Just a normal week: consulting in the clinic every day, a busy clinic at Bingham Wednesday morning, two hours of Amharic lessons, two trips to the gym, meals with friends, Skyping with several family members, going to Church, and visiting a bazaar.

Except that…

This was the week that Ato Gebretsadik came to the clinic for the last time. He is an elderly gentleman (hence the title “Ato”) who has just had his job with an SIM project taken over by a different organisation. His pay has been halved (to around £60 per month) and his new organisation doesn’t provide any extra funding for medical care. Ato Gebretsadik has a number of long term medical conditions that I have been managing for him and SIM had been covering the cost of this as well as his several medications. Medications his life depends on. Now he can’t afford them. His medications would take up a third of his monthly income; an income he needs for food for himself and his family. Thanks to a kind gift from someone in the UK I was able to fund him for the next two months of his medicines. Before he needs more I hope SIM will come up with a solution for Ato Gebretsadik and several other SIM employees soon to retire who rely on drugs that for them are unaffordable.

This was the week that my chunky Ford pick-up was washed. It sits outside our block of flats under a now flowering Jacaranda tree which mercilessly drops flowers, twigs and dust on to it. Not to mention the huge crows and yellow-billed kites that like to sit in the tree and drop material of their own making on to it as well. I only drive the vehicle to work once a week on Wednesday afternoons, after my Bingham clinic – for the sake of my sanity and the integrity of my vehicle the rest of the working week’s commuting is done in Haile’s taxi. So it sits there under the tree most of the week and by the time I drive it on a Wednesday it is the dirtiest car in the city. Addis drivers do like to keep their vehicles clean – witness the taxi van washing business going on down by the river (using river water) just over the wall from our flat. Negash is not an SIM employee but he comes into the HQ compound (where my main clinic is) fairly frequently to do odd jobs – including washing my vehicle for 30 birr (about £1). So when I drove home on Wednesday evening I had the cleanest car in the city. Negash has a wife and a  family of four children. They live a long way out in the countryside as they cannot afford to live in Addis. Negash gets to see them every few months – depending on whether or not he can scrape together the funds for the bus fare.

This was the week that on Saturday I had to preach for the first time in a very long time. I picked up a friend and colleague and we travelled across the city to the Korean Hospital Medical School where we are each involved in mentoring a small group of medical students. This week I had been asked to speak at the short worship service that’s held before lunch. I chose as my topic “A Christian view of Suffering” (I like to choose easy things to talk about…) which turned out to be a very appropriate topic, as I delivered the talk a few hours after senseless and cold-blooded murder stalked the Paris streets.

Rarely does a drive across the city go smoothly and predictably. We left the medical school after lunch and after dropping Valerie off at her flat I was on the last 2 km stretch of dual carriageway ring road before the roundabout local to Bingham when cars started coming towards me down my carriageway. This is a sure sign of a blockage up ahead and I could see a lorry trying to turn round to similarly come the wrong way down the road. It was pretty much as long as the carriageway is wide (there are concrete walls either side), so it was doing something resembling a 27 point turn. With no hope of going forward and with the oncoming drivers gesticulating vigorously I turned round as well and joined the crowd going the wrong way down the road to come off at the previous junction and up the service road at the side. However this didn’t help - the blockage was actually on the roundabout up ahead and now the carriageway and also the service road were both choc-a-block. It’s amazing how a three lane carriageway can become a six lane carriageway if everyone squashes together closely enough.

Just a normal week…