Ethiopia – a country with many rivers and lakes

Ethiopia, about two thirds the size of Queensland, Australia, has an abundance of lakes which are mainly situated in the Rift Valley. Where ever we stayed in Ethiopia we were close to a huge lake, except for Addis Ababa! But some of the hotels in Addis had swimming pools!

On our very first trip out of Addis when being taken to work at Shashemane we stopped for lunch at the Koka Lake for lunch. It is man made and one of several man made dams on the Awash River for hydroelectricity production! Later when passing, we sometimes stopped to buy catfish. In the late 1960’s early 1970’s and even during the 1990’s when we arrived home they were still flopping around – 100+ km later to Kuyera or 300Km to Soddo – and the fillets even jumped around the frying pan when being cooked!

The two photos above are of Lake Langano which was about 20 Km from where we lived at Kuyera near Shashemane during our first stay in Ethiopia. It has a number of memories for us. We occasionally used to go for a swim on a Thursday afternoon, but were often called back to the hospital for an emergency! Annoying! There was a pizza fire-place, out in a paddock, on the way in from the highway to where we used to swim at an hotel and a camping area. There wasn’t a pizza hut in Addis at that stage! It was a holiday site on the Lake and as they supplied a real reminder for foreigners of their homelands. They did a reasonable amount of business! Not at that time but in the 90’s grandson Adam, visiting with his parents, had his first swim in that Lake (really his first splash not in a bath!) One of the quite interesting medical cases which came from in the water was….a lady washing the family clothing and bending over with her bottom pointing ‘seawards’! A hippo saw an opportunity and took a nibble. Fortunately it was a fairly large pair of buttocks and so he left a moderately huge piece of skin and fat, hanging downwards but with enough tissue still attached to allow the ‘mouthful’ to be cleaned up and sewn back on! I think after that she probably washed keeping her eyes ‘seaward’ after that!

The lake on the left is connected to the one on the right by the creek seen above

The panoramic view above the animal pictures and the two below them are of the lakes near Arba Minch – Lake Abiya and Lake Chamo which are connected by a southward flowing connecting creek! The difference in their surface heights is 65 metres! Abiya covers about 1175 sq kilometres and Chamo 320 sq kilometres! As a doctor I have operated on dog, hippo, crocodile, donkey, monkey, baboon, snake, hyena and human bites. ‘Human bites?’, you may well ask. Two stand out – both from tiffs between ‘lovers’ or that is what they said! Both were on men (I could show photos but had better not!) One lost about two fifths of his lower lip and the other about 2 sq cms of the full thickness of the right side of his nose. So they have Domestic Violence in that country!

Lake Bishoftu is beautiful for swimming and boating! We used to go there for our annual holidays. It was owned by our mission but now the government has acquired the site!

Lake Zeway has many birds as seen above, Marabou storks are huge birds which either take a run up before ‘taking off’ or commonly rest high in trees and fly by dropping from the tree to let gravity give them some speed to allow them to fly! There are also plenty of delicious fish!

Dominic Cartier

Pandemic Funerals

Pandemic limitations have reduced the numbers at funerals, but have also made it possible to attend (or at least listen to) funerals without travel. In 1968 we arrived in Ethiopia. The man who had been station head at the time when I had to leave in 1973 for health reasons, had a funeral last Saturday in Canada. My wife and I attended the ceremony. Well, not quite, but we watched it on U-tube last night.

Seventy years earlier he had travelled by ship with two other young men for their first term of missionary service. So it was interesting to remember not only my contacts with the man who had died but also with the other two.

The dead man had married a beautiful lady and by the time we knew him had 4 children. He was a good leader, but what I remember most was that his youngest child, a daughter was about the same age as our oldest son. We had a platform type swing in the front of our place, and his daughter and our son used to, during school holidays (they both went to boarding school in Addis) stand at each end of plank, goggle eyed, swinging back and forth. Puppy love, I guess; nothing came of it.

Some years later I met him again in Addis. He had remained in Ethiopia in an Administrative role during the time of the communist rule. I visited during that time for the Australian division of the mission. I wanted to visit my old hospital but was forbidden. Everyone thought that it would cause a riot. But, I did need to do a bit of travel in Addis. I did not have an in-date Ethiopian licence. One of his sons, who had a licence, was out visiting him. So my friend offered his son as a driver. His licence had been obtained to drive automatic vehicles. All the vehicles available had stick gears. I’m glad that the traffic wasn’t as busy then as it is today. It was a scary ride, but we did arrive both ways without an accident.

