Sylvia's Journal

We had our first visit with a potential beneficiary of our assistance, the chief of the regional health bureau and his deputies in one of Ethiopia’s larger states; the one that holds about one third of the country’s population. This started to provide us with some context, a view from the top. We hope to get more views to complement his but this is not that easy. Having only three days left makes scheduling visits very challenging. There are just too many variables, the elusive holiday of Thursday just one of many. Cold calling doesn’t work very well so we have to network ourselves onto people’s busy schedules. This takes time, one thing we don’t have much of.

A visit to Amhara region in the northwest had to be cancelled to our regret because the chief is out of the country (I wonder whether he is being trained in something). Instead we will be visiting two zones south and east of Addis, taking us on a trip that will last the entire day.Thus we will get at least a few opinions from further down the food chain.

We also met with the dynamic trainer from the local management institute who is still ready to hook up with us and get this leadership program started. She joined us after teaching all day, with no visible sign of wear and tear – she’s just the kind of person we need. In between these two meetings we spent hours with two of our own colleagues, both former ministry of health employees, who took great pains to educate us about the intricacies and complexities of getting health services to the people.

We had lunch in a place that clearly catered to foreigners, both in taste and buying power. It also had a bookstore with self improvement titles and announcements of yoga and Al –Anon classes. A few floors below gorgeous looking beauties happily penciled our names in a few time slots on Saturday for a hot stone massage and a facial. By then we will have delivered the goods, to everyone’s satisfaction we hope. So this will be our reward before we board the plane at midnight for the long trip home.

Over our high-calorie room service pasta-with-spinach-dinners and glasses of Chianti Liz cobbled together the elements and assumptions of a budget, a task that is not as intimidating to her as it would be to me. In the process a preliminary design emerged that hangs together and that we believe addresses the various needs that have already been communicated to us by various stakeholders. It will serve as a working hypothesis which we will test during the next three days.