First Field Trip in Ethiopia

I woke up at 6 am and met my coworker downstairs for breakfast.  We were going to a rural town in West Ethiopia called Assosa.  I would be visiting the clinics in my project to see, for the first time, how they were running the programs I only read and wrote about.  It was a 1 ½ hour plane ride and I knew I was getting close when the captain said, “we will be landing after some time and some time and the weather in Assosa is fine.”

Assosa is bright, primary colors. Red dirt and green bushes and women with yellow and blue head scarves.  We drove for hours in a bumpy land cruiser to get from clinic to clinic.  Every time my jaded eyes glazed over “this looks like Uganda” something would jar me back to Ethiopia.

Mud hut. Mud hut. Mud hut. MAN RIDING DONKEY. Mud hut. Mud hut. Mud hut. CAMEL.

The differences are subtle but I make myself savor them because I don’t want to be so world-weary at 26 that my eyes barely flicker.

At the clinics we asked the health care workers and a focus group of mothers how they felt about the calendar we developed to help them remember their Antenatal Care and immunization visit dates.  The interviews had to be translated from the local language to Amharic to English.  They would talk for an hour and by the time it would get to me the translator would tell me “they love it.”  During all this translation I had time to squeeze a lot of baby cheeks.  It was damn cool to hear what they think about a tool that was so abstract to me before.  That I had helped convince donors about and yet had never seen actually being used.  Many of the women had deep tribal scars on their face that made them look like they were perpetually crying.

We visited women at their homes and they showed us how they used the calendar to remind them of important dates.  The mud walls and straw roofs make their homes very cool.  There is usually a tarp separating the kitchen area (coal fire, a few bowls and pots), and the main part which has 1 or two big beds for the family to sleep on.  They sometimes hang dried corn from the ceilings and paint pictures on the walls.  The women told us how even their kids and husbands read the calendar and help them remember important dates.

Back at the office, I ran to the squat toilet because I had been holding it in all day.  Just as I was congratulating myself for aiming properly, I realized I didn’t have toilet paper.  I had to inconspicuously waddle around the office until I found some.

The next day we traveled to a remote hospital to see the new infant warmer they had installed.  I have learned to guard myself when I go into clinics. There are always things I don’t want to see.  And if I don’t see them, then I don’t have to look away.  http://chelseatosea.blogspot.com/2014/05/a-moment.html 

In the delivery room I saw the newborn warmer.  My colleagues oooed and ahhed at the wonderful advancement.  The room looked like a scene out of Jacob’s Ladder.  Beds were falling apart and the delivery bed looked like a medieval torture device.  I’ve seen maternity wards in these countries hundreds of times. But my friends in the US are starting to have babies. Recently on Facebook, a friend took us through her experience giving birth to a premature baby.  Every day she posted pictures of the baby hooked up to all sorts of machines, fighting for life. And she looked so small.  Here, a baby must look microscopic.  I can’t imagine how hard it’s going to be to come back here once I have children of my own.  The guilt just might do me in.  We congratulated the clinic staff on their new machine and got back in the car.

I ended my field trip with honey wine, communal eating and a scary butcher that posed for a photo.

Hello from Ethiopia

I landed in Addis at 1pm, plenty of time to get to the hotel, shower, and hit the town so that I could write an adventurous blog post.  Instead, I saw the bed and my eyes watered up like I was seeing an old friend.  So instead of exploring, I drank cup after cup of silky Ethiopian coffee and played Adele's new song on repeat.

Hello from the other siiiiiiiide.

Cupid Drinks a Coffee

Immediately off the plane from Uganda, I noticed the men.  And the big grocery stores.  And oh my god the men in the grocery stores.

I had spent a year and a half without a second date (you can read about my Uganda dating experiences here:  http://chelseatosea.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-science-of-dating-in-kampala.html ) and was definitely going a little cray cray.  I immediately revved up the old dating sites: Tinder, Ok Cupid, Coffee Meets Bagel, Cupid Drinks a Coffee, and set up my profile.  Twenty something girl seeks a real live boy.  Must have teeth.

I met a real live boy and we started to date.  We ate pizza and took walks during the last NY summer days and I texted him when I traveled.  “Dude, I’m going to get such massive thighs from all of this pooping in the squat toilet at the office.  How was your day baby?” 

I was stuffing myself with affection because I remember what it was like to be malnourished.  Four months after we started dating, it ended.  I was sad so I called Val.

“Vallie, I think I wore my heart on my sleeve and it hemorrhaged all over us.”

“You got laid and cuddles for 4 months?  How dare you be upset when people are dying in Africa from lack of snuggles?”

