One last coffee ceremony

Yesterday Hannah and I were greeted by new interns at the usual resident report. Our old interns moved on to their surgical rotations and these new interns will be on service for the next month, which means Danielle (a fellow resident) will get to work with this group when she gets here next week. I made rounds with my intern, Victoria, and my goal was to make sure that we got as many people out of the hospital as possible and to make sure that every patient we rounded on had a good solid plan for discharge. I could tell that she might have been a little bit overwhelmed, particularly since she had been on call the night before. We also rounded with another sort of sub-attending who was an intern last year and has been assigned to the medical ward as part of his national service after medical school. He will act somewhat like a resident over the intern and the attending will continue to oversee both of them. I am glad that he is there since our attending is not there consistently for the intern.

After rounds and finishing up discharge paperwork yesterday, the nurses had planned a coffee ceremony in the hospital for us. Hannah and I are now very well educated about the process of a coffee ceremony since this was our fifth one. The head nurses from both sides came--Sister Fegadu on my side and Akbaret on Hannah's side. The other nurses including the nursing assistants also attended as well as our interns from the month. I had 2 cups of the coffee and Hannah had one. I think she has about had her fill of coffee ceremonies (as have I). The coffee ceremony included the usual popcorn, which seems to be a must during these events, as well as candy and some crackers. One of the nurses on my side also brought injera and shiro for the group, all of which was consumed by the end.

After our 5th and hopefully final coffee ceremony, Hannah and I took off to a nearby restaurant where we read for about and hour before we returned to the hospital for admissions. In the afternoon we had another thoracentesis (there are a lot of those here!) to do on a patient with a unilateral pleural effusion for symptom control. I have been impressed with the number of patients with pleural effusions here. At times it seems like everyone has one.

After work, we made it to one of the souvenir shops to pick up some last minute gifts for people before having dinner at the hotel. My intern, Luam, and her boyfriend came to our hotel and had dinner with us at the hotel restaurant. They were very cute together and I found him to be very up on his American culture. For some reason, we started talking about geography, so I proceeded to draw a map of the US in my notebook and Hannah and I started to label and name all of the 50 states. Then we started talking about African geography, and he impressed us all with a drawing of Africa in which he labelled all 54 countries. Did you know there is a country called Seashell? Its true! I had no idea. I hope to stay in touch with Luam to know where her life takes her in the future. And to have another contact in Eritrea should I come back to visit.

Hannah and I are now counting down to coming home. We have plans for each leg of our trip back--coke zero on the flight to Germany, then breakfast in Frankfurt, then family phone calls in Chicago, and finally home. We are looking forward to heading out tomorrow, but I admit that some part of me will miss this place and the time that I have had here and particularly the people.