Jimma

You know that feeling when you are not sure whether or not you are going to be allowed on the plane, and therefore whether you will spend the rest of the week in Addis Ababa or Jimma? Me neither! At least, I didn’t know that feeling until last Tuesday… A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to join a team from Cure on an outreach clinic visit to Jimma, which is a town about 360km south-west of Addis. Cure does regular outreach clinics, but this was the first time doing one in Jimma. I was keen to join, but the slight hitch was that my visa was in the process of being renewed. The process that apparently “takes 2 days, no more, don’t worry”…. did not take 2 days. The team was due to catch the 3:30pm flight from Addis on Tuesday. On Tuesday morning, I still did not have a visa, and the visa office also had my passport. Thankfully, I have 2 parents, one each from 2 different countries, meaning I have 2 passports also. The decision was made to attempt to get me on the plane with my 2nd passport, although without a valid visa, the risk was I would be denied permission (there is no arguing with Ethiopian officials… at least none you are going to win). So my plane ticket was finally bought just 3 hours before the scheduled departure time, and I climbed into the minibus with the rest of the team, trying not to catch the excitement in case I was soon to get on the same minibus back to Cure. We arrived at the airport and Dr Tim cunningly suggested giving all 18 passports to one person to hand over together, hoping they wouldn’t notice the one missing the visa. It was an agonising wait, as my passport ended up at the bottom of the pile. But maybe that worked in my favour, as the check-in lady had probably lost the will to live by the time she got to mine. Whatever the reason, the tactic worked and I was handed a boarding pass! I’ve never been so happy to receive a boarding pass before.

Jimma! I liked Jimma. Its much smaller than Addis and feels a lot more like Africa – if you know what I mean. The hotel where we stayed was great. It was nice to get food other than Injera (the Ethiopian staple) and it even had a swimming pool which I made use of. Wednesday morning we set out for the hospital where the clinic was being run. Turns out, there had been a communication breakdown somewhere, and our team was not really expected… or something like that. I only got this 2nd and 3rd hand. So there was a lot of people running around, moving things around, talking, waving arms, etc, without noticeably achieving a great deal. But a couple of hours later, we were underway!

If anything, the children that attended this clinic had even more severe deformities and more dramatic problems than the children I’ve seen at Cure. Apparently this is not unusual – they often save up the “dodgy” cases when they know there is an outreach clinic. I wasn’t sure what my role would be in the clinic, but I soon found myself being called on by the surgeons to give my opinion on various cases. Eventually it morphed into the nurses bringing me cases and saying “this one is for you Dr Julie”! All the doctors here go by Dr “Firstname”. I have tried to explain that I’m not a real doctor! Despite the surreal feeling at the start of the clinic of being sent children with severe deformities to assess and give my opinion on, I settled into the routine and enjoyed being part of the clinic. It was a challenge trying to solve such complex problems with very little resource available. It was also a challenge just figuring out how to do the assessment, when I was often just in a dimly lit corridor, with one chair if I was lucky, and often with a crowd of interested patients waiting to be seen, crowding around to watch.

It had its heart-breaking moments too though. The hardest cases are the ones where you know there is very little you can do. The parents bring their along children with such hope in their faces. All you want to do is tell them something, anything, that will improve the situation. But for some, there just aren’t any options, particularly without the resources available that we have in the West. Its so hard to tell the parents you can’t offer them any solutions, particularly when they look at you so hopefully. It was brought home to me just how hard it is to have a child with severe disability in this country, when a 6 year old with multiple problems was brought to the clinic and the “aunt and uncle” who brought her (not her parents) wanted to leave her with us and told us that they didn’t want the child, while she was sat there listening! But most of the parents and carers seem to be doing an amazing job, with very little support.

The second day of clinic brought much of the same. Then yesterday (Friday) we returned to Addis. I really appreciated getting out of Addis and seeing another part of the country. And also another aspect to life, outside of Cure. It was good also to have time to think through and prioritise the time I have left, as I am already almost half way through my visit here.

Other than Jimma, I have continued to see patients in the gait lab here at Cure. The week before Jimma, Cure hosted a 2 day training course for the orthopaedic residents and fellows. It was on gait analysis and clinical assessment, so I was asked to give a few talks and help out with the workshops. That was fun, and great to get to know some of the trainee doctors. We also did a live demo in the gait lab, with one of the residents as a guinea pig – that got a few laughs! My roomie, Dorothy, had her birthday that week too, so we found a lovely Italian place for dinner.

I so much appreciate all your prayers and support. Please do continue to pray. I’m aware how fast time is going, so please pray that I would prioritise time well. I’ve been struggling with a dodgy tummy on and off, so please also pray that doesn’t impact things too much. The more time I spend with the Cure team, the more I am impressed by them and the work they are tirelessly doing here. Please pray for them also, that they would continue to have the stamina, compassion and wisdom they need to daily care for both the physical and spiritual needs of the patients they serve.

By the way, you got the very abridged version of the visa saga (you’re welcome!). The addendum is that I’m still waiting on a renewed visa (apparently this is also “no problem”). Just before travelling back to the airport in Jimma, I had a request that I send a different photo for my visa application, because the one I had given them was the same one as the one in my passport… you get the idea!