Day 4

The battle with the mosquitoes has begun. I can't tell yet if we are winning or losing. I just hope I didn't wake the whole house when I jumped from bed to bed slapping the ceiling with my shoe. It's 3:00am. This is becoming a routine as we haven't been able to sleep through the night yet. Maybe if we stay up tomorrow without an afternoon nap or dozing in a plane or car we will finally be able to adjust to the time change. We are staying in a beautiful guest house surrounded by palms and flowers. It has two floors, a kitchen, two bathrooms, a large dining and living area and multiple bookshelves full of abandoned books. So far, we found the Village Medical Manual which is a layman's guide book to village medicine and is a dry but useful read. We are sharing the house with another family. We met them last night after waking from a nap. They were having dinner with a retired couple from down the path. Their accents were clearly American but when we asked where they were from we got the answers "here" and "The Congo". They were super friendly and offered us their flashlights and dinner before we told them we were eating with Jeremy and Christina. Almost as an after thought as we were walking out of the door one of them asked where we were from. Dallas. That was the end of the conversation. You could tell it didn't really matter where any of us were from - we are all here now. Surprisingly, there are a ton of young children of volunteers here, at least 10 of them ranging from ages 3-12. We ran into them last night as they were chasing a mongoose with their dog, Peanut. We were told you can see the mongoose eyes at night glowing red in the darkness. Soddo is beautiful and a welcome change from the capital city of Addis. It is green and dotted with palms. Hills rise from the ground and dip into deep valleys covered with farms and small huts. The people, the sun, the clothing are all brighter here and everything is more relaxed. Jeremy and Christina are amazing. They opened their home to us immediately and did not hesitate to show us around and insisted that we join them for dinner. Before we could even finish unpacking, Jeremy came back to the guesthouse and called up the stairs for us to grab our white coats and come to the ER to see an interesting case.  We dropped what we were doing and hurried down.  He explained on the short jaunt to the ER entrance the history of "mossy foot" (a form of Elephantiasis caused by lymphatic obstruction due to volcanic soil) in Ethiopia and the physician who formerly lived in Soddo who, in his 80s, started a foundation to promote foot care among Ethiopians suffering from mossy foot.  We actually saw two patients in the ER with mossy foot, each with edematous discolored feet and ulcerations carrying the scent of infection.  It was a brief and unexpected introduction to both tropical medicine and medical care in Soddo.  Jeremy and Christina also invited us to join in on their plans for this weekend including touring the town, hiking up a nearby mountain and eating pizza with them tonight. They are so honest and emanate a sense of peace which is calming and familiar.  They answered all of our questions, told us funny stories of travels, and explained some challenges with the small hospital. We filled them in on Dallas and the new hospital. The dinner ended with us walking back to the house with Jeremy who was going to check on one of the other physicians, a pediatrician with a fever of 103F. He was heading to the hospital after that to see if he could get the wifi running. It has been down on and off for the past 3 weeks so likely multiple posts will show up at once when we have brief periods of connectivity!