17th October 2011

Now there’s another thing that’s going to hinder the vegetable garden – an entire troop of monkeys were swinging on the veranda this morning, jumping from the veranda beams to the, as yet unidentified, tree in front of the house. I think there is some kind of fruit growing on the tree and so presume this is just a temporary picnic place for them. Talking of food, we saw the ‘chicken man’ this afternoon. I’m not sure whether we have actually managed to negotiate some fresh eggs or not as our Oromo isn’t that good yet and as you might imagine, he didn’t speak any English.

I set off at 7.30 this morning to visit the health centres out in the Kebeles (villages). After a very bumpy 2 hour drive, we arrived at Nole Health office, where there were around 55 community voluntary health workers awaiting a teaching session from the midwife travelling with us. I got the gist of the teaching session, but largely because Silleshi, the midwife, supplemented his teaching with animated gestures. Basically, the health workers were being taught about the various risk factors associated with pregnancy and how to identify these and how to detect post-partum complications such as infection and haemorrhage. The whole session took around 2 hours and encouragingly, there was quite a lot of discussion about their past experiences of delivering babies. One woman spoke of having to deliver triplets in the house, which was quite a surprise to both her and the mother, as she wasn’t expecting this. I’m not sure whether they survived or not though.

After this, I was taken to the health centre in Haru, which has recently received some new equipment – some of which was provided by MW. The team there were really friendly and happy to chat to me about what they were doing. Amazingly, just 2 weeks ago they set up a new system of medical record keeping for all people attending the health centre. This is fantastic news as I was wondering exactly how I was going to be following women up after the deliveries. Hopefully, they will keep the records up-to-date and will also then appreciate the benefit of having them. I am looking forward to going back to this place as I think the staff there are very receptive to any support that they can get.

On our way back to Gimbie, we picked up a pregnant woman who had been teaching at the village school and was now along her 3km walk back home.

 

16th October 2011

Yes, we're back on the internet....for now at least. The internet has been down for a couple of days here and then the electricity went off last night as well so we were feeling a little isolated.
Arrived safely in Gimbie after a long 10-hour bumpy drive. Our house is comfortable and we have a very nive verander that looks out on some banana trees. In fact, it looked like we were in a rain forrest this morning as we were in the middle of a low cloud.

We seem to have chickens, and worse still, a very noisey cockerell squatting in our garden. So every morning, we are woken up firstly at around 4.30 by the Orthodox priest calling the whole town to prayer and then by the cock a doodle doo at around 5am. We are plotting a way to resolve this but it may take time. I'm not sure whether a share of the eggs is worth it for all the early wake up calls.

Today most of the staff from Maternity Worldwide, including us, went to one of the programme manager's wedding. It was a lot of fun and much dancing and singing as the groom was being prepared for the wedding. The ceremony was in the Adventist church at the bottom of the driveway to the hospital and then we all went 50Km down the road for the reception. Quite how we got 12 people into the MW Landcruiser, I'll never know. Very cosy indeed.

If any of my photos and movie clips are interesting, I shall pot them next time.....

13th October 2011

Finally, the paperwork is complete (well, the essential things like work permits, medical registration, immigration and police clearance) and so tomorrow morning at 0600 we leave Addis on the long trek to Gimbie. We have stocked up on essentials like water, milk powder and biscuits and look forward to a diet of beans and tomatoes.

Below is my police clearance, just in case anyone was wondering whether the police would find some dark  secret past misdemeanour.

Clearly not!!

Hope to Blog again soon; ChinaNet dongle permitting - which, by the way, does not work on my Mac as promised by the con man in the computer shop.

11th October 2011

Today I have become an Ethiopian resident and therefore, technically, I should no longer write as the 'Faranj' who goes to Gimbie. Actually, all I was asking for was an extension of my business visa but for some reason this turned into a need to request a residency permit. After many hours of queuing and yet more photocopies of various documents, plus of course, another photo (I must have given in at least 20 photos by now and so assume that I am well known across the country), I get made a resident of Ethiopia. I think this is something of an honour and am grateful for the fact that I now have equal rights to Ethiopian citizens (not quite sure what those rights consist of, but I'm pleased to have them nevertheless.

