A picture of the guy's leg tumor.Saturday was good. We did special music with Amanuel (on recorder). It went really well. We had potluck in Dr. Gemechu’s apartment with Hareg, Amanuel (who was the speaker) and Bereket (who taught Sabbath school). I do not know if I have mentioned, but there will not be potluck anymore. But we have been invited to the apartment the past two weeks, so maybe it will continue that way. I think that we should have potluck, but have it be a potluck instead of Sinke making everything. Sinke can just make the injera, and everyone else can bring a wot. It makes more sense. Pathfinders went well. We sang and then the kids broke into groups and were given a topic to discuss. While they did that, Amanuel, Bereket, Kibret, Cameron and I rehearsed some special musics. In Amharic SWEET. We are singing in four parts. After the kids presented what they had found and answered some questions about it, we showed the rest of Jonah. Then we watched a marching movie.
I do not think we did anything on Sunday. OH! I made pierogies! Curtis and Meredith had brought me sourkraut, and we had bought Vidalia onions at Lomyad, so I made sourkraut, then made them into pierogies. Hey, kids, when there is nothing to do on Sundays, what do you do for fun? Oh, we hang out in front the the feranjiwoch window and giggle while we watch them do strangs things. And we kick their kickball onto the roof. Thanks, China. Yeah, they hung out ALL while I was making pierogies. I let them try a bite of one, and I do not think any of them liked it. Maybe they will not ask us for things anymore. We have a brilliant plan, to give them Warheads or Fisherman’s Friends next time they ask for candy. All we need now is… Warheads and Fisherman’s Friends. And stickers with itching powder. Heehee. Only good little not-greedy children will get nice treats. For dinner, I fried them up with onions like we do for Easter and Christmas, and Cameron really liked them. Yay! They did not turn out badly at all, if I do say so myself.
Monday was Monday. We knew we were not going to have class on Tuesday, because it was Epiphany, a big Orthodox holiday, but we did not know that the kids only had a half day on Monday! I specially arranged to have 2B on Wednesday [even though they are my least favorite class] and 3rd grade only on Thursday, but it turns out that I have to miss 2A too! Drat. I love 2A. They love me. Maybe I will have an extra 2A class on Wednesday of next week. Third grade is already way far ahead. Around 130/2, maybe, I heard Dureti calling and calling and calling my name. I ignored her (she is the worst when it comes to asking for things). I went outside finally around two thirty, and it turns out HELEN had been calling my name, not Dureti! I felt so bad. So no class on Monday. Around 4, Girma came to take us for a walk (?). We went out the back, and then through the fields and it started to rain. POUR, more like it. Girma did not understand why I was okay with getting my hair wet. Haha. We had sheets of mud/t’eff on the bottom of our shoes. We took refuge under the future employee housing for awhile, then went home. We were so wet. We found out that the Florida Hospital mission trip for April is canceled. Well, it has been moved to October, which does not matter to us, because we will be gone. So we are sad that we will not get to see the Yosts again. Boo.
On Tuesday, we had no water when we woke up, which is super weird because it had rained the day before, and we had electricity. Sorry Cameron, no shower. We took a taxi (mini bus) with Girma, Meskeram, and Mekelech to the bus station before Girge, and the girls went on to Hareg’s house. Bereket and Kibret met us there, and we went with them, via HIGER BUS (AHH!), to Megedanya (the main taxi station) and another Higer bus to somewhere near the main Epiphany festivities. There were SO MANY PEOPLE! And some horses—with actual English saddles! Pretty. I want to be an Ethiopian horse policeman. Either that or I can join the RCMP. Bereket guessed 100,000 people. We saw the big parade, and the priests and elders and their cool umbrellas. And the supposed Arc of the Covenant. AND we saw the Pearsons! They were there with some other people from the hospital. It was nice to see them. It was SO hard to move through the crowd. My philosophy was “stick as close as you can to Bereket (or whoever was in front), your eyes on the ground, and keep his shirt in your periphery vision.” When the crowd got really bad, it was easier to follow, since we all basically moved as a unit. It was Bereket’s first time at Epiphany too, which I guess is not that surprising because he is not Orthodox. We ended up seeing another smaller parade, and then we stopped for lunch (YAY). It was called Five Zone, and had feranji food, and some really good-looking pizza, but we got Ethiopian food. I got shiro, and Cameron, Bereket, and Kibret split two meat dishes—t’ibs and something else. It was really good shiro. We had a lot of trouble finding a taxi to get home. We tried at this one stop for awhile, then tried another one. We FINALLY found a Higer bus that was supposed to be going to Bole Road (we were going to go to Kaldi’s for coffee (it is like Starbucks…. so much so that it got sued), and, for me, ice creammmmmmmmmmmmmmm. It ended up going to Megedenya instead, so we caught a bus to Girge, had coffee there, then they put us on a bus to Safara. We got off at our produce stand and got bananas, potatoes, avocadoes (for Cameron) and eggs (for baking!). Then we walked to find Girma, who thought we would get off at the last stop. There were some guys on horseback, and a beautiful buckskin, all decked out in his saddle, went running down the street, sans rider. It was SO funny. The other guys went after it. We finally found Girma, and it started to rain (not as bad as the day before, though), and I joked that every time we were with him, it rained. We STILL had no water when we got home, but we had another surprise. The beans we had been soaking had begun to ferment or mold something, and bubbled over—ALL over one of our chairs and all over the table. It smelt HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE! And we had no water with which to clean. Thankfully, we still had pierogies left over, so we just microwaved them. I had three, and Cameron polished the last 12. I went to bed early, since I could not take a shower.
Still no water on Wednesday, so we told Daniel, who told Yobe, so went with me to look for Solomon. The guy whose wife bit him came in to have his dressing changed, and one of my 2A students came in with a fever and abdominal pain. We tried to do a stool sample, but as of now *ahem* no luck. We went him back to class and said to come again after he eats lunch. Today is going very slowly. I finished inventory as much as I can, and those are the only two patients who have come. Class today was fun. I had 2B, but apparently the communication of “2B on Wednesday, and 3 only on Thursday” failed miserably. There were only like, 20 kids in the class. I restarted the book, we learned bakery again, and I introduced “polite.” We only got a little bit further than the entire class did last week. I made them give me a sentence “May I please have/go….” And once one kid did it, they got a Smartie. And then another kid, and another, until they got the hang of it: Give a sentence, get a candy. Funny, though, no one gave me “May I please have a candy?” I ran out of candy with 6 KIDS LEFT! ONLY SIX! Gah. But I took down their names, and will give them another chance next week. That is what you get for going when no one else goes. Like when Dr. Barnhurst gave us the code word in recitation… which I forget, unless it was elephant… that gave us 10… 10!!! free points on a mechanism question. I wish I remembered the word... Thanks, Dr. Barnhurst, for not putting it on the test key.
I forgot to mention, we went to a new grocery store and out to lunch with Dr. Gemechu on the Tuesday before he left. THE GROCERY STORE HAD ICE CREAM, so we bought a pink one. It turned out to be strawberry ice cream, which I usually do not choose if there is vanilla or something, but it was SO good. It was like, 14 birr for a tiny little cup, but it was so worth it. Lunch was nice; we went to the first restaurant we went to with Abebe. Cameron got a hamburger, and I got pizza again. Dr. Gemechu got t’ibbs, and ate only mostly the meat… with a fork, of course. Funny.
What will you do for the gentleman with the tumor? Do they think it is benign?? It is rather odd and I understand why he was so excited to see a doctor about it.
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