All. Night. Long….. the wind howled to the point it blew my curtain so hard, it pushed the fan that couldn’t work, over onto the floor in the middle of the night making me wonder if someone was breaking in through my window. Not a good feeling let me tell you! It was a Saturday night last night and there must have been a wedding or something cause all night long you could hear revellers in the street, drunk and whoohooing, and then come into the lodge and down the halls…letting their kids shriek and run while they caroused themselves, while we lay in our dark sweat pits trying to flush puke and poop down toilets with not enough water, in the dark, hoping our aim on all fronts was good.

Good morning. (Typed through gritted teeth and a grimace)

Knock knock on my door at 0730. Yes? I call out from my sweat pit. No answer.

Knock knock on my door at 0735. Yes? I call out again, not wanting to answer the door in my finest birthday suit…knowing it isn’t one of my peeps with our secret knock pattern….still no answer.

Knock knock in my door at 0740. WHAT ?!?! I shriek, this time pissed off…no wake up call has been requested, I feel like crap and want to sleep! No answer.

Knock, kn….. STATE YOUR BUSINESS!!!!! As I fling open the door in a t-shirt I have dragged on…. Outside stood a man with a new bucket of water and notice my breakfast was ready. Harrumph. I guess the morning has started without my blessing, again.

I make myself look more like human than wild animal as best I can given what I have to work with. The group is sitting around the table as I stagger in. We all commiserate on the restful sleep we have been denied and pack up to get out of Dodge right after Lee makes the decision he will come to regret later with his breakfast choices.

We have our second day off and we are going to a fancy place right on the beach of Lake Malawi called the Sun ‘n’ Sand Resort. Picture a Cuban or Mexican type resort. It was very nice, very well priced, but like something out of The Walking Dead. I am told this is one of the top 3 fanciest resorts in the country, but there isn’t another soul there initially besides us. Walking down all the rows of rooms with their outdoor patios and not a sound of anyone else can be heard. It is like they have all been killed, or there are zombies waiting to get us around the next corner in an ambush. Sadly, I am without my favourite pitchfork. Not long later, there are a few other vacationers that can be seen around the pool and by the restaurant. For a resort whose capacity is near a thousand or more I would imagine, being 5-12/1000 here is odd.

After the two hour drive from the Hippo area, we have seen elephant trees that actually do look like the legs of elephants in both size, color and stature (pics later of course) that are called Boabab trees, we have seen brick kilns cooking away, stick bundles being collected to thatch roofs with for protection and fields upon fields and other random looking areas burning. It seems that they are always burning something here. Grass? Garbage? Trees? No idea what? And thousands of people carrying unimaginable things on their bicycles and their heads down the road without a second thought.

We take some time to crash into our rooms with the power, the shower, the AC and the lovely resort. Soon enough Dick and Aaron are ready to explore and the three of us are looking to find something to put us out of our misery with. Lee is cramping, my stomach is so hard and bloated and doing things best not typed here. I look six months pregnant and can’t stand the pressure of anything around my belly. Poor Alynne has the added blessing of puking out every single thing that goes in her mouth. Excellent way to spend at a lovely place on our last day off before heading out to a village with no water, power, toilets etc…90 minutes to commute from our scheduled lodge that is an additional 90 minutes from the main city with amenities and better choices to have around if you are sick as a dog…..for another five days.

Something has to give.

We start taking our Cipro that we brought for this exact eventuality, and go back to laying down watching movies, or surfing the web as we have WiFi at this resort. Things do not improve over the course of the day, over the night, or into the next day.

It doesn’t seem smart to the three of us that we continue with our goals and objectives. Like I was once told when I was on a trip a long way from home in surroundings that were foreign to me and things were not going well…..This isn’t a test of endurance. Nor is it smart to be battling GI issues for days, while being hours away from help, so we are done.

Africa has beaten us, and we are tapping out.

