Prince Akeem is leaving Ethiopia. He is coming to America, and will be arriving in Queens after a quick stopover in Istanbul.

 

Yesterday I had a going away party for myself. I am leaving Ethiopia next Tuesday. My time here is up, and while I am extremely sad that my year is over (yesterday marked the one-year period for me living here) I am grateful to have had such an amazing experience.

For my party yesterday, we bought two sheep, two chickens, and nearly thirty kilos of onions. The animals were butchered in my backyard. It was out of control. I hired a cook to help, and the dishes were being cooked until 2AM Saturday night. My party was a lunch get-together on Sunday afternoon. It was wonderful – a great mix of my friends, co-workers, Unity students, and adopted brothers. After lunch was served, there was even dancing. Pictures are currently being posted here. I had such a fun day, seeing all my random acquaintances all in my living room. The food was plentiful, as were the drinks. Some people even brought me presents with meaningful cards. Some even gave me a present for my sister! The woman who gave me a present for my sister, Meseret, I met at Sodere (the swimming pool resort outside of the city). When she found out I worked for an NGO, she asked if I could help her with the education of some poor kids. We, the JDC, were putting together a potential project, so I agreed to meet with her in Addis. When she showed me pictures of the kids a few weeks later, I noticed one had severe scoliosis. I told Meseret to bring her to mother teresa’s on Saturdays, where we see our spine patients. I later found out that the girl’s name was Bethelehem. We got Xrays, blood tests, and an MRI on her, and she was accepted to go to Ghana for spinal surgery. She just came back last week with a straight back.

 

Overall for my last week, I’ve just been wrapping up loose ends. I went to Gonder for a last visit, but it was special. Another story similar to my previous entry about the dictionaries. In August a mission of Canadian donors came to see the JDC’s operations. One of these donors gave me a bunch of sunglasses that were leftover barmitzvah/wedding party give outs, the kinds that the DJ people give away. There were roughly forty sunglasses. I was wondering what to do with them. At the time, I was running a health education summer camp for the Felas Mora community in Addis Ababa, for primarily kids under the age of 14. I decided to give out the glasses to the kids who came as a surprise. I told the kids that the Canadian foreigners heard that they were voluntarily coming to get health education 5 days a week and wanted to give them a reward for making this effort to better their lives, so they gave these glasses to us. After that day, our attendance increased from an average of about 35 to 60. I emailed the donors this information, and they shared it with their friends. I was contacted by a donor named Shira, who was moved by the story. She told me that she wanted to do something special for the kids and asked me for ideas. That very day, the drama troupe had asked me to buy them a keyboard so their drama’s could have music. I emailed Shira, and she liked the idea a lot. She threw a birthday party to raise the money, and sent us a check for $1,000 USD to buy the keyboard. There was a lot of red tape in getting the money here, and when the money arrived, there were no keyboards left in Addis. A new keyboard came from Dubai, and we bought it immediately. I gave the keyboard to the troupe this past week. Keyboard lessons are going to start this week for them. It was a nice way to say goodbye to Gonder.

 

Also one bit of good news-  we are trying to cure a patient with metastatic osteosarcoma. I have been responsible for giving him his medical regiment, which rick designed himself. It looks like the tumors in his lung have shrunk significantly. If this patient is cured, it would be a miracle.

 

This may very well be my final blog post. I may be deferring medical school, and if so this blog may stay alive (assuming I go abroad again). Otherwise, thanks for reading!

Monday was probably my best day in Ethiopia ever.

 

It all began in February. I was contacted via email from Altrusa Dallas Foundation. It is an international organization with clubs in 17 different countries and consists of women. Their international focus is literacy and “strives to be builders of women.”  They were looking for a potential project to do in Ethiopia with us, the JDC. After explaining to them about our different scholarship projects (nursing, elementary school, architecture, women’s university education) they decided that they could help with our women’s university education project. For this scholarship project, we are sending many women for their university education at Unity University in Addis Ababa, a private college. We just enrolled 15 new students, who are in a preparatory class before university. I am tutoring the students, primarily in English but also in Math and Science, to help prepare them for the university classes. My English class is focused around Harry Potter. We do vocabulary, group discussions, and communication exercises using Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone (which was hand carried to Ethiopia by Jeff Engler and Rob Meyerhoff- Thanks guys!). Even though Harry Potter is at a low reading level, some of the students were struggling with the book. I remembered from my elementary years the frustration of not knowing a word and having to look it up in the dictionary – it was necessary, but totally killed the flow of my reading. I wanted to get something to prevent this from happening with my students. I wanted to get them a Franklin electronic Pagemark Dictionary (of which I have my own as well – they are amazing) - http://www.franklin.com/estore/dictionary/MWD-520/. It’s cheaper at walmart.com - $22.

