The Wonders of Bonga by Jessie

Since we have visitors from the US, we decided to take them on a tour of the “wonders of Bonga.” Bonga is the nearest sizable town (population 11,000), complete with a post-office and supposedly a tourist office, although the tourist office is so far off the beaten track that I’ve never met a tourist who could find it. Actually, there doesn’t seem to be many reasons for tourists to come to Bonga to begin with. I was understandably suspicious of any “wonders” that we could find there.

Our friendly clinic translator offered to be our tour guide for the day. All six Americans piled into the Land Cruiser, hats and sunscreen and cameras in tow, and we made the 30 minute drive to Bonga. The first “wonder” on our list was the Bonga waterfall. As I sweated in the morning sun and slipped downhill on dusty dirt paths, the backs of my legs already protesting, I wondered why we were going through all this trouble to see a no-name waterfall when there was not even a discernable river in the area. Also, I couldn’t help but think that if it was that great there would be a better road to reach it. Then I heard water. The air grew cooler and misty. Out of nowhere, a 30-story tall waterfall appeared. It made me dizzy to stand on the rocks at the foot of the falls and look up. There were plenty of other people there already, boys stripped naked who clambered happily among the slippery black rocks, girls discreetly changing out of their skirts so they could wade into the cold pool at the base of the falls, a group of friends taking pictures of each other as they posed bravely in the cold spray. The air was deliciously cool after hiking in the sun. I had to admit that it was worth the hike.

After the waterfall, we had lunch at the “National Hotel” – injera with sheep shins (no joke) and a boiled egg. There, our American guests experienced another wonder of Bonga – the pit latrine out back. We regretted drinking so much water. Our translator mentioned that he used to be a waiter at the local donut shop (he called it the “Mickey Mouse Café” because for some unknown reason there were pictures of Mickey Mouse painted all over the walls), so we stopped there for coffee and dessert. Sitting in the shade, eating cake and drinking coffee… suddenly Bonga seemed like a pretty decent town. The next (unofficial) wonder was the new gas station. Previously, we had to drive three hours to Jimma to get diesel, so it was a big deal when they installed an official pump less than one hour away. Unfortunately, the largely unconcerned attendant said we had to return at 4pm if we wanted any gas.

The next official “wonder” was an old palace-turned-church painted so uniquely that it is rumored the painter’s arms were cut off afterwards to prevent him from duplicating the art anywhere else. Unfortunately we didn’t have a paper from the government giving us permission to visit so we were turned away. Foiled! So, we continued on to the “natural bridge,” where the water flowing downstream from the waterfall had created a tunnel. It was another long walk in the hot sun, but the tunnel itself made me feel mysteriously like a little kid again, scrambling over the cold rocks without caring if my pants got dirty or my shirt caught the rough wall of the cave, exploring the dim recesses among the rocks, marveling at the bats in the corners and the swirling water below us. By the time we made the return hike to the car, though, we were all pretty spent. We hit the last “wonder” of Bonga – the beer distributor – and we headed home with 24 bottles of beer in the backseat.

The best part of the day for me was that the new Health Officer was on call at the hospital, so Edwin and I could leave for a day without worrying about the nurses or the patients. That’s big news for us, since we have been “on call” every day for the past 5 months. Finally, a break. Will wonders never cease!

The day the outreach team tried to kill me by Jessie

Well, I cannot truly claim that the outreach team tried to kill me, since I asked to go with them, and I knew by reputation how hard the hike to Ufita would be. It is more accurate to say that I almost killed myself trying to keep up with them, and they saved me each time.

The outreach team goes twice a week to surrounding villages to give immunizations and health education. Some villages are accessible by car, but several sites require hours of hiking off the road. The team carries a cooler full of vaccines to maintain the “cold chain” and umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun and rain. Ufita is the most remote site, in an area with a totally different culture and totally different language. In Ufita, they have absolutely no access to Western medical care. Ufita is National Geographic’s Africa – naked children with intricate designs shaved into their hair, adults with huge earrings wearing nothing but beads to cover their tattooed skin, bare-breasted women and spear-carrying men with skin so black it seems to glow almost blue. The passage to Ufita is difficult during dry season and impassable during rainy season, so this month’s visit was to be the last one before the beginning of the rains. It was my last chance to see Ufita.

The drive to the drop-off point was cheerful despite the terrible condition of the road. We drove for one hour, then parked the car and began to hike. Since I was a visitor, I didn’t have to carry anything other than my own weight. Actually, the outreach team treated me with such deference that they probably would have carried me if I asked them to. Emily, the outreach coordinator, pointed to a mountainside high above us. “Our site is over that ridge,” she said. We began to climb uphill. The outreach team barely seemed to notice the hills, but I was already panting, cursing my childhood in the Great Plains that had not prepared me for climbing anything other than the stairs in our South Dakota split-level house. The sun quickly burned off the morning mist and hammered down on us as we zig-zagged up the eastern face of the mountainside. I tried to use my umbrella as a hiking stick but arms were too shaky to support my weight, so I tried to open the umbrella and use it to shade myself from the sun instead. My SPF 45 had already melted off. Heat radiated up from the dry gravel path in visible waves that distorted my vision; the sun was like a physical weight pressing down on my shoulders and legs. My calf muscles refused to cooperate.