And she’s right. I’m in the land of plenty, no need to mourn.  But now that I’m feeling less like I need to pack on the kisses for the long winter, I can breathe and actually explore New York.  Next up: New York Snuggery http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/new-york-snuggery-offers-cuddles-hour-article-1.1173154

(maybe not)

Sensory Deprivation Tank

I want to explore things in New York like I do in other countries.  I may not be able to go on a quickie safari but there are tons of crazy shit New Yorkers do that would make even a lion’s head turn.  Like, pay $100 to be locked in a pod that deprives you of your senses.

I heard about the sensory deprivation tanks from the book I’m reading, Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks.  The book shares examples of how people who lose their sight, hearing, or even who have an extended period of lack of stimulation in their landscapes (desert, solitary confinement), can start to hallucinate.  Charles Bonnet syndrome is found in people who can hallucinate whole scenes in front of them but do not have sight.  Musical Ear Syndrome is when there is loss of auditory function and yet the person can hear music or people talking.  People can even hallucinate feelings if they’ve lost their sense of touch.

In an experiment to test hallucinations, people were put in a sensory deprivation tank for a long period of time and many started to hallucinate.  So I signed me and my friend Hannah up for back to back hour sessions at a sensory tank in Gramercy.  Because New York and Adventure and Hallucinations and Africa Doesn’t Have This.

I got to the “spa” early.  Hannah had already started her tank time and I wanted to hear about her experience before I went in.  The spa was basically this old dude’s house with women and their long grey hair sitting in various corners participating in the spa services.  Such services included: Cem Tech- Communicates with the Body’s Cellular Structure Use Millimeter Wave Technology, Biomat- The Combination of Far Infrared Light, Negative Ions and Amethyst Quartz Crystals Opens the Channels for Intelligent Cellular DNA repair and Total Body Wellness.  There was a women behind a curtain sitting on a full body vibrator. It was awkward.

When Hannah came out she looked all zenny.  Thing is, she is zenny.  She’s a meditator who’s done silent retreats and stuff so she was able to completely zone out and lose herself in there.  I didn’t have such high expectations for myself. My goal was just to not get too bored and hopefully hallucinate a medieval carnival.

When it was time, I was led into a small bathroom, given earplugs, and told to shower before entering the tank.  The “tank” was an oldish bathtub with sliding doors painted black to block out all light.  The temperature was regulated at 93 degrees Fahrenheit to closely match body temperature.  The water was filled with pounds of Epsom salts to keep the body floating. 

I started out by trying to cheat the system by trying to not float.  It’s nearly impossible! You’re completely buoyant.  It is a strange sensation.  You can’t see or hear anything and you start to lose your sense of self.  As a dancer-atheist-scientist, I see myself as my body, not as something inside my body.  But this somewhat falling apart, lukewarm bathtub challenged that.  I couldn’t feel a body or a space and was completely my mind.  And so my mind drifted.  “What if I were a corpse floating in a vat of embalming fluid?” Was my main thought.  And when I got bored of that I thought about what I wanted to eat for dinner.  45 minutes passed relatively quickly and then I got bored of not hallucinating so started to play games.  What if I wiggled only my pinky.  Would that be enough to propel myself into the tub’s wall on the left.  YES! 

When my time was over, I showered and put on my clothes and stepped outside.  I felt like I was still floating and was very calm.  My mind completely serene from lack of senses.  And then I stepped down the stairs and into the subway and saw a man jacking off to the Bible.

I did not "come home"

Back in Uganda

We packed into 1 Land Cruiser, 10 adults, 1 baby, for a 9 hour trip to Kitgum, 1 long and bumpy dirt road, 0 air-conditioning.   Upon arriving, my hotel had no hot water and no electricity.  It’s a cup water, soap up, splash-water-on-self kind of shower and a no fan night.  I lay in my bed without a sheet, covered only by a blanket of buzzing mosquitoes.  A rooster wakes me at 5 am and there is no hot water to make coffee.  I get to work at 8:30 and wait for the training which doesn’t start until 2 hours after it is supposed to.  Remind me again why I left New York?

When I got off the plane in Uganda, I felt different.  It felt different.  I breathed in the thick air and didn’t feel at home.  I have only been in the US for a month, I’ve visited home for that long before, but I guess, a part of me has closed the door on Uganda.  I met up with friends and danced and drank but it was in an ecstatic way, the kind you reserve for vacations.  Not the kind of prudent, I better not really let go because that guy at the bar is kind of cute and I have to do my laundry tomorrow, kind of way.  (Just kidding I never did my own laundry in Kampala.) 

This is the first trip I’ve made after having moved back to New York.  My contract says I will travel 45% of my time to Uganda, and soon, Ethiopia and Liberia.  Part of me wants so much more.  I still want to work at a refugee camp doing research on outbreaks, or to do emergency research on epidemics.  But part of me wants so much less.  I missed my friend’s wedding and I started to date a really cute man.

