Ethiopia 2010 Day 11

10-9- 2010 0730 Apartment, Bole, Addis.
I think I finally have the day sorted out...since I know Kevin and Bob were staying 10 days and they left last night..the big 747 fan jets are much noisier than anything else, and when they take off from Bole its the kind of sound that makes people believe in cargo cults and gods from the skies. But I didnt hear them, was asleep by their departure time, which will be my departure next Wednesday. So now the apartment is even more quiet than usual...whenever I can hear my own key clicks I know its quiet...and I am enjoying the solitude, although missing K and B.
We did well as a team. I loved NOT being the leader, continuing the course I set over a decade ago of trying not to be in charge of things, or at least to be part of a team if charge is needed. The uncle role. And since I am often the oldest in an assemblage, its also fun to feel the contrasts within myself...feeling intensely young and impatient and madly creative at moments, and at other times absolutely spinning at the changes, the pace of events, the direction human society is taking. I'm aware that I walk like an old guy, unless I am running and then I RUN like an old guy, There's no escaping what for years I consigned to those friends who had less able nerve, less able joints. I knew, with increasing certainity, that they were leading the way, that, as my friend Hale once put it, 'you temporarily abled people have a lot to learn'. Hale, a long term Berkeley resident and man about town was one of my first students, when as a young (really, chronologically less than 30) assistant professor I started teaching a course called Physiology 10, modeled on Dick Strohman's Zoology 10, and George Wald's Harvard course. And as friend and patient we've both been on the planet, sometimes together, often apart, every since. Salama, Hale!
But hey, I could maunder along adressing each of you by name, and where would that leave us?
OK, after my walk this morning, and yet more time to reflect anxiously at the obviously badly poured and minimally reinforced pillar joints of the multistory buildings going up all around, I came back and googled earthquakes and Addis. Oops...
"...More interestingly, the low to mid-rise reinforced concrete buildings that have mushroomed in Ethiopia’s major cities over the past 20 years or so share very identical design and construction characteristics with their counter-parts in these countries. As seen in the August 17, 1999 earthquake of Istanbul, the September 7, 1999 earthquake in Athens, the September 21, 1999 earthquake in Taiwan, and the January 21, 2001 earthquake in Gujarat, India, such buildings that consist of poorly designed reinforced concrete farmes with un-reinforced masonry infills experience severe damage resulting in loss of life. Ethiopian building officials, engineers and architects, therefore, should take note of the probable fate of these builings in the country’s major cities in the event of an earthquake. ...
http://www.ethiosun.com/earthquake-risks-in-addis-ababa-and-other-major-ethiopian-cities-will-the-country-be-caught-off-guarded/)
Just what I was afraid of. Its the usual factors, of course, The country has a modern building code, but its not enforced. Enforcement takes training and funding. And if you can get funding without having to adhere to codes, and your expected investment should pay off within a few years, and the chance of an earthquake is...well, low, right? Then why not?. This dammed market driven model we are using is more flaws than fabric!!!
And of course, most of the hospital building we have visited, perhaps EXCEPT for Adoma/Nazaret, which is single story, are at major risk.
On the subject, I remember sitting with a structural engineer whom we met over coffee in Oaxaca, and hearing for the first time the concept of elasticity explained clearly. People there were busily bringing their buildings 'up to code' by retrofitting rebar in the adobe walls of their buildings. 'Thats like putting a stiff stirring rod into a frozen daiquiri' said the expert, apparently no stranger to cocktails or building codes. 'When something bigger than 7 hits, the rebar stirs the mud and the whole thing comes down in a heap".
But, then, I live in the Bay Area much of the year. And on the coast!! Another reason to consider Woods Hole on Cape Cod as home, I guess. Soon our house on a hill will have a beach in the back yard.