 

Anyways, after much discussion, Altrusa agreed to purchase 15 dictionaries for our students. They arrived in NYC in April, were hand carried to Israel in early May, and hand carried to Ethiopia this past Monday. I met the JDC rep (who was coming to Ethiopia on other business) in the airport at 6AM to pick up the dictionaries. I was so excited.

 

I was thinking about the best way to distribute the dictionaries. Even though I had enough for each student, I decided that a round of Harry Potter Jeopardy would be fun. The students were divided into teams, and I told them that the winning team would get one of these (and showed them the dictionary). Their interest was immediately peaked. Then one of them asked “will we each get one?” When I affirmatively replied, they were ecstatic. Game on.

 

Team Arseel and Rafiki battled it out over questions about the names, places, vocabulary, wizard culture, and famous wizards and witches found in chapters 1-6 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. A 100 point question was “The platform to get on the Hogwarts Express” while a 500 point question “He worked on Alchemy with Albus Dumbledore.” It was so much fun, and a very close match. In the end, it came down to one question “The school Dudley will go to.”  Rafiki won the game, and the dictionaries. I distributed the dictionaries and took pictures. They were all so happy and smiling. The other team, Arseel, looked so sad. After playing this game for 5 minutes, I looked in the bag and said “Oh, what do I have here???” with a smile and pulled out the rest of the dictionaries.

 

I will never forget the way they screamed. The atmosphere in the classroom was euphoric. Both teams were laughing  - some crying because they were laughing so hard. In the true Ethiopian way, the winning team was ecstatic that their classmates would get dictionaries too. I was on such a natural high from the pure excitement and joviality in the air. It was amazing. I truly feel honored to have been given the opportunity to have had such an experience.

 

For myself, and on behalf of my scholarship students, thank you Altrusa Dallas Foundation.

 

I just concluded my trip to the north with Jeff and Rob. It was a great time, and very different from my previous trip with Erin. This was a more historical/city hopping tour, as opposed to my previous cultural safari. We started our trip in gonder, a city I’ve been to multiple times but have not actually done ...   more »

Some of you emailed me saying that you couldn't find pictures on the blog. Look to the left on the home page. There is a rectangular box with the heading "Main Page". Under "Main Page" are the photo's divided into different albums (such as "an eclectic mix from the beginning", "awassa", and "1st gonder trip"). The albums are in chronological order. I just got back from a trip to the north with two friends from Columbia, and will post pics soon!

So this past week I took a trip to the southern region of Ethiopia called the South Omo. I did the trip with Erin, the JDC volunteer in Mumbai. It was unbelievable. We rented a land cruiser and driver for 8 days, and hit the road from Addis Ababa at 5am.

 

Our first day was nothing terribly ...   more »

Well well, a whole two months without a post.  Not to suggest that nothings been happening here, but for the most part I’ve been swamped.

 

The most interesting thing from a cultural perspective are the ethiopian weddings I attended in February. The end of Jan/early Feb is wedding season in Ethiopia because the weather is good and the ...   more »

I’ve now been back in Ethiopia for a full week since my trip in Israel. The trip was amazing. The reason I got to go was for the JDC mid year seminar. It was a time for all of the people in my program to get together and talk about the difficulties and successes we’ve had in the field. ...   more »

I’m in Jerusalem! I arrived here today on the 2am flight from Ethiopia, with 60 or so ethiopian immigrants/olim. It was quite a sight, seeing the olim all dressed up for the plane ride and their actions on the plane; the examinations of all the individually wrapped items in the meal, the mixed use of hands and spoons ...   more »

I love Gunna (Ethiopian Christmas). After my wonderful Tibs breakfast, I visited a my friends sisters house, and ate more tibs along with some of rick’s kids. We also had tej (Ethiopian honey wine. So good) and coffee. The little potent coffee’s are key in the this food marathon – they prevent you from falling into a food coma. We ...   more »

Ethiopians really know how to celebrate holidays.

 

Today is Ethiopian Christmas, or more commonly known as Gunna. It’s sorta funny being here, because I’ve now celebrated two Christmases, and two New years. The reason for all this, is that Ethiopians have their own calendar. It’s actually very similar to the Jewish calendar – both new years occur around September. ...   more »