Respose to comments

As I still can't see any blogs out here, I am not able to post any comments. However, as luck would have it, I set the blog up so that all comments are emailed to me.
Thank you for your responses to the photo challenge - it seems that it's possible to upload text but not photos.
For those of you who have managed to see the photos posted on Jeremy's blog (chickens - who by the way are becoming incredibly demanding), you are able to see these because he emailed them to his son and got him to post them form the UK! So Shaheen, you see, there is always another explanation. I can't believe you would even contemplate the possibility of user error........?
Thanks again for reading - keep the comments coming and I will post loads of photos when I am in the UK.
Kxxx

2nd January 2012

Well I am pleased to say that the woman that had the twins here by caesarean section told me that she did not know that she was having twins before I scanned her and at that time, she was not planning to come to hospital for her delivery. Indeed, she hadn’t planned anything, which means that she would very likely have stayed at home (approximately 90% of women have their babies at home in Ethiopia). So when asked why she came to hospital, she laughed and said, ‘because I told her to’. This is of course very true, I did tell her to go to hospital as very few women seem to manage to deliver both babies alive when at home. Moreover, one of the babies was in a transverse position and was unlikely to come out on its own accord. So, she is a lucky woman and hopefully she will tell others in the village that it is better to have a check-up at some point during the pregnancy, and hopefully, when they do, someone will spot when there is a problem and will hopefully refer them to hospital if they need to be there. Yes, a lot of ‘hopefullys’ but I think it is certainly possible to bring about this change, even if on a small scale in a couple of regions.

Last night we took the boys to the Green Bar for a meal as the bonfire is lit on a Sunday. On the walk up to the bar we stopped off to buy Lalisa a belt as he has developed a crooked posture from walking along with his hand hitching up one side of his trousers.  The poor little chap almost completely lost his trousers, revealing his naked bottom, when I tried to thread the bright pink belt (his choice of colour). His waist is about half the diameter of the trousers.

The Green Bar (named this by faranjis as it has a green gate) also doubles up as a butcher’s kiosk and they use all the bones for the bonfire. It kind of smells a bit odd – a bit like an operating theatre where they use diathermy to stop the bleeding – but along with the booming and somewhat wailing music, it creates a nice atmosphere.

Can anyone see the photo below? Problems with the site are driving me crazy.

1st January 2012

HAPPY NEW YEAR – I wonder what’s in store for 2012…..

We saw the new year in in Spanish style as Clara invited us over for cheese, tomato and chorizo, then paella, followed by orange cake – you may wonder how on earth we manage to have these exquisite dishes when there is a distinct lack of ingredients. Well, we are becoming resourceful and manage to collect up all sorts of goodies from Addis. We also have some things that we brought over from the UK and they are rationed so that we get some ‘treat’ nights. So tomatoes, oranges and rice comes from Gimbie, cheese from Addis, a tin of mussels and a tin of squid and a tin of tuna from Spain, and Chorizo from the UK. Oh and then we undertook the traditional eating of 12 grapes over 12 seconds just before midnight (enormous grapes bought from Addis). Unfortunately the electricity went off in Clara’s house for the whole evening but we had enough candles to see what we were doing. The internet went down around 11.30 (predictable) and we had planned to play the gongs from a YouTube video. So we had to improvise by making a recording of Clara banging an empty dried milk tin 12 times over 12 seconds and then playing this at about 1 minute to midnight so that we could eat one grape every second. We totally failed on the grape front and I only managed 5 in the 12 seconds – despite having peeled them beforehand.

I have just returned from the hospital, where there is a woman who I scanned in the health centre about 8 weeks ago. I am pleased to say that I spotted that she had twins and told her that because of this, she should have her babies in hospital. So yesterday, she did exactly that and had a caesarean section. Mother and both baby boys are doing very well. I am sure that not all women take the advice but when they do, it makes me feel very happy as it means that the project does seem to be working. I am going to chat to the woman tomorrow (with an interpreter) to ask her about her decision process behind coming to hospital to have the babies. I am obviously hoping that she will say that it was the advice given in the health centre that persuaded her to come to hospital but we shall see what she says. I need to be careful that the translator doesn’t lead her into saying what I want to hear but I think I can get him to do this.