Aaron and Dick bring us back to Lilongwe after a four hour drive in his pickup the next morning after breakfast we can’t either eat or keep in. We drove through switchbacks and mountains until we can find a hotel in the heart of things with what we need to hole up with till we can make arrangements to change our flights, ride it out till Friday if we cannot, or go to a hospital if required. We arrive just before lunch, but lunch is not something we are having any part of!!!

Dick and Aaron carry on to the final leg of the trip and the three of us collapse into bed for the next eight hours. I know this to be true because except for the need to foul the bathroom all we do is watch four movies in a row, while eating moist crackers that I grabbed from the resort gift shop. How on earth is a nice light buttery, flaky cracker moist?!?! It shouldn’t be. EVER. However, when sitting in an air conditioned room is unable to prevent the sweat from rolling down your flesh, I would imagine crackers can’t stand up to the humidity either.

Supper is attempted and failed. The bed and the pillow win this battle.

Morning. Not good, but definitely morning. It came far too soon. Waking every few hours convinced I was late for something. Having to look at my watch, for some reason stuck on Toronto time, convert to Malawi time, decide if I was late, realize I wasn’t, swat at a Malaria infected mosquito – real or imagined, and try to fall asleep again. Awesome. Not.

Sniff. Sneeze. Hack. Swallow. Scream slightly. Sweat. Repeat.

Our breakfast at the lodge that used skeleton keys to lock the rooms, was an egg, dry bread and an honest to goodness wiener. Alrighty then.

We have two days off ahead of us before we head out to Rubberboot, Africa (aka Falwell, Malawi) to spend four days in a village teaching first aid and working at an outreach clinic. We are headed to The Shire River today. It drains into Lake Malawi. Lake Malawi is the largest in the country, taking up 1/3 of the total space here – 118,000 km2 in size. The video advertising at the airport showed it to be crystal clear, bright blue and awesome sandy beaches. The Shire River is along the Lilongwe National Park and we are going on a hippo hunt today. We will have the opportunity to shoot as many as we want. Seriously. No limit. Can you imagine how many big game hunters this place must draw if they can shoot as many as they want to? Our weapons available to us, you wonder? Our cameras. Ha ha! Got you!

On the drive to the Reserve, we have three hours in Aaron’s pickup truck.

We saw hundreds of food stands, as well as thousands of piles of fresh food, tomatoes…mangoes…potatoes…onions…. all stacked in little pyramids along the side of the road. I asked Aaron what is done with the food each night as the vendors want to go home, or go to bed. He replied that it just stays there. “It just stays there???”, was my incredulous response. “No one is going to steal it?” I asked. He was quite puzzled at my question. “Why would anyone steal it? They can just eat it if they are hungry.” My turn to be stunned. “What do you mean, they can just eat it?” I felt like I was in a ping pong tournament as the surprise at each other’s question volleyed back and forth between us. “Of course! We all need food to live. In fact, if someone comes to eat off a mango tree in someone’s yard, they will be pointed to the one that is the sweetest. It is how we survive. We are one people.” I remember my mouth opening, but nothing came out. I had nothing. Process that one for a moment, will ya? (Yes, you…the reader of this passage. Reread it in fact. No the fact I was speechless, but that which made me so.)

I sat in silence, thinking about this for most of the rest of the drive.

Some of the big differences I have immediately noticed between these two African countries are these….Malawi, while polluted is much cleaner. Malawi is more humid. Ethiopia has 100 million people, Malawi has 17 million. There is less congestion of cars and trucks on the road, ergo less air pollution….and thousands of bicycles. There are less sticks, and more bricks. The eldest and wisest little piggy would be proud.

There is a 50% unemployment rate, 15% more than Ethiopia. Their staple food isn’t injera, it is nsima. It is a corn flour based, gluey dumpling like smooth blob that is used as their main starch. It is much like very thick, dry semolina with a similar taste and consistency. It is not bad.

