Still struggling with the dial-up.................

 

11th January

 

The blog entry below was intended to be sent yesterday but had problems with dial-up (the blog entries are sent to the site by email).

(would like to blame Ethiopian internet but it turned out to be a "blonde moment" technical problem on my part- I will spare you all the details but needless to say I know now!).

 

10^th January

Settling in is more difficult than I expected- I thought that I was too old to get home sick but that doesn't appear to be the case. It is getting easier with each day but it is not a feeling that you have a lot of control over which is very frustrating. I think about the fact that I came here not expecting mobile phone signal and wonder how I would have got through without the ability to send/make occasional texts and calls.

Everyone is very welcoming. There are a number of other long and short term ex-pats working here (we are collectively know as "Faringe" by the Ethiopians which appears to be a term that is descriptive rather than derogatory in any way). Many though not all are Seventh Day Adventist missionaries as Gimbi hospital is an NGO run by their church. Perhaps it is a reflection on the type of people who do this sort of work long-term but I have been overwhelmed by the time people have taken to explain things and to help me to find my feet for aspects of day-day living.

Overall I have nothing to complain about as I have far more than I expected in the way of creature comforts and as promised we have electricity "most of the time" and water "most of the time". It can stop out at inconvenient times like this morning – getting going in the morning (afternoon/evening person) is a challenge for me any day but without coffee it is particularly difficult!

I've already had feedback about too much medical detail for the non-medic readers- apologies I will try to keep it sanitised and minimal but it is what I am here for after all. Things are a bit quieter than I was expecting. No one really understands the statistics here and certainly they are unable to make any future predictions but for some reason the delivery rate has fallen from 200/month to around 150/month in recent months. There is a brand new Government Hospital just opened in Gimbi, this is not seen by the Adventist Hospital as competition but a desirable alternative especially for people too poor to afford to pay for their care in medicine and surgery. The new hospital may be part of the reduced activity but it is not the whole story as the birth rate fall began a few months ago and Maternity Worldwide provides a "safe Birth" fund so that there is care available to all women here (additionally ex-pats from here visited the new hospital yesterday and found one inpatient in a 50-bedded hospital- can you imagine). Anyway this means an average delivery rate of 5 babies day here. The section rate is about 20% as the aim is still for SVB if at all possible, the midwives do all the suturing and also do straight forward vacuum deliveries (the re-use Kiwis here- sorry a very medical comment). The other thing is that unlike the UK, women are not in labour in the hospital for prolonged periods as they only come to hospital after they have been in labour for a long time at home with labours that are clearly obstructed and beyond the help of the ubiquitous syntocinon we use for slow labour in the UK. Thus review and action (usually caesarean) are swift. Overall what this means is that there is a lot of time waiting around for things to happen so I will have plenty of time for other things such as teaching or organisation once I find my feet.

Hope the cold in the UK is abating slightly. I won't gloat about the 30degree sunshine outside, as there are downsides to other supplies in Gimbi to make up for this!