I spent the last years of my working life in the University at Arba Minch. The city has a population of more than 200,000. The University has more than 40,000 enrolled students. I went there as the medical students were about to enter their clinical years. They were not ready to receive students in the hospital but we had to do so!
In my time we had to take the Hippocratic Oath, which I’m sure would be impossible to take these days with abortion, euthanasia, sex change operations. At Arba Minch they had a commitment called ‘Passing the Light.’ There were a number of ex-patriots mainly Indian subcontinent or from the Philippines. There were only two Caucasians. I was the only one involved in training doctors. Thus for a while as they came to clinical years thy found my accent difficult.
Every morning we discussed the emergency admissions from the the previous day, deaths and the operations performed. Because of the way we divided the students for teaching there were 60-75 people packed into a small room. As you can see above there was no room between the front row of participants and the people leading. You can see the data projector hanging from the roof on a little platform attached by rope.
This is looking up at the ceiling. The mark on the wall is bird poop, and the tin roof without a ceiling made it very difficult during the rainy season.Robin and I shipped across a ship container of stuff to make the system workable even though not perfect. You are looking at a large part of my superannuation!There were other lectures to be given also. These were presented in the University grounds in much better facilities which had been prepared for the preclinical years.If you let your eyes wander you can see the level of furnishings in the wards. There was one X-ray box for the whole hospital, so the light coming through the windows did the job. There was no radiologist to report on the X-rays.But a University enrollment of 40,000 makes for a big graduation ceremony. Not all faculties graduated on the same day.Terrorism either as anti-government protests or as a means of getting the attention of those in charge occurred, although thankfully not all that commonly.But the purpose of training medical students is treat patients and we had an endless supply of them!
An old man with little time, simultaneously, a lot of time, and lots to say - with opinions, born of life's lessons, on many subjects.
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4 thoughts on “Some aspects of University Years in Arba Minch”
What an interesting, and difficult time you spent in Ethiopia.
Heated Stew 
What an interesting, and difficult time you spent in Ethiopia.
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Challenging, difficult but worthwhile!
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And I bet you would do it all again.
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Age sadly does weary them. But yes I’d love to be young again!
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