We arrived at The Hippo View Lodge a few hours later, Kwacha in hand to pay for a four hour private boat ride along the river to see what animals would let us have them in our live zoo…..circle of life and all, firstly the zoo animal, now the spectator. Simba would be proud.

Mere seconds after me wondering out loud who would see the first hippo, I spot the beast – mouth wide open as it broke the surface of the water. Had it hiccuped right then, a large portion of the river water would have disappeared it’s mouth was so huge! I wondered if the opportunity had just passed by everyone too quickly, for I was the only one to see it. I needn’t have feared as over the next four hours, with ZERO exaggeration, we probably saw between 500-1000 hippos! Some groups/schools/pods/gangs ? Not sure what the proper hippo grouping is called, and without my friend Google to help me, I can only guess, we saw up to 50 in one bunch. Their backs were quite scarred as apparently hippos like to rumble in dark alleys behind the bars at night. They are quite territorial, and will chomp and/or shank the offending hippo from the wrong corner of the river. Why can’t they just wear coloured headbands to identify their gang colours like the Crips and the Bloods do?

The next animal we saw large quantities of were elephants. Their skin was much darker, more charcoal like, than I expected. Perhaps it is because they are African elephants instead of Asian elephants? They were very beautiful and peaceful at the same time. One of my most favourite pictures of me Alynne took with the elephants in the background headed into the river for a swim. I will try and add it later.

Crocodiles were also very plentiful. Steve Irwin would have not known where to wrestle first.

We also saw Fish Eagles, Kingfishers, termite hills, Baboons, Water bucks, Water buffalo, Bush bucks, Warthogs, Ibex, Herons, Elephant skulls and burnt out poacher boats. It was sadly not our day to see a lion, giraffe, rhino or zebra. However, we did see lots of other animals.

I also got intimately acquainted with the Tse Tse fly as it chomped my left calf not once, but twice!!! I was about the size of a nickel and it wasn’t a puncture wound, it was a definite shanking of my flesh as it cut me twice. It was so fast, I got my second bite before my superhero reflexes of shrieking and slapping could kick in. I am told they are also called hippo flies and they carry the disease called African Sleeping Sickness. Usually more bites than this are needed to infect someone….but….If you find me sleeping and won’t wake up in the next few weeks, please call the bambulance and tell them what happened. Joking, but somewhat serious….

We thought we were supposed to stay there, but Aaron says it isn’t in the budget, so we go to the Two Deuce motel instead. Rolling blackouts seem to be a big thing here, and we definitely had our share of no power that night. We arrived by candle light, ate by candlelight, and went to bed by candle light.

While waiting for supper, Lee, Alynne and I lay on their bed flat out. We were overheated from the day on the river, the temp of 36oC with 112% humidity (or close enough) and moaning about the fact we had no power for AC or even a fan. I think my sweat beads were sweating. In desperation Alynne cried out, “All I need right now is a fan!!!” Well, the disparate primal tone of anguish stirred something deep inside me that had been laying dormant for weeks, and frankly it surprised me. It could have been the tone of her suffering that resonated with me, or the battle cry in her desire to survive the heat, but I leapt to my feet with the cartoon lightbulb above my head illuminating the room like you see in comic books!

My parents were practically there in Africa with me in that moment. Let me explain. Picture this, Sicily…1884….just joking….. My parents had suggested I bring a solar charger capable battery pack with me in case of being out in the middle of nowhere and the need to charge something arrived. Well, when I ordered the one I got from amazon.ca, inside the box was a little bonus gift I hadn’t expected. A FAN!!!!!! I leapt from the bed as though I was a worm in a hot frying pan and Alynne and Lee wondered if I had been bit by the Tasmanian devil I moved so fast. Seconds later, we were taking turns holding salvation 4” from our face. I am ashamed to admit when I saw the little fan, I scoffed at it a bit as it seemed gimmicky, but wow…was it exactly what we need to keep from slipping over the edge in that moment.

