I’ve Found It!

(NB - the words highlighted in blue in this post are links you need to click to see the two best photos.)

All my life I’ve had a skillful ability to lose things – just ask my mum. it’s actually a small miracle that the nice Shaeffer ballpoint pen she bought me to bring to Addis is still in my possession despite several attempts to lose it, usually redeemed by my clinic nurses. Well I lost a key recently. It was for a store room in the clinic that contains some medicines that we can dispense to my patients. One busy Friday morning I ran downstairs to the store room to grab something and absent-mindedly popped the key into my pocket rather than leaving it in it’s usual secret location for others to use. I realised I had it when I returned to my consulting room and made a mental note (obviously in temporary memory) to take it back later.

At lunchtime that day I left with Haile to go to visit the Addis Ababa CURE hospital where two British orthopaedic surgeons are working. This is part of a large worldwide Christian organisation devoted to providing free and high quality expert surgery for very needy children. My visit to the “charity” ward was extremely moving – poverty-stricken children with some awful deformities were recovering from surgery, and the gratitude was palpable.

On Sunday evening that weekend I received a phone call from Dorinda. She had some stuff in the clinic store room she needed to take away with her on Monday morning and – she couldn’t find the key. I’m fairly familiar with that feeling you get in your chest when it suddenly dawns on you you’ve one something stupid. I told Dorinda  I remembered taking the key on Friday and not putting it back but I couldn’t remember what I did with it. I suggested she go look in my consulting room on my desk which she did but said she couldn’t see it. We agreed to meet at 8am Monday morning before she left by which time I optimistically guessed I would have located the key in a pocket or something. So, in the semi-darkness of an early Sunday evening power cut and armed with my “LED Lenser” torch (which is as bright as the sun) I hunted through our apartment, in every pocket I own, in my clinic bag (which is where my mum’s pen had mysteriously turned up once), on the floor of the wardrobe, in our car – everywhere. No key. Monday morning I asked Haile and hunted around the passenger seat of his car. No key. Misery is settling – I’m convinced that it was the only key to that door. Perhaps it had dropped out of my pocket at the CURE hospital? My mood perked up a bit when I arrived at work on Monday and discovered a spare key was kept upstairs in the personnel office. I borrowed it under threat from the personnel director that if I didn’t bring it back he’d send Demeka to break my legs. Demeka’s a diminutive little chap so I suspected I’d win in a fight, but I got the point.

So the spare key came in handy that morning both for Dorinda and me. I was still puzzled. What on earth had I done with it? During the course of seeing several patients that Monday morning I ran out of small billing slips in my desk drawer. I noticed a small pile of them on the desk next to a pile of medical records. I picked them up and guess what was underneath? I laughed out loud. Not particularly because I had found what I had been looking for, but because of what was stamped on the key, and it was perfectly positioned for it to be the first thing I saw. Click here – it’ll make you smile!

Mattress Man

I have previously mused on people carrying things on their heads. It’s a common sight in the roads around the main city market (“Merkato”) past which Haile drives me now the railway construction has improved. Recently fridges and freezers have been carried around on heads and shoulders across the road. I saw this person carrying a great deal of foam on his head through the traffic when we were returning from our visit to Assema’s celebrations the other Saturday, but I spotted this guy a couple of days later when Haile drove me an odd route home (because of traffic). Count them – I think I can see 28. It’s a record. (Go on – click the blue link in the text above, not the thumbnail photo!)