I knew one of the other men quite well but the story is second hand. Much later he and his wife adopted a young Ethiopian girl. I can’t understand how but the Ethiopian officials allowed them out of the country without a Canadian visa for her. The other end wouldn’t let the child into Canada. The guy, nice but a bit pushy, unsuccessfully argued with them for quite a while, but eventually put the baby on the desk and began to leave. ‘OK, she’s your problem now’, he said.

He was called back, some agreement was reached, and eventually everyone was happy.

The other guy with his wife who went with him on the same ship reminded me of a couple who were working on the Ethiopian-Kenyan border. There were poor roads, no phones, his wife as the only trained nurse in a nurses clinic on site; there was no other medical help available without travelling hours on terrible roads. They were so ‘out-on-a-limb’, distance wise and in political uncertainty, that the headquarters in Addis had radio contact with them each morning and evening. And describing the roads as terrible, I mean terrible, unmade, ‘mud-slides’ and rivers with no bridges to be crossed.

Late one Saturday afternoon the husband complained of abdominal pain, his wife assessed him as having appendicitis. It was too late to fly a helicopter down but the decision was made to get everything set up for action in the morning. A helicopter was arranged, and everything was planned to be able to leave in the morning if he was still unwell. After the morning radio contact we would make a decision depending on what his wife thought. She was still worried, so another nurse, and I set out with sterile instruments, sterile disposable drapes, a spinal anaesthetic tray and a strong torch.

We had two alternative plans in place. If there was a fear that it was far progressed we would bring him back on the helicopter so that he could be watched in hospital in Addis, after surgery; or if it seemed the correct diagnosis but an early case we’d operate there and leave him in the care of his wife.

We travelled down at low altitude in a glass bottomed helicopter. It was soon after the civil war had ended and the people were frightened of low flying air machines. As we passed overhead, the men and their beasts out ploughing took off helter-skelter, often the men in one direction and the beasts in the other, still pulling their ploughs. I don’t know why the pilot flew low; it wasn’t funny for people on the ground; but it looked so from above! And when I say that we flew at a low altitude, what I should say was that we didn’t fly far above the ground. Ethiopia is mountainous so we had lots of ups and downs so as to not hit mountains. I guess we fluctuated between four and ten thousand feet, altitude wise.

At any rate I decided (correctly) that he had early appendicitis so I operated on him on the kitchen table, using a strong torch for light (held by the pilot) and under spinal anaesthesia. After surgery we watched him for a couple of hours, had lunch and returned to Addis. The next morning on the radio his wife was asked how he was getting on. She said that he was in the garden watering. She called out to him; he was happy and said ‘Thanks for making house calls.’

Pathology proved the diagnosis correct.

Dominic Cartier

Old photos from Ethiopia.

I cannot boast of being a good photographer. Here are a few photos from the past with a bit of explanation. The first photo was taken through an airplane window. The smokiness is real in that without electricity every home has an open fire, and picture was taken early in the morning.

IMG_3482 copy — Ethiopia has 70 percent of the mountains found in Africa. The highest is Mount Dashen at 4543m (14930 feet). It also has one of the lowest and hottest places in the world. The Danakil depression is 125m below sea level.

rock church Lalebella copy — The north is also famous for its 11 churches, hewn out of rock. The place is called Lalibela, where an Ethiopian Emperor of that name set out to restore the region to Christianity after a Muslim invasion. The churches are outstanding, being of a single piece of rock! Some believe that English knights, fleeing from Jerusalem during the wars there, helped in the building. This is maybe supported by the inclusion of the English Tudor rose in so many of the carvings. Others say that, at night time, angels came and helped in the building.

IMG_3540 copy — There are seven monasteries of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church on Lake Tana from which the Blue Nile starts its journey into Egypt. Above is an example of the multitude of paintings painted in typical Ethiopian style. They are found in abundance in these monasteries. Not in this painting which is of an angel watching over Mary and her Son but interestingly you see amongst the many paintings two saints whom most of the churches don’t recognize. Kidus Pilatus (St Pilate) – sainted because he was the only one who sought to have Jesus released, when he was being tried before His crucifixion. Another called the Cannibal Saint, who supposedly loved eating human flesh but has been sainted because he gave a glass of water to a thirsty girl. The story is that Mary put her hand on the scales when he was being tried after his death.

At filling station copy — I don’t think they make the horses drink petrol, but these little carts are a very common form of transport in the countryside. Although the car per population ratio is low the car accident per number of cars is very high. One of, if not the highest, in the world.

Accident 1 copy — On a straight open bitumen road. Note the rocks placed to warn motorists. It doesn’t help if you are just topping a hill and the rocks start just over the top! See lake Shalla in the distance – the deepest lake in Ethiopia. Its depth is 257 metres and its area 12X15 km.