If Addis Ababa were a movie, the title would be… A River Runs Through It. Or maybe just Waterworld! They warned us it was the rainy season, but I don’t think we realized quite how much rain. It rained most of the day today, and on the way home, water was literally gushing down the side lane of the streets white-water-rapid style. They also warned us it would be “cool”, but today it was downright chilly as we traipsed around the Jhpiego office with our coats on!
Our first meeting with Jhpiego today went extremely well, though. We were welcomed by Maria, the program manager at the office, and we were taken around to meet everyone in the entire office. It was a lot bigger staff than we were expecting—probably 20 people or so working in-house. Also, with the exception of the country director who is British and an intern who is American, the entire staff is Ethiopian; for some reason I was expecting more foreigners, but I think it's awesome it's mostly people from here who are running things. Today was just a meeting day. We met with a couple of people who managed the infection prevention program and also the country director, technical director, and deputy director. They told us all about healthcare in Ethiopia, and Jhpiego’s work specifically. We got to explain more of our purpose (and the projects from last year were super useful for explaining and stimulating conversation!) and had some really productive discussions about the problems Ethiopia’s healthcare faces and where new devices might fit in. It was really useful to learn about the infrastructure the government is working on to incorporate health extension workers who go house-to-house in communities to do basic education and health care checks because there are so many people living in rural areas far away from healthcare. There are so many additional complex factors that prevent people from seeking healthcare beyond just distance alone , including perceived expense, traditional beliefs, transport limitations, fear of bad outcomes and treatment at the hospitals… It was really eye opening to a lot of public health things I never have thought about. And I was so impressed with how knowledgeable, helpful, and open-minded everyone on the staff was.
We ate lunch at the office and got to have more injera, which we think was even better than the stuff we got in the restaurant the other day. Speaking of our dining outing, we learned from the Jhpiego staff that a typical tip in an Ethiopian restaurant is like 1 or 2 birr (aka 6-12 cents…), and since we didn’t know the protocol at dinner yesterday, so we went with the American 15%ish and gave them like FIFTY birr. No wonder the server looked so thrilled when we left… Silly Americans.
In between learning all about the healthcare dynamics in Ethiopia, the Jhpiego staff also took us out for Ethiopian coffee at this tiny little place that seems to be run out of someone’s house , just a short walk down the muddy gravel side street where the Jhpiego office is located. Ethiopia is apparently the birthplace of coffee (stories say it was discovered when a farmer noticed his goat was particularly hyperactive after dining on coffee leaves), but unfortunately none of the four of us actually like coffee and had tea instead! I’m determined to have some with milk before we go at least for the experience.
Tomorrow is more meetings in the office and probably a clinic visit in the afternoon, then the day after that we’re heading out in two different pairs to check out a couple different hospitals each in regions both north and south of Addis. Stay tuned…
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