The other most exciting moment of the day is going to the police department to get clearance from them - I guess they want to check that I am not a criminal - fair enough. Here, I not only had to give another 2 photos and an approval letter with numerous important stamps on it, but I also had to provide my finger prints. So now I am registered with the Ethiopian police and presumably, I will pick up a clearance letter tomorrow.......

We are still in Addis but hope to leave for the hills on Thursday or Friday - it all rather depends on whether Jeremy gets his clearance. We are waiting for the medical panel to sit and hopefully approve him as a doctor. Once they have done this, we can process his work permit and residency permit (now, at least, we know what the process is).

Sunday 9th October 2011

Today was spent trying to familiarise ourselves with the city of Addis. However, after walking along the side of the road for a couple of hours, the smog starts to get to you and the sinuses start to throb. The pavements are sparse and deep holes, presumably there for drainage, present potential death traps. 

By midday, a St Georges beer at the local bar (above) was much needed.

Remains of Lucy in Addis National museum.

The National Museum in Addis is definitely worth a visit, not least of all because they have the remains of Lucy, who is actually called 'Dinknesh' in Ethiopia - this means 'wonderful'. She was named after Lucy in 'Lucy in the sky with diamonds'. Her remains were found in 1974 and she is believed to be 3.2 million years old.

8th October 2011

Akam Bulte; Or good morning to those who are not yet familiar with Oromo. Actually, this will be of no use to me at all at the moment as we are currently in Addis Ababa, where they speak Amharic. I am, however, trying to get back into the habit of learning a few words of Oromo a day. I think this has been triggered by the fact that I haven't a clue what anyone is talking about here.

We arrived yesterday morning to the familiar sights of Addis; congested roads, with hundreds of cars edging in from all directions- each contributing to the enormous grey cloud of smoke above us. After checking in to the Lions Den hotel, we went to register at the British Embassy, only to find that they were closed Fridays, weekends and Mondays and even then, only opened o Tuesdays from 1.30-4.

So the next thing to do was to get our work permits sorted. Having submitted various apostled, legalised and embassy approved documents already, I thought it would be a simple matter of picking up the permit. Oh, if only that were true. There are incredibly tight processes set up here that you simply have to go through if you want to get the right documentation to allow you to work. And that's exactly what we did. At the ministry of labour and social affairs, we handed in 4 copies of our work permit application form, along with copies of our visas, passports, education certificates, professional certificates, letter of job offer, NGO certificate, health certificate and 4 passport photos. This all gets carefully read and any minor errors are corrected (a missing stamp, address, phone number etc). Then these documents get handed to someone who writes a ticket out for payment, it then gets taken to another office to pay the fee of 600 Birr (£24). Then the documents get taken to another office for stamping - here 4 different stamps are made on the documents in around 20 places. Then we take these stamped documents to the filing office, where some more checks are made before finally stamping things again and leaving one set of documents with the person there and being given the other to keep so that a copy can be given to the police, the immigration office and the hospital. At the end, though, you get presented with a small green book, with various stamps on and your photo stapled in it. This is the much treasured work permit.

Being an application for a medical position, Jeremy's work permit has another stage to go through and so we took his documents to the ministry for health, where they will be considered by a panel of experts (presumably some will be doctors) on Wednesday.

The next thing on our list is to get an internet dongle (USB stick). This was achieved easily enough after visits to various shops to find one that had the type we needed but now we have to take this to the Communications Office on Monday to allow us access to the internet. Another 2 photos and passport copies and we should be there.

Thank goodness for Mosisa, the project manager for Maternity Worldwide - he spent the day with us to help with the various stages.