We have now arrived at the part of this journey you all knew was coming, but have been with mixed emotions about. Do you really want to know about how we pooped over there…or not…Kind of like peeking at something gross and unable to stop yourself from looking…or in this case reading.

My razor blade throat now has company. Alynne has started to puke every time she eats. We both also have started stomach cramping and bloating with the occasional Di-poopus-of-the-blowhole. Hence, why we named this establishment the two deuce motel. With the absence of power and running water, we needed to use the bucket of water with dead flies in it to manually flush down the contents of the toilet…be it vomit or poop, and there is only enough for two flushes per bucket. I’ll let your imagination take it from here, and just say your imagination is probably not as good in it’s painting of this picture. Especially when the rinse bucket runs out of water post puking….

We finally get to bed after our charcoal cooked fish is served. Some have the head still on, some of us do not. Yes, even I got the fish. Locals say the fresh fish out of the lake is a world delicacy. I figured since I wasn’t someone who enjoyed coffee before Ethiopia, and now I love their coffee, perhaps if this is considered a world delicacy I should try this too.

My fish arrives, but not how I would have totally preferred to receive it. I was hoping for a fillet, maybe breaded and fried with a little lemon maybe, but my only option was head on or off. I chose off. Not super interested at looking at the face of the animal I am eating, EVEN IF THE HEAD MEAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE BEST PART.

It wasn’t the worst thing I have eaten, at least it was white fish. But it smelled of fish and there were skin and scales everywhere. Not happening again this trip. Period.

I filled the gap with mangoes and called it a night just so the day could be over. I felt like crap. Judging by the sounds coming from Alynne’s bathroom, it isn’t going well there either.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Day twelve

Up before dawn, even before the Mosque call to prayer today. The group is splitting up and we are headed separate ways. Kari and Matt are going on a trip to Tanzania and Dick, Lee, Alynne and I are headed to Malawi.

My throat was tingling when I went to bed last night, so I know I am run down from the pollution, the long days and early mornings and the lack of downtime. I went to bed early as my stuff was packed and prepped earlier, hoping a good nights sleep would do the trick, however this morning I woke having swallowed razor blades, and feeling like I drank too many beers. Buckley’s cold pills to the rescue! They would come to be my best friend every 4-6 hours….

We headed to the airport with some hugs and goodbye’s to our new Ethiopian friends/drivers/bodyguards and piled into the airport lobby waving goodbye to Matt and Kari as they were staying on one more day on Ethiopia.

As soon as you walk into the airport there, you are subjected to security screening and X-ray scanners of your bags. Enter first hiccup of the day. Apparently in this airport you re required to carry medical documentation to prove you have a pacemaker/defibrillator. Having the scar and a palpable lump isn’t good enough when explaining why you can’t go through the metal detector. There were six requests made to walk through, and six times of declination of same. I had to resort to pulling my shirt and bra away from my chest, pointing to the scar and standing in the line up, refusing to let anyone else pass by me before they took me seriously. Even after that, I was subjected to extra screening and bag investigation in case my device was a remote detonator or something! My powers of persuasion finally won and I was allowed to pass.

We then checked our bags and headed down to the gate, passing a second security check. Enter hiccup number two. They were more forgiving in terms of my lack of documentation, however, they went straight to the body cavity check, including the removal of my Fitbit. When I got through to the other side to collect my backpack, phone etc, I grabbed my stuff and we went downstairs to wait and check things out. Shortly after being down there, I realized my Fitbit was missing. I hadn’t seen it in the bin when I got my stuff, so didn’t put it together until I went to check my watch for the time. Alynne and I went back to get it, and when we approached the security gate we had gone through, I said to the guard that my watch was missing. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled it out. Nice. Trying to rob the Chinese. I could tell he had been diddling with it as my stopwatch had been started 16 minutes earlier, exactly when it had gone through security. Plot failure on his part. Thief:0, Annie:1

We had some time before our flight to cruise the airport, and in doing so, discovered the coffee pot I bought for my new love of a good coffee ceremony was priced much higher there than when I bought it on the street. EXACT same pot. I paid $5US, and here it was being sold for $78US. Nuts. Smoking deal for Annie! We had a chance to eat a yummy breakfast (Alynne’s mouldy toast being the exception) with even yummier of a milkshake before lining up to go through yet another security checkpoint. (This one, no hiccups.)

