walkway at the Baro Gambella Hotel
the group at breakfast
bajajs we rode to the hospital one morning
setting up in the operating room
When we arrived at the Gambella hospital that first Saturday, we found to our dismay that the hospital lacked running water. Our only option to remedy this problem was to transport plastic yellow jerry cans full of purified water from the church down the road to the hospital. Rolling blackouts were not uncommon, and occasionally Dr. Samuel would have to close up a patient's eye halfway through surgery until electricity returned to the operating room.
tree full of bird's nests outside the operating room
fallen bird's nest
During the times I was not in the operating room or assisting the patients waiting outside, I would spend my time helping out in the eye clinic, where patients were readied for the surgery. Those who wore a piece of tape above either eye indicating an operable cataract would enter the clinic, where we would perform keratometry and biometry to obtain a measurement of the patient's eye. From these measurements, we could determine what size lens Dr. Samuel would need to insert during cataract surgery. During this time, we would also clip the eyelashes of the eye to be operated on, and take the patient's name and age. Though the cataract surgery was free for all patients, we charged 50 birr (about $2.70) for the medications patients would use after the operation.
performing biometry on a patient
If anyone believed that all Ethiopian women were oppressed, one need look no further than Sister Kaffa, a Daughter of Charity in her early 20's, as an exception to that rule. With a big personality, a big voice, and a big smile, Sister Kaffa would not hesitate to speak exactly what was on her mind. Her intolerance for disorder and noncompliance was matched only by her sense of humor and love for Ethiopian pop star Teddy Afro.
Sister Kaffa's primary role at the eye camp was intake- registering patients' names and ages, and collecting their money for medications. Since the patients' names were typically in Nu'er or Anuak, languages as foreign to Sister Kaffa as they were to me, her attempts to record patient names often turned comical. After a patient would calmly state their name, Kaffa, having never heard these names before in her life, would incorrectly repeat the name back to the patient. Across the room, an eavesdropping nurse would overhear Kaffa's mistake and repeat the patient's name a little more loudly. Still struggling to understand, Kaffa would restate the patient's name incorrectly a second time. Finally, the kids poking their heads through the clinic window to observe the happenings inside would all shout the patient's name in unison, at which point Kaffa would understand and, with a big laugh, would record the patient's name correctly.
If obtaining a patient's name seemed difficult, however, it was a walk in the park compared to figuring out a patient's age. Many elderly Ethiopians never had a birth certificate and thus had no way of knowing their true ages. One patient with graying hair stated he was 10 years old, while another young-looking patient claimed he was 120! Still others saw the question as a sort of trivia game in which they were the hosts and we were the contestants, replying with such cryptic answers as "I was one year old when the Italians invaded."
In the meantime, the rest of the clinic would be no less chaotic. Dragonflies would find their way inside, zipping back and forth as they crashed into patients and staff alike until finally getting knocked out by the spinning fan above. Some of the blind patients would often get confused or just impatient and start pushing the other blind patients around them, leading to full-blown fights between blind people which required us to intervene.
view from the hospital
Some of our younger patients provided some much needed comic relief. One twelve year old boy came to us telling us he couldn't see the board in class and wanted his eyes checked. Yet upon visual exam, his vision came up 20/20. It turned out that his mother was having a baby in the maternity ward across from the operating room where Dr. Samuel was performing cataract surgeries, and he had grown bored while waiting and figured he would get his eyes checked to pass the time. Another day a crazy three year old boy wearing a pink hoodie and no pants ran back and forth through the hallways doing karate moves and mugging for no one in particular. One of the strangest and funniest conversations I had with two teenagers waiting outside the clinic went as such-
Teenager: "What's up?"
Me: "Not much. What's up with you?"
Teenager: "You don't know what is up because you are doctor. We know because we are nigs."
***
One day a local news crew, having heard about the eye camp, came to the hospital to interview Dr. Samuel. Dr. Samuel characteristically declined, since doing an interview would rob him of time he could be spending on additional patients.
***
Our first day in Gambella, we also had the chance to visit the town of Abobo, 20 miles south of Gambella. Though we had gone to scope out possible future camp locations at the clinic there, we culminated our visit with a trip to the Abobo dam. For some reason, officials were worried that if they allowed pictures of a certain bridge in town or of the dam at Abobo, terrorist attacks would ensue, and thus photos of these structures were illegal. We quickly snapped some shots anyway.
***
One morning as I went down the line of patients waiting to undergo cataract surgery, I came across a small elderly woman who was missing the piece of tape above her eye which would indicate which eye was to undergo cataract surgery. As I motioned back and forth between her eyes to ask her which eye had the cataract, she eagerly grabbed my hand and pointed my finger at her left eye. The woman's daughter, standing nearby, reacted with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment, laughing and putting her hand to her face, in a manner which reminded me more of American mannerisms than Ethiopian.
The daughter, who spoke English well, turned out to be a worker at a dispensary far out in a remote corner of the province of Gambella, and had also brought her husband and young son- a fan of John Cena and aspiring wrestler- to the eye camp. She said she worked alone at the dispensary and that things were often slow because visitors needing medication could be few and far between. Still, it struck me that without people like this woman, who was perhaps the only healthcare provider the people in her area would ever meet, medications for an array of conditions would be entirely inaccessible. It dawned on me that sometimes it's the unknown people doing the least glamorous work that are the true heroes.
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