04-JAN-B-6

ARRANGEMENTS MADE WITH SOMALILAND AMBASSADOR AND ETHIOPIAN GONDER MEDICAL COLLEGE CONNECTIONS FOR THE NEXT WEEK’S DEPARTURE

FOR THE HORN OF AFRICA

With senior medical students Kevin Bergman and Juan Reyes (Jay Maguire is in Palo Alto on elective) I went to the new offices of the Somaliland interest section—the de facto embassy of an as yet legally invisible wannabe nation. There we met with the personable de facto ambassador, who makes the rounds of the Washington Offices as a lobbyist for recognition of his one-time state, the saner of the two halves of what was Somalia five days after the independence of both British Somaliland and the former Italian colony of Somalia. Each were independent states in 1960, but since that time the faction in Somalia (which has included warlords and some real potentates like the dictator Siyad Barre) the Somalis have been stripping Somaliland of what it once had and at one point even had jet fighters taking off from the airport of the city they had been sent out to bomb, then return to the same Hargeysa airport of the capital they had just been bombing. Warfare can always bring out bizarre firsts!

We talked at length, and he is not only a PhD in education—can you believe it—from the University of Michigan!—but a polymath in political science and other distinctions that make him an ideal man for the job. Within minutes we had already discovered several mutual friends, both in Africa and the Middle East, with most now in between in USA. We promised to get back with the details and all the data that I would generate for the help of this picturesque expedition. We are official guests of the president of Somaliland, and all our transportation, lodging and in-country security system will be on the tab of the highest ranking leader in the country—a duly elected one-man-one-vote democracy rare in Africa wealth neighbors.

I was then in a position to reciprocate, having Saad Noor come to GWU where I layered a group of papers etc. on him from the promised delivery of goods, then carried him off in introductions to Peter Hotez, Frank Ciafflo, and then a surprisingly long interview with Skip Williams who was eager to talk. We swapped plans and the future thoughts about the new African Center in GW

THE ETHIOPIAN VISAS, AND MAP DRUGS

AND PACKING PLANS WITH SUPPLIES

AND PROPOSED LECTURE SCHEDULES

I had proposed lectures (below) and had laid aside clothing to use in Africa which would make a one-way trip there along with books, journals and equipment—before realizing that most of this already carefully sequestered for medical missions is nearly irretrievable. I canot get to the areas in which the materials were stored, and now with the complete disruption (there are no doors upstairs, including the attic staircase) and everyting is pushed into toppled-over piles with no distincitions since they are covered with a layer of camouflaged drywall dust. What I had hoped to carry included a few lectures for which the handout materials are already on their way to Saomaliland and Ethiopia respectively. We will still try to pull out some semblance of a prepared trip, but there is less predicatablitliyt here on the Derwood side than in the somewhat less predicatable African third world.

PROSPECTIVE VISITING PROFESSORSHIP

Visiting Professor Lectures that may be available for medical education as schedules permit:

1) Management and Prevention of Surgical Infection

2) Management and Prevention of Endemic Hypothyroidism and Goiter in Central Africa

3) Addressing Surgical Problems in the Settings of the Developing World

I will attach abstracts or supporting materials, a brief CV and carry handouts that may be able to support the conference subjects

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