While waiting for the flight to board, Alynne and I had a front row seat to some trauma and lept into action with our ITLS training, and were able to save a young boy from haemorrhaging to death after he fell from the seat and suffered a small lac to the forehead. Between my emergency toilet paper roll and Alynne’s bandaid, we provided supplies tp the Mom to staunch the flow of blood. The medical staff who were called by the gate staff were going to be disappointed when they got there, as there was no more saving to be done. Yay us. Pat pat. (On the back.)

We were hoping for a smooth, uneventful flight but alas fate had other plans. To start with, the seatbelt in my chair was freakishly short. I know I’m not a tiny person, but I have always fit in an airplane seat and been able to do up the belt. Always. This particular seatbelt was nearly 8” too short! I had to ask the attendant for a seatbelt extender. I knew there was nothing to be embarrassed about, but it was a first for me. Sitting in the row in front of us were some (actual) Chinese men who decided we should be a part of their human zoo. I’m not sure what their fascination was, perhaps it started with the seatbelt thing….but the one guy was practically sitting backwards the whole flight so he could eat with his mouth open, crackers spilling out as he slobbered and cackled to his mates while staring at us. Perhaps he had never seen amateur supermodels before (I confess Alynne and I were looking smoking hot in our travel outfits and hair ties, so we deserved all the fanfare we were due…).

I asked him point blank what he was staring at. He just laughed and cracker-spilled like a fool. The man across the aisle from me must have had some previous experience with these jokers, as he commented that they didn’t speak English and gave them a dismissive look. A sneer actually. He could see them for what they were, just as we could. Well after a few hours of this, Alynne was at her breaking point, and as “The Coach” from CJ92 in Calgary used to say when he was a radio announcer, she “lost it.” She accosted him from her seat, demanding to know what he found so fascinating, and that he should turn around as more crackers dribbled from his chin. When her shrieking was unsuccessful, she knew the universal language of charades would need to be employed. We had graduated beyond English. She started gesticulating wildly with her hands motioning to them to not only turn around, but to turn-the-f**k-around-motherf**kers!!! Luckily for them, the flight was nearly over or I am certain the Bruce Lee in her would have emerged next.

We made it through customs with no problem and secured our bags while Dick greeted our greeters who where there to greet us. Lol Aaron and his friend Gideon were all smiles to meet us. I saw a real Jacaranda tree upon exiting the airport and immediately thought of the walk-in clinic in the mall named after it. Even their color scheme was the right shade of purple to match the tree.

My cold pills were starting to feel like tic tacs, I was popping them so often. I was starting to sweat like a beast and feel like garbage. Speaking of that, while there was waay more garbage here than in Canada, it felt quite clean in comparison to Addis.

We arrived in Lilongwe and went to a parking lot of the grocery store, and just sat there. We waited. People begging for things came to our window, asking for money, demanding money…until the store security guards came and surrounded our truck to make a perimeter to keep them a cars length away. They weren’t having this sort of behaviour, it was bad for business. Whose business though….? Shortly, a man came to our window that our driver knew, and it was here we changed our American money for Kwacha, the local currency. In a mall parking lot, sitting in our truck with the windows rolled down like we were doing a drug deal. $300US each translated into $222,600 Kwacha. Wanna feel rich? Have literally wads of bills in your hand wrapped in paper like ransom money. 742 Kwacha per $1US. Then we drove away.

