05-AUG-B-4
EVENING AT
DINNER, COFFEE CEREMONY
AND THE
ERITREAN FESTIVAL CELEBRATION’S FINALE, THEN A FULL DAY AT HAZHAZ HOSPITAL IN
FIRST DAY OPERATING WITH HERNIAS AND GOITERS SCREENED AND THYROIDECTOMY DONE
WITH A RETURN IN RAIN TO A FAILED ATTEMPT AT INTERNET CAFÉ CONNECTION
August 8,
2005
We were invited last night to dinner at the home of a special public spirited family who had hosted prior medical missions at their home, by turning out the whole family, including the uncles and aunts, and elders in their finery. A few of these were at risk, cooking over a roasting fire of charcoal in a brazier, especially at the concluding coffee bean roasting ceremony. I had seen this at the home of Haile Mezghebe and had photographed his wife in the middle of the ceremony of the special coffee service. I am told that after the multiple steps in making the coffee up from freshly started bean roasting to the first serving (after the pot had been heated three times with discarded brews) the guest must immediately respond after the first sip “Tahum" = "Delicious” or the hostess must throw it out and start all over again from the beginning.. I did not make that social faux pas, so had watched after the dinner and a number of courses from the Negira bread (like that which I had had in ‘Ethiopia not that far away part of which this once was,) and the separate courses, of what seemed to be a spicy lentil sauce and chick peas (“hominy” to US southerners) we also had an Asmara beer—label saved for further scrap book verification.
We left somewhat early since we had wanted to take in the last day of the Eritrea Festival, which is like a giant theme park, market with containers spilling out the contents of what looked like a used clothing bale. We paid the entry fee, and then went inside to be accosted by spitting camels that were hobbled as they squatted in front with the fancy saddles and awnings, even one with a love seat built for two. We went in as the subject of a great deal of fascination since I believe we were the only non-Eritreans here, and most of us were African American, so causing a double take when they encountered at least one white skin in the crowd.
There were band platforms with the high amplifiers and sound
effects form a screeching mass of fans ululating. There were men in camo army uniforms and
swinging sticks to be sure the crowd stayed back and did not mob the platform. The whole crowd seemed to gyrate, with the
shoulders giving occasional seizure like jerks. One could be convinced that the
whole crowd stood still, and that the occasional distortion of movement was
caused by the observer’s head being twisted.
I could hardly thread my way through the curious but courteous crowd, as
we passed through the group, and saw a few displays of the kinds of hovels and
huts that were part of the anthropology of the cultural displays of their
religions and cultures of
NOW I HAVE BEEN IN THREE OF THE EFOUR OF
AMARA’S
HOSPITALS AND OPERATED IN THE ONE NOT OFTEN USED, SINCE IT HAS NO AUTOCLAVE THAT FUNCTIONS.
Today has
been mostly hurry up and wait. We waited
a long time to get set up in the
We picked
out an indirect inguinal hernia of a rather standard size to show the two
students and for me to become acquainted with Dr. Hebro, a woman surgeon who is
going to be brought up to speed by me in goiter removal, as well as several
general surgery cases, although we are operating from a new and different list
we have there than the one which we had pre-screened at Halibut Hospital where
the majority of our teams had gone today.
There was also a rather imposing goiter that I had picked to be the
demonstration run for the first of our thyroidectomies. I learned that Dr. Hebro had gone to school
at the
I returned from the OR day to give a go at the Internet Café across the street from our hotel, and I found that the slow speed of the service never did let me access my account at GW, but I finally did enter my name in a web search, and found the Home page and tried to get access to my email through the Home Page. When I had typed up the whole message to be sent, the machine replied that it could not be sent as directed, but had to be tried again at a later time even though no message had been saved. So, that exercise was a bust.
I then took
Amy and Sherri aside for the promised tropical medicine and surgery lecture
tutorial for three hours, using the lap top to teach them all about the
conditions they would be seeing. I also
walked out after the rain to a number of tailor shops, now e of whom were
wiling to sew up my backpack, until I went to the Zebra leather shop, and paid
25 Nafka for the sewing of the rend that the mountain expeditions in Azerbaijan
had rendered it unfit to be closed. I
noted that the extensive collection of postcards I had been writing on many
occasions has gathered bulk while standing in the cubby hole at the front desk
and since it was now Monday and the three days since which they had been parked
there, I wondered if some were actually going to get the stamps and post them
off in the mail. “Oh, you can come to
get them to carry them to the Central Post Office any time you would like” they
responded. So I may have to spend a day
doing what the considerable effort cost me in
WE ALL WALK THE STREETS
TO AN ITALIAN RESTAURANT—
THE RESIDUAL OF COLONIALISM
We gathered
up those who were still mobile, since a few have gone down already with some
kind or another of the malaise, that comes form being in summer in a hot environment
and suddenly finding themselves at a high altitude cool jacket weather eating
and drinking things they had no idea about before they arrived. We made our way across town along the crowded
streets to a courtyard restaurant, and entered to spend the evening talking
about the experience so far. A very long
time ago, when Haile had been a surgery resident at