It has been a rather uneventful week. I was not looking forward to the duties 24/7, but strangely enough, I was called only once during nighttime the past week! Although there have been many deliveries46 in 1 week!, almost all spontaneous. Only two caesarians, and a few vacuum extractions. We induced one lady who had congenital malformation: an anencephalic child. ( child with no skull formed, only face) Always very sad. And one post term child died after delivery. Because we cannot do any investigations here, we sometimes just don’t know the reason. There is always a debate whether to transfer or not to the Fellleger hospital. There is a pediatrician and a “neonatology” department, but not real good care is taken. I visited in the beginning of my stay here and was really shocked by that ward.

The weekend is long, when the ward is not busy! I watched half of the Borgen-danish-series! Daphne was away with her family, and Margaret had left. Sunday afternoon the whole staff was invited by one of the laundry ladies, who delivered the week before. It was pouring with rain, so we went by ambulance (8 of us) It is always nice to see how people live and visit their homes. Tradition here is making a barley-porridge (gunfo) eaten with spiced melted butter. Seems to be good for women after birth. And they had really good talla-the local beer. And the woman in childbed with her baby are not joining, they are laying in a far corner, behind a curtain.

new stadium Bahir Dar 

first time in football stadium

 

cooking porridge in the compound

 

eating porridgegunfo porridge 

 

And it was good Tenaw, the surgical officer from Mota came to visit me. He arrived with the hospital car, and brought the Pelvitrainer for us to use here. It was good to talk to him about his and my work. He is really dedicated and very experienced now. It appeared he knew many of the staff here, from various training places. With him I visited the new stadium, which opened this week. Two weeks long there are games of all sorts, they call it Ethiopian Olympics. It is the biggest stadium of northern Africa they say. Entrance was free and for the first time in my life I watched a football match in  real!!There were female teams from Oromo region and Afar region playing. A nice relaxed atmosphere, I liked it!

Meanwhile I feel my English getting worse. I tend to speak as the Ethiopians do. They make all the same kind of mistakes: wait me, you come now, no matter, and these kind of abbreviations. I hear myself talking like this now too. It was good Margaret was here for a while to correct me!