Suddenly heat surged into my face and eyes went dim and I was sliding backwards down a steep bank. Elias, one of the outreach team, caught me square on my backside and shoved me up the bank. I rested for a moment until my breath caught up with me, feeling discouraged and embarrassed that everyone else hiked so effortlessly while I had to be hoisted up the steep parts like an old lady or a lame goat. My thighs trembled violently. It made me feel a little better to see the sweat washing down Elias’s bald head like he just walked under a faucet, and to see that Tamarat was still struggling up the hill behind me. Of course, I knew that Tamarat was having terrible trouble with his hemorrhoids, so he had a good excuse to go slow. He was still smiling and singing. “Tamarat,” I said, “I am so weak!” He smiled and said in thickly accented English, “no, no, you are wonderful!” I got up and kept walking.

We descended a ways and reached an impossibly beautiful stream set among a cool shady clutch of trees. The outreach team washed themselves in the cool water and sat on the damp carpet of leaves to eat lunch. Butterflies swirled around the still water. Spanish moss hung like wet green lace from the high branches of trees. I fully expected to see pixies or fairies appear. The place seemed enchanted. I was so happy to sit down and drink some water. The outreach team squatted around a pot of injera that they hauled with them, and everyone ate with their hands from the same pot. They shared with me. Refreshed, they move on. We reached Ufita about 45 minutes later. I felt cheated to discover that the whole walk had lasted only two hours, despite the fact that it seemed like eternity to me.

The school house made of widely spaced vertical sticks and tin roof was deserted when we arrived. It actually sits deserted all the time now, since the new schoolteacher – who could not speak Menit, the language in Ufita – had been thrown in jail for murder. We quickly set up camp in the schoolhouse. Slowly, people began to arrive. Boys dressed in blue loincloths, naked children with protruding bellies and dusty skin, men wearing cloth sarongs wrapped around under their armpits the same way women wrap towels around themselves after showering. I actually thought the first guy was a woman at first just because of the sarong, and I marveled at “her” huge strong shoulders until I heard his low voice and realized my mistake. Everyone wore their hair shaved short. Men and women alike wore heavy round earrings. Women wore beaded necklaces and multiple bracelets on their arms and legs, and everyone had tight plastic bands above their elbows and below their knees. Children had elaborate circles and patterns shaved into their hair. Two kids, a brother and sister, had perfect mohawks.

More amazing than their appearance, however, was their complete disinterest in the two white people in the room. They totally ignored us, showing neither fear nor curiosity, not asking for money or trying out English words on us. They were, however, very interested in my camera. Visitors with the outreach team in the past had taken their photos and then brought printouts at the next visit. People went nuts over the printed photos, and jumped in front of my camera at every opportunity. Whoever said that African people don’t like having their picture taken because they think it “steals their souls” obviously did not visit Ufita. They loved looking at themselves on the digital screen.

The air in the vaccination room was festive, and despite a lack of understanding of why vaccines were necessary, they were more than happy to stand in line and get stuck with the needle. Children chewed the plastic flip-tops of the vaccine vials like it was candy. Men stuck their white vaccine cards in their headbands like feathers. The men in the village asked for medicine for worms and pain and eye infections. Emily de-wormed everyone the month before, and was afraid to try to de-worm the new people since everyone would demand the medicine if one person got it, even if she tried to explain that it not necessary to take the medicine again if they received it last month. Likewise, we were wary of giving the pain medicine they requested, because of the tendency to take 20 pills at once, or give one pill to everyone in the family just for good measure. Volunteers in the past had tried to orient the people of Ufita to taking medicine, with startlingly little success. The language and cultural barriers were overwhelming. Plans to build a health post there had been abandoned.

Once people began demanding other medicine, we made a hasty exit. Afternoon clouds gathered overhead, threatening rain, but also blessedly blocking the hot sun. As we descended the same steep paths that I had struggled to climb, my legs trembled. Sharp pain shot through my knees. My running shoes – comfortable for walking distances, but a remarkably bad choice for climbing gravel paths – slid as I tried to walk down the slippery gravel. I bent my umbrella trying to use it as a walking stick to steady myself. The outreach team jumped to my aid, grabbing hands to steady me, holding my arms as I descended inch by inch. I was too exhausted and too shaky to object, despite my embarrassment. When we stopped to avoid a herd of cows on the path, I snuck down a bunch of ibuprofen, which did little to dull either the pain in my knees or in my head. Even the guy with the hemorrhoids was ahead of me now. We continued at a pace that varied from brisk walk to forced march. I started to think of purgatory, and how this excursion had better count against my time there. Somehow I made it back to the car in one piece. I was numb with physical exhaustion but also with shame at my softness and weakness in a country filled with such strong people.

