After arriving in Ethiopia, I wasn’t feeling well at all. I still hadn’t completely recovered from the Typhoid I had been diagnosed with the previous month. Knowing that in a few days my team would be traveling well outside the city and very far away from any hospital, I decided to get all the things checked before heading out to the village. The following is an account of the day’s events as my teammate and I went to the hospital. I hope you enjoy this humorous story and can imagine us laughing and finding the joy in the unusual experiences we had that day.
When you’re sick in Ethiopia, you go to the ER with a friend on a casual Sunday afternoon after church to get checked out. You walk in and convince the doctor to see you because it’s technically not an emergency, but the outpatient clinic is closed. You explain how you can’t come back tomorrow because you’re serving as a missionary and are living an hour away on the other side of town. You get triaged by a nurse who seems very unhappy. But you start making jokes and he calls you out on being a nurse. Apparently when you use terms like “abdominal pain” and “fatigue” instead of saying “my stomach hurts” and “I’m tired” people notice.
Next, you’re sent to the registration counter to pay for a consultation- in cash because the card machine is down. After waiting and waiting you give your information and complete the payment. Then you return to the ER to wait for the doctor. When the doctor calls, you enter a small exam room and explain all the health events of the past few weeks. You get the response “welcome to Africa” from the kind doctor. After the exam, you’re sent back to registration to pre-pay for the labs. You use your last bit of cash to cover this cost. Next, you go to the lab where you pray for protection over your bloodstream as blood is drawn by a smiley lab tech. You then deposit your other sample cups on a metal tray and wait for the results. Because it’s going to take an hour and you’re out of cash for the ride home you decide to find an atm. When you realize the two ATMs just outside the hospital aren’t working, you return to the lab to ask the tech where to find another. When he gives simple directions, you head towards the door with confidence until you see the giant raindrops falling from the sky. Remembering that you forgot your rain jacket, you decide to see if someone has an umbrella you can borrow so you go back to the lab where you loan a bright-colored parasol covered with kissy lips from a generous and trusting lab tech. You trek back out the door where you confirm the directions to the atm with one of the guards.
You set out down the road and ask three different people along the way where the atm is. You continue walking in hopes of finding one. When you finally do arrive at an atm, you get shocked… literally shocked with electricity by the machine which doesn’t even work. You chat with a guy who also failed to get money from the highly charged apparatus. You find out from him the place the lab guy told you to go is actually in the opposite direction. So naturally, you all walk together in search of a working atm. Along the way, you have a conversation about family, career, mission, religion, and health. You get grilled about back pain when the guy finds out you’re a nurse. You continue trying different ATMs along the way until you realize the problem is that you don’t have enough money in your checking account, so you do a quick online transfer and pray the next machine works. When you get to an atm that’s functioning you wait for the money to dispense as a crowd gathers in line behind you. Eventually, you get yet another error message that the machine is out of bills. So, you keep on walking. You come upon a bright red atm where a man is getting cash dispensed. As he turns around after completing his transaction, you are received with a welcoming smile and are asked if you’re born again. You receive a warm hug from a brother in Christ and proceed with your business. You pray for the umpteenth time for a successful transaction and exclaim with glee when a wad of bills is dispensed.
Before heading back to the hospital, you pray for the man who walked all over creation to help you with your atm search. You make a quick stop at a market along the way to purchase fixings for dinner and throw in a couple of rolls of minty Mentos for good measure. As you’re making the journey down the street you run into the blood drawing lab tech who asks if you got lost because you’ve been gone for a couple of hours. After explaining the events since you last were at the hospital you say “thank you” and continue walking. You make it almost all the way back to the entrance of the hospital and run into the triage nurse who gives you a jokingly hard time for being gone so long and eating a whole roll of Mentos. You explain that’s all you ate that day but don’t get any sympathy.
You return the umbrella to the lady in the lab before facing the row of medical professionals at the desk in the ER and ask for your results. You meet with the same kind doctor in an exam room where he tells you your labs are normal, and you probably have a virus that just needs to run its course. You thank him kindly and return to the lab for a printout of your results because it’s your instinct as a nurse to have a copy in hand to double-check for yourself. After securing the documents you call a friend to hook you up with a ride back to the guest house. When he’s not successful in finding a ride, you ask the security guard to help you get a taxi. You rely on your friend to give the driver directions and hop in a bright blue car. You negotiate a fair price and start thinking about your bed as the car merges onto the highway.
Once you reach the guest house, you thank your friend who runs the front desk for his help with the taxi directions and make your way to the kitchen to work on making dinner. After dinner, you pass out on your pillow feeling thankful… thankful for the adventure, the opportunity to spread the love of Jesus through countless interactions that you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t been feeling unwell.
