addis, yo.

oct 3 2009

addis, yo.

i second hand smoked two ethiopian taxi-cabs yesterday.  actually, more like two thousand.

one of them, however, was well worth the asthma.  its driver was 75 years old, ancient by ethiopian standards.  he was once a priest, and one of the few remaining scholars who could translate the ancient language of gees.   on the ride from downtown meskel square, to my guesthouse in the burrough of sirbet, he took from emperor haile selassie’s (king of king’s) golden years, through the Italian invasion, to mengistu’s revolt and subsequent hanging in the mercato, and the kingdom’s slow decay.

the highlight of this story came when he found himself face to face with emperor selassie, chosen as a young genius in gees translation from over 30 others, and tasked with translating an ancient religious text.

he was presented to the emperor by the director of the ministry of education.  selassie studied him.

“you can translate the ancient languages?”

“yes, emperor, i can.”

“and what of your character?  is it suitable for my palace?”

“emperor, i cannot speak to my character.  if you want to know it, ask another man.”

the emperor laughed.  “he actually laughed!” my driver said, as he approached my guesthouse, having slowed to crawl so that he could finish his most important story, exhaust fumes piping into the cabin from underneath our seats.

i have been an addis for a week or so.  i am working in Addis Ababa University’s Black Lion hospital, preparing for a collaboration with AAU and the University of Toronto (along with the University of Wisconsin) to start the country’s first training program.  over the past decades, ethiopian physicians have been a large part of the country’s diaspora.  i have been told that there are more ethiopian physicians in chicago than there are in ethiopia.  it is the hope that by training people in the country, by offering academic collaboration at an institutional level, the country might increase its inertia, its gravity, and retain trained physicians in its system who will serve as future leaders and advocates for their countrymen.

this has already proved successful while training the country’s first psychiatrists (www.taaac.ca).  i am here to see if there is room for emergency medicine as part of the solution.  it is a different tack than the relief work I look forward to with MSF, a longer view.  i am thinking that this program will be measured in decades, but one hopes that in ten years, AAU will have a program that not only is important in addis for preparing young physicians for their future role in the country, but is a leader in eastern africa.

more later.  i am going to go outside and smoke.  some lada’s.  i’m off cigarettes.  (**insurance companies, and patients, please take note:  i have never smoked, ever.  it is a deadly habit.  deadly.  the scenes with cigarettes in my book, “six months in sudan”, were for effect, a signifier for the evanescence of human life and should not be taken literally).