The only thing that could have felt shadier about it was if we had been in a limo, and this strange guy stepped in. In this scenario, we would be wearing black clothes, gold necklaces, white hats and have at least one gold capped front tooth, hands folded in front of us with a cane between our legs, with a duck’s head as the brass handle.

We were told if people here go to the bank to get American money for travel, the banks ask a lot of questions. Snoopy type questions that aren’t any concern of theirs, but big brother wants to know. Something to do with American money being used to fund terrorists. Spin off entrepreneurs now operate out of this parking lot as money traders (?Launderers?) to undercut the banks fees and control over the masses and as such, give better rates. Did we unwittingly just play a role in something nefarious?

Aaron then took us to a little lodge just outside of town and I immediately lay down for three hours to try and gain the upper hand on my cold until Alynne woke me.

We ate about 19 fresh mangoes between us on the step in front of the hotel before supper. It is mango season, and there are nearly as many that rot as are eaten. 40% of all the fresh food either grown on purpose, or as a volunteer crop, rots here. In what is supposed to be the poorest country in the world, that statistics was shocking to me. If there is so much free food everywhere, why are there so many people starving to death!?!??! The answer I was given was because of the lack of ability to process it, or store it (ie refrigeration) or transport it. I still haven’t figured out why the rest of the world doesn’t know this, or act on it?

We had supper and I went to bed straight afterwards, sick as a dog, sweating through my Jammies. Nice.

Night night.

Good morning!

Leftovers for breakfast was on the menu so we could clean out the fridge before we head our separate ways. Kari and Matt won’t be coming to Malawi with us, they are off on a treetop safari in Tanzania, so we have some food to eat. Fried Mac and cheese for me!

I am super looking forward to a shower with real water. This little trickle that makes me wonder if I am actually getting wet is starting to make me crazy. My hair is sticky from shampoo that hasn’t come out, mixed with pollution, dust and sweat, I am definitely Uber attractive. I will say however, that it hasn’t slowed down my eyebrow action as I drive through town. I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but the main way to communicate here is via eyebrows and the sucking in of air. Pre-groomed eyebrows are recommended so as to avoid any miscommunications. The men do it more than the women, and they are often caught off guard when a white woman does it to them to say Hi. I quite like it actually, and rise to the challenge of multiple eyebrow raises when they don’t respond initially.

We were sitting in traffic today on our way to the ambulance tour we had arranged, and a woman with her child came begging at the window. As I have mentioned, giving anything to beggars or vendors can result in the driver getting a ticket. I had made eye contact with the woman, and didn’t want to be rude by ignoring her, so I quickly commented on what a cute baby she had. In all likelihood, she had no idea what I was saying, but it made me feel better to talk to her like one mom to another rather than just have her as invisible and ignore her.

On the drive we saw a beautiful playground that was a bit out of place considering the slums we were in, and then we were able to figure it out. I was protected by armed guards with AK-47’s to only allow certain kids to use it. Likely diplomat’s children as that is where several embassies were. I am told that 35%of people live in the shanty houses or are homeless and 65% live in the apartments. Most seem to have satellite TV, even though we are told it is very expensive.

Pulling into the alley by the Tebita Ambulance there were what appeared to be human femurs laying in the gutters, no one knows why.

We meet Kibret Abebe, the CEO of Tebita Ambulance. He was formerly a nurse anesthesiologist who was asked to go on a transfer between hospitals with a patient all the way to London. When he saw the power of having an ambulance to do that job, he came home and resigned from his position at the Black Lion Hospital, sold his house to raise the money he needed, went to Dubai to buy the equipment and started the Tebita Ambulance. He chose that name because Tebita means “Where is my drop of contribution?”He chose the mustang as his symbol because he wants his delivery of health care to be swift and strong. There are currently zero paramedics in the whole country of Ethiopia. His force has now grown to have 11 BLS ambulances and two motorcycle response units. They do 25-30 calls per day. Five are in Addis and 6 are remotely stationed, sometimes at large businesses that hire him, much like oilfield medics on site would be. His vision is to have a social enterprise with cross subsidization of his venture.

