie up all loose ends and try to get everyone into the hospital that we can. We are going to bring flowers for the nurse and the resident helping us and we bought a laptop computer for Dr. Etsegenet who has been enormously generous with her time. We have been using the computer up until now too, so it will work out well. For every child that we have seen, she has done an echo exam, which takes a long time and is also physically demanding.
So that is all for now. We are excited to see which number we will reach in total.
Hope everyone is happy and healthy...
Will (Liad and Liora)
sounds good, and also that you are well busy and content!! It sounds like you are the rich american cousins, but it is always great to be on the giving side!!(in my eyes). keep experiencing and inhailing all the good untouched view deep into you. It can serve you on a daily basis when you return. Hugs & kisses
ReplyDelete