Day 3

Today we went to the nursing school and met the director and our nurse tutors (veiledere). Our group of 6 is split in two, so we will be going to the health centers and the pediatric wards and delivery wards together 3 and 3. My groups tutor is called Aster and she is a nurse and midwife and has 26 years experience working and now she is working as a teacher in the nursing school. She has quite good English and seemed very sweet :) One of the first things she asked us was if we had delivered babies, because that is actually one of the nurses jobs here. So I guess we're gonna get to assist in delivery :)

She showed us all around the hospital. Its the biggest public hospital in Ethiopia and serves between 2 and 3 million people, and that is obvious when you see it, cause it is huge and extremely crowded, especially at the first floors which is 3. class (where the poorest are taken care of). There they are 6 or more patients together in small rooms with absolutely no privacy and more dirt.  As we moved up the floors to 2. and 1. class some had their own rooms and bathrooms. Some parts of the hospital was really smelly, of urine and who knows what. We saw different departments. One of them was the children's emergency department where they had a tiny room with I think about 3 or 4 kids of whom several were screaming and the place was packed with family, nurses, doctors and so on. We also went to the part where they treat HIV patients. We got a quick look in at the neonatal unit as well. Then we all went and had coffee, and I had the sweetest macchiato ever made. One of the tutors had the same and she added like 2 or 3 more spoon fulls of sugar! They sure like it sweet here!

Tomorrow we will be having our first day in the hospital as students. Not sure exactly which unit I'll be in, but either pediatric, neonatal or delivery. We will have the next 3 days in the hospital, and from Monday on we will go to the health centers. We're supposed to mostly observe, but we might get to help as well. Nurses don't do any of the cleaning and taking care of the hygienic needs of the patients, their families do, as well as bring them food. So it will be interesting to see what the nurses are actually doing!

After the hospital visit we went to Hilton Hotel, which is a huge and expensive hotel, where we paid a little to use their pool and sunbathing facilities. We also got dinner there, really yummy chicken fajitas. Spicy, just like everything else here, they seem to put chilies in everything!
On the way back home we stopped to get some fruit at a marked and we drove through some really poor streets, where trash was laying everywhere and it was really stinky. Probably the worst streets we've seen here so far. Pretty much everywhere though we see people laying around sleeping on the side walks and in the middle of round-abouts, as well as some horrible sheds pieced together by whatever they could get their hands on. Extreme povery.