OK, enough of engineering and fear mongering. Its another gorgeous post-rains day in Addis. On my walk I now regularly pass the young mother with the three kids and the green neTela, and smile at the kids, who now smile back, and pass her 10 birr, or sometimes a bit more. Today the older kid was looking over a handwritten sheet of paper with a adult drawing of an airplane and block lettering saying 'TOMORROW I FLY BACK TO MY COUNTRY...". Left by another admirer. Shes so attractive, I am sure any ferengi coming by feels drawn to her, as I do. And as far as I can see, that part of that wall is her nighttime camping place. It being Saturday, there was live call to prayer from the Cathederal, amplified of course, but with very human pauses and even a cough or two. Nothing like the hawking and throat clearing of the older monks that accompanies Tibetan prayers in the Gompa's of Ladakh. People all around are just going about their business, but others are in various degrees of attendance. Some come inside the fence, across the wide paved space that is NOT used for parking (as a megachurch in the midwest might use it..) Some come up to touch the doors or walls with their foreheads. And at the times of regular services, some go in. Across the street, there is a dwelling place made by piling up broken cement sidewalk blocks to form incurving walls, and covered with corrugated steel and tarpaulins. In front, every morning, a man with robes and a head covering, chanting. A life of prayer? Next to the fence around the cathedral, there are many transient sleepers, some holding down prime places from which to sell religious paraphenalia. And also several older men who sit, ensconced in possessions, more or less continuously praying with or without books. Or perhaps they are just mumbling 'duh, duh' over and over, I can't really hear. Whatever, they are swept into the practice and process we recognize as religious behavior. Good in that it helps bear the slings and arrows. Less good in that it deflects people from earthly solutions to social problems.
Meanwhile, back in the meeting rooms, the mission continues. We had a kind of non-meeting yesterday, as events became primarily political rather than informational. After various caucusing, and rapid work to create a comparision of the 'traditional' lecture based model and the possible inquiry directed model, with diagrams and summary matrices, we reassembled. But it became clear, by the unexpressable but clearly percepitable decrease in tension of our Ethiopian colleagues, that in the world of Ministries and politics outside, there had been a shift. After lunch, Oluma, our prime host, sat affably chatting with colleagues, and then proposed that we should separate and have an afternoon off. Hmmm. Luckily, we had introduced the idea of Check Out last week, and so were able to propose a last checkout. It went well. From it we learned that they had enjoyed the process play, and learned from our meetings. From the two most obviously oppositional individuals, we learned that their differences continued, and were not resolvable at the present. We distributed small gifts for our hosts, and the process was over.
Well, not quite. Bob and Kevin were scheduled to leave for the airport at 9, and at about 6 we got word that the Minister of Health would like to meet with us all as soon as possible. As an intensity junky, an ex birth attendant and ER doc (who are all intensity junkies de facto) I love this part of international work. The scramble for a necktie and presentable shirt, the comandeering of the institutional vehicle for the ride through traffic to the Ministry, the quiet and calm that surround the office and officer, the courteous and almost always pleasant interaction itself, and the realization afterwards that most political decisions have been made by the time the meeting is callled. Will the planned develoments be easy? No, of course not. But as usual I am both awed and aghast at the realities of how human societal change occurs.
So now the work of the KAB team is over, KB are sitting in Frankfurt waiting for a connection, and A is sitting here looking forward to going to Merkato to search for the perfect neTela. And yes, Sala, looking for the perfect wooden spoon.
In the coming days, I will be working with Oluma , Birna and others to try to make more specific plans on how information technology can help assessment processes keep track of professional development and communication skills, etc. Yes , I have ideas and even opinions about that is going to happen, but you know what? It's Ethiopians who must make the plans and execute them, and expressing my ideas even to my extended family would be trespassing on territory that now belongs to them. After all, one of our basic group agreements was confidentiality.
I have plans to observe in the ER at St Pauls on Monday night, and to sit in on a class on Tuesday. And time perhaps to get to the Museum of the Red Terror...as well as other cultural sites and touristical attractions. And more wot, more injera, more fit-fit.
Time for breakfast and the day.
Salama
Alan