The car was surrounded by people begging for rides or just staring. We accepted one hitchhiker only, since any more and the Land Cruiser would be too loaded down to climb back up the hills out of the valley. We drove past more people begging for rides, parents crying and holding out their babies. We drove past. We arrived back at the health center at 4pm. The clinic closes at 3pm on Fridays, so everything was already deserted and quiet. I unloaded the unused vaccines back into the refrigerator and for the first time ever, happily sucked down a bottle of beer. I had survived my first – and last! – trip to Ufita. Barely. But my injured pride whispers to me, it will get easier if you do it a few times more…

A small relief by Jessie

The new Health Officer (like a nurse practitioner) isn’t so bad after all.

The smart new nurse settled down and agreed to take overnight call.

We had a sit-down talk with the not-so-smart new nurse about expectations.

As for the so-far-from-smart-that-she-wouldn’t-recognize-smart-if-it-fell-on-her new nurse… we haven’t quite figured out what to do with her yet.

But three out of four new employees are settled in. Suddenly there are a plethora of nurses around the clinic; we don’t have to turn patients away at the gate anymore, and Edwin and I don’t have to be the “backup on-call” every night and weekend. I fully recognize that we are at the mercy of the local government though – they dump unemployable nurses on us that we can’t fire, and they can yank our good nurses for other assignments at any time, and then load on a hundred more reports for good measure. But this afternoon there was a small space of relief, like an unexpected cool cloud passing over the hot sun, where it seemed like maybe things were finally on track at the clinic. The staff finished up with patients early. Some played an impromptu game of volleyball under towering grey clouds that seemed about to rain. Others sat on the wooden benches outside the exam rooms and gossiped. Two nurses argued about how to run the malnutrition program and one nurse finished stitching on the sliced tip of a man’s finger. The families of the hospital patients milled around the empty clinic grounds. I sat down and felt the hard edges of this experience soften a little. Who knows. Maybe this adventure will turn out okay after all.

‘Tis a gift to be simple, part 2 (the retraction) by Jessie

I don’t know how to do this.

I don’t know how to be an American in Ethiopia.

I buy American food like cheese and cornflakes and spend more money at the supermarket than most of our staff members earn in a whole month. And everyone who works at the clinic knows it. How must that make them feel? What should I do, just accept that there are different standards for them and for us? Eat only local food? Stop buying cheese?

I don’t know how to be a rich person in a poor country.

Everyone, strangers and friends alike, treat me and this clinic like a giant ATM. They are constantly trying to extract money from me. If not money, then a ride, or a raise, or a laptop, or a job, or funding for school, or a day off, or to buy them a camera from the States for which they’ll pay me back of course. Everyone here knows I am rich compared to them, and it seems to give them a sense of entitlement. Even people that I consider friends have tricked me to benefit themselves, so I find myself becoming more and more distant from all Ethiopians – I suspect everyone, based on the actions of a few, which I know is wrong. But how else can I protect myself? Even if I could cross the cultural divide, I don’t know if I could cross the economic one.

I don’t know how to be a white person in Africa.

I stand out like a sore thumb. Sometimes even the waves and smiles and friendly attention feel unwelcome. I see white tourists in the cities, women with REI pants and dyed hair and men with big hats and even bigger cameras, invariably surrounded by a mob of Ethiopians. Begging. Trying to sell stuff. Just staring. I wonder what would ever make a white person vacation here, where white skin condemns you to incessant unwelcome attention and of course higher prices on everything from vegetables to hotel rooms. Could I ever blend in?

I don’t know how to be generous in a place where the need is unending.

To set “precedent” is dangerous – a white person gives money to a beggar in the city, then every white person who comes through will be swarmed with beggars; give to children and they will learn to ask white people for hand-outs instead of becoming self-sufficient; give one patient a ride and then all patients will demand a ride, let one employee use the clinic phone for a personal call and then all the employees will expect to make personal calls, give away your clothes when you leave and all volunteers will be asked to give away their possessions. Individuals do not see the “slippery slope;” they see their own need, and they see that I am not willing to fill their need. But I can’t fill all needs. Where do I begin? Where do I stop? It does feel good to make someone smile with small gestures. But I don’t want to be the one to set a bad precedent either. I feel small and helpless and angry in the center of such endless need – it spreads out infinitely around me like the plains in Western South Dakota or the sky when I am in an airplane. I can give until I myself am destitute and the need will not be any less.

I don’t know how to manage a clinic in Ethiopia. I don’t even know how to be myself here. I’m exhausted. I feel vulnerable and aggravated and very, very tired. I long for just one familiar thing, for a Starbucks where I know what to order and I can sit without attracting stares; for a park filled with people walking their dogs or playing frisbee, for a clean paved street with curbs and sidewalks and busy pedestrians talking on their cell phones. Life in Ethiopia is simple in material ways, but in every other way it is immensely more difficult.