It’s been at least a couple months since my last blog post – it’s really become Eric’s blog with the (very) occasional guest blog post from me! It’s a new year, however, and worth a new post.
Part of the reason for my silence has been months of computer woes. I knew there would be power outages in Addis that would impact connectivity. I also knew there would be sporadic and slow internet that would surely frustrate. I purposely bought a new computer prior to coming here so minimize the possibility of other issues (and also to not bring UW property to Africa!). Alas, beginning in late October, my hard drive started acting up and failing. I had purchased a 5 year protection/replacement plan, so instead of more available possible fixes, I brought my computer to the one authorized Dell store in Ethiopia (which, fortunately, is in Addis). I told them I thought it was the hard drive, explained what had been happening, and they recommended first doing a full factory reset. I was reluctant to do that, given that UW pre-loaded it with necessary programs before I left. They insisted, so that happened. It immediately began to demonstrate a hard drive failure again (I’ve rarely wanted to say “I told you so more”) so they ordered a replacement part from the US. No indication on how long it would take to arrive.
I now have to put in a MAJOR plug for the wonderful people at UW IT. Especially Jay and Lincoln. They each spent HOURS on Zoom with me, taking over remotely to reload what they could. Once their work was done, it then took not hours, not days, but literal weeks to have everything download (please refer back to the power outages and internet unreliability). My computer was finally sort of back to functional and the part came in. I told the good folks at Dell that I was reluctant to repeat that process given that the computer was more or less working, and they said they seemed to understand…then inexplicably sent the part back to the US. Of course, that’s when the Blue Screen of Death took over again….Oy. I limped along until they got the part back and replaced it, then I went through that same process again, made slightly more rapid by the recent purchase of a MiFi, which significantly helps reduce the internet variability in our apartment. We were finally done about mid-December, and things started sporadically failing again. Another Oy. We’re now trying to get Dell to actually replace this computer, but so far no luck. We’ll see – I still have hope. It’s working most of the time, fortunately, and I’ve learned some new tricks (did you know if the computer won’t turn on at all, sometimes if you unscrew the back panel completely, then screw it back on, it’ll then turn on?) so I’m trying to be patient!
That long story was meant to partially explain why I’ve not been posting at all…but mostly it’s because Eric is so good at it, and I have less time once I’m done with work at the hospital and done with evening conference calls! I’ll still try to get something up at least once a month, however.
While we’re on the subject of time and how long some things take, there appears to be a very different approach to time here in Ethiopia. Aside from our daily morning report at the hospital, almost nothing seems to start on time. Sometimes events are spectacularly late getting going (the medical student and resident graduation I attended started about 90 minutes late). I can’t quite bring myself to start habitually being 30 minutes late, as I am not yet able to tell when things will conform to this apparent norm, or when it would be unbelievably rude to be that tardy. Our Amharic lessons offered me some critical insight into this, however. When we learned how to tell time in Amharic, we learned that you never give precise time – it’s always rounded to the nearest 5-minute mark. I would never hear from an Ethiopian that it’s 4:23 in the afternoon – they would say 4:25. This lack of precision is seen also in other areas. When fetal weights are recorded, it’s to the closest 100 mg mark. Babies are 3.2 KG or 2.7 KG, not, as we would record and report in the US, 3245 g or 2764 g. Though my American soul revolts instinctively at this lack of precision, I then reflect that it rarely matters all that much if one is precise within a couple minutes of time or a few dozen grams. Perhaps we in the western world, especially the US, have an unhealthy attachment to precision when it is actually not very critical in many situations. I’m not sure yet where I’ll ultimately fall in this debate, but I’m sure this more relaxed approach won’t work when I’m back in the US. I can just imagine if I told a patient their child was born around 3:45 in the morning and weight more or less 3.5 kg. I’m pretty sure I’d lose most of my obstetric patients. But for now, I’m trying to relax into this more fluid (and often more frustrating) approach.
Similarly, our Amharic lessons have given us huge insight into the lack of precision with directions as well. I’ve described before how many Ethiopians seem to have a different approach to directions (not necessarily knowing how to read a map). A couple lessons ago, we learned about directions and one interesting thing is that it’s not standard to use the cardinal directions (North South East West) for short distances, like within the city of Addis. They only use those directional words when indicating far distances (i.e. Egypt is north of Ethiopia). When Ethiopians give directions, it starts very macro with major signposts (near Addis Ababa University) then gets increasingly narrow in scope (near a specific square, then do you know this restaurant? Turn left there and it’s behind that). The most useful directional word we’ve learned is “akababi”, which means “around”. Not only is it fun to say, but it actually gets folks heading in the right direction! I’m sure this lack of precision is aided and informed significantly by the fact that only the most major streets have names, and those names are often relatively new, so the Ethiopians don’t actually call them that (for example, Lesotho Road is known more commonly as Abo road, after Abo church which is on that road). So, most streets don’t have names, those that do are not consistently called the same thing, and there aren’t really any house or building numbers. As far as I understand, there is only one official map of Addis Ababa (which Eric and I obtained for 93 birr – about $3 - from the Ethiopian Mapping Agency after going through about 45 minutes of bureaucracy and requiring 3 different receipts) and much of it is incomplete. This lack of addresses came up over the holidays as many friends asked if/how they could send us a holiday card and/or care package, and we said…either send it to our house in Seattle and we’ll have Christmas in August, or take a picture of your card and email it to us, or just skip us this year! Thank you, all you wonderful friends, who keep trying to be in touch!
As for time and directions, I wonder how much the Amharic language and its structures has informed the lack of precision with time, directions and other measurements, or if the lack of reliable infrastructure informed the language. Who knows, but it’s interesting to consider!