There was a big accident is Addis that killed 26 people that he and his crews attended to for no charge that involved some delegates from the Canadian Embassy. They were so grateful to his organization, that they gifted him $30,000 to assist in his starting of his school to train paramedics. He is now in need of instructors and books to start training his first 15 students. He has been working with the government and they would like to have 17,000 people go through a training program to make them paramedics.

This man was very inspiring. He has been travelling the world attending conferences to explain his vision for his country, and with as much passion as he has, and the commitment behind it, I believe he will make history.

We then went to Makus art gallery for lunch before headed out to Kirkos again for more medical assessments.

Off to bed early tonight, as tomorrow we leave for Malawi.getting wet is starting to make me crazy. My hair is sticky from shampoo that hasn’t come out, mixed with pollution, dust and sweat, I am definitely Uber attractive. I will say however, that it hasn’t slowed down my eyebrow action as I drive through town. I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but the main way to communicate here is via eyebrows and the sucking in of air. Pre-groomed eyebrows are recommended so as to avoid any miscommunications. The men do it more than the women, and they are often caught off guard when a white woman does it to them to say Hi. I quite like it actually, and rise to the challenge of multiple eyebrow raises when they don’t respond initially.

We were sitting in traffic today on our way to the ambulance tour we had arranged, and a woman with her child came begging at the window. As I have mentioned, giving anything to beggars or vendors can result in the driver getting a ticket. I had made eye contact with the woman, and didn’t want to be rude by ignoring her, so I quickly commented on what a cute baby she had. In all likelihood, she had no idea what I was saying, but it made me feel better to talk to her like one mom to another rather than just have her as invisible and ignore her.

On the drive we saw a beautiful playground that was a bit out of place considering the slums we were in, and then we were able to figure it out. I was protected by armed guards with AK-47’s to only allow certain kids to use it. Likely diplomat’s children as that is where several embassies were. I am told that 35%of people live in the shanty houses or are homeless and 65% live in the apartments. Most seem to have satellite TV, even though we are told it is very expensive.

Pulling into the alley by the Tebita Ambulance there were what appeared to be human femurs laying in the gutters, no one knows why.

We meet Kibret Abebe, the CEO of Tebita Ambulance. He was formerly a nurse anesthesiologist who was asked to go on a transfer between hospitals with a patient all the way to London. When he saw the power of having an ambulance to do that job, he came home and resigned from his position at the Black Lion Hospital, sold his house to raise the money he needed, went to Dubai to buy the equipment and started the Tebita Ambulance. He chose that name because Tebita means “Where is my drop of contribution?”He chose the mustang as his symbol because he wants his delivery of health care to be swift and strong. There are currently zero paramedics in the whole country of Ethiopia. His force has now grown to have 11 BLS ambulances and two motorcycle response units. They do 25-30 calls per day. Five are in Addis and 6 are remotely stationed, sometimes at large businesses that hire him, much like oilfield medics on site would be. His vision is to have a social enterprise with cross subsidization of his venture.

There was a big accident is Addis that killed 26 people that he and his crews attended to for no charge that involved some delegates from the Canadian Embassy. They were so grateful to his organization, that they gifted him $30,000 to assist in his starting of his school to train paramedics. He is now in need of instructors and books to start training his first 15 students. He has been working with the government and they would like to have 17,000 people go through a training program to make them paramedics.

This man was very inspiring. He has been travelling the world attending conferences to explain his vision for his country, and with as much passion as he has, and the commitment behind it, I believe he will make history.

We then went to Makus art gallery for lunch before headed out to Kirkos again for more medical assessments.

Off to bed early tonight, as tomorrow we leave for Malawi.