Axum, Baby

So while Liz and Sonal toiled away at the hospital in Gonder, I took a Twin Otter turboprop plane to Axum. Axum is in the Tigray region in the north and is the heart of the former Axumite Empire which ruled part of Africa and the Arabian Penninsula from 200ad to 600ad. This was a nice town to visit. I rented a bicycle and rode all over town the first day, taking in as many sites as I could handle. Unlike Gonder, Axum has flat and wide streets which are great for biking. The back streets are new cobble stone but the rental mountain bike ($1 per hour) handled them fine.

The Steale are monoliths that the Axumites erected for burial markers for rich or ruling families and to express their power and culture. These granite Steales are carved out of the side of mountain hill sides and dragged by elephants and people 7km to their erection point.
The largest is 33m high and 520 tons! The carvings are simple but precise and strangely modern. The tombs underneath are quite cool also, especially in the heat of midday.


This church is the main church in a compound where Ethiopians claim to safeguard the Ark of the Covenant. They won't let anyone see it though, but who knows, the Axumites are the descendants of Soloman. I'm not going to argue, I just hope they keep it safe from the Nazis. The Ethiopian gal in the forground is making a sexy pose on top of fragments of a toppled Steale.







I hiked around the hills above town and got a this photo of the main market square with a giant Tekwar Tree, a massive shade maker and a perfect centerpiece for a square in sunny Ethiopia.







Hah! Found this on the camera when he got back from Axum.











Today was our last day at the hospital and we spent our second morning at derm clinic with Dr. Kass (pr: "Kahz") and Sarah (of Duke fame). Jeez, it's wild. I wish I could do this every morning until my learning curve shows its asymptotic slowing. We see such bizarro stuff: A crusting, stinky, oozing ear twice the size of its neighbor to the left which had been growing under the averted eyes of his medical colleagues on campus; a 20yo man with hideously widespread serous-draining group of patches covering both axillae, groin-to-gluteal-cleft and, due to the chronic and worsening oozitude (an advanced medical term), covered in old pieces of newspaper; on an 11yo boy the nail pits and crusting, well-demarcated, silvery papules and patches on shins, scalp, and arms which scrape down to silvery and hyperemic bases consistent with years-ignored psoriasis; a 45yo man treated for lepromatous leprosy 15 years ago with resultant gynecomastia, "lion face" without eyebrows ("madarosis"), and now presenting with diffuse and patchy loss of pigmentation from application of traditional herbs which he hoped would cure his irreversible nerve damage. Doh!


Yesterday Sonal and I recruited the friendly outpatient nurse in the foreground who translated -- very diligently and seriously -- the eight questions on Tuggy's questionnaire (our residency director, "Dr. Michael Tuggy"). We heard some really interesting opinions on barriers to health care ranging from religious practices to transportation difficulties, to belief that herbal showers would cure HIV (yikes!).

Lastly, here is one of our wonderful interns, Bethlehem, using a donated blood pressure cuff and stethoscope from Dr. Cordy at diabetes clinic. They approved the use of this photograph :)









This has really been an intense three weeks and the intensity has come for reasons we didn't expect. We're getting kicked out of our hotel lobby so I can't write the appreciative sentiments floating around in my head but I feel them!!! More soon. We're moving down the street for a last dinner at the Hotel Tana where we haven't yet had the reportedly yummy traditional food.

So, we're off to Lalibella tomorrow at noon. No promises on internet for the next couple days but I think they have reliable electricity in Rome. Rrroooaaarrr!!! (That's general enthusiasm and a desire to say more.)