I took a walk after work through the village.  The sun was setting and damn beautiful.  Nothing particularly profound occurred to me.  No eureka moment.  But in this moment I was happy.  So I guess we’ll see.

Jews for Jesus in Gulu

While eating dinner at the hotel, in walks a rabbi.  Very strange, I had never seen a Jewish man adorned with a kippah and tzitzis in Uganda let alone in rural Uganda.  He joined a table of people bent over bibles. I moved my chicken a little closer.  The Rabbi ordered some fish and shared how he preached about the good lord Jesus Christ today at a local Ugandan church.  I picked up my wine glass and joined their table because it was a Friday night, in a town with no electricity, and this was too good.

The Rabbi had his own TV show in Ohio and was traveling to African countries to film and preach the word of Jesus.  He was joined by 2 young (maybe early twenties) camera handlers and an older man.  In Gulu, Uganda, I had found my very own Jews for Jesus.  

“Do you believe in the good lord’s word?  Have you been saved?”

“No, sorry guys.  I’m an artificially inseminated, daughter of lesbians, haver of pre-marital sex, approver of abortion, worshipper of no god, true heir to the iron throne.”

“No I have not been saved.  But I’m open to the idea!”

Rabbi S believed that Jewish people are the chosen people, Jesus was after all a Jew, but the bible doesn’t end with the Old Testament and Jesus is our true lord and savior.  He’s a preacher with a yarmulke. A pastor with Chanukah. 

I moved to the other side of the table, because the rabbi kept putting his hand on my head and praying for me, and started talking to the young cameraman.  He was nice in a pasty, long nailed sort of way and I talked with him for several hours.  He had some very good points as long as we stayed away from morality.   But is where I always trip up when someone is trying to convert me.  I don’t have faith.  I don’t believe in God, and I don’t have faith.

 

I explained that to cameraman and he said, “Chelsea, just come to the Crusade tomorrow night.  You’ll see miracles and then you’ll get faith.”  (They thought it was ok to call it a Crusade?  Yikes.)

The next night I take a boda to the Crusade Arena (…) and am shocked to see Rabbi S on a stage overlooking tens of thousands of Ugandans.  And I’m not exaggerating.  Tens of thousands.  I walk through the crowd and take pictures and videotape.   The rabbi is being translated by a Ugandan Pastor who shouts his words and stomps his feet.  It was fun, like a Jewistian field day.  People brought their kids and women were selling roasted maize.  And then it started getting dark and Rabbi’s preaching took a darker tone. 

“Homosexuality is the greatest sin and Obama is the anti-christ!” The crowd clapped their hands and whooped.  I felt a chill run down my spine.  There was a lightning storm in the distance and the clouds lit up over the faces. 

“I want you to put your hands on your head.   I am going to bless you all now.  Get RID of the evil spirits that reside inside of you.  Cast away the devil.  Be free now!”

The woman next to screamed and sank to the floor.  Her arms and legs were writhing.  People around her tied her hands and legs and shouted at the devil inside of her “You shut up!  You shut up!” And then another woman fell down beside her. It was terrifying.  I kept filming.  I pushed through the crowd and walked right onto the stage.  I was staring at thousands of faces completely enraptured by the man next to me.  A young girl was brought up onto the stage who was foaming at the mouth, her eyes rolling back into her head. This girl was having a seizure.  The rabbi comes up to me “This is how it all happens in the book of Acts.  Women falling down screaming, having seizures.”

I went home freaked out, the women still screaming in my head.  What was that? 

I opened the Bible.  I put down the Bible.  I opened up Google.  I was most interested in that young girl who was foaming at the mouth and having a seizure.  How is that possible?  Is there such a thing as a psychological seizure?  Google’s not super helpful on the matter but I did find this: http://www.macalester.edu/academics/psychology/whathap/ubnrp/tle09/Religiosity.html Temporal Lobe seizure, a seizure invoked by a strong emotional reaction controlled by the temporal lobe. 

The cameraman was wrong.  The Crusade did not bring me faith.  I am not a Jew for Jesus.  Or Jewish.  Or Jesus.  

But damn.

Ebola

They were given 72 hours to leave to pack a bag and fly across the world and fight Ebola.  When they got there, the disease was already rampant.  Traditional burial practices and fear had made this disease spread faster than anyone had ever imagined and they had to hit the ground sprinting.  An alphabet of NGO acronyms competed to put their letters on the isolation tents and the efforts were disjointed and competitive.  Their task wasn’t just to move in and cure Ebola.  They had to figure out how to change the behavior of burial practices so people would not wash the dead before burying.  They had to work with anthropologists to connect with traditional healers and to learn about community practices.  They had to figure out how to set up isolation units when people feared that they would get Ebola if they went to them.  They had to teach local staff how to properly put on and take off protective equipment so that they would not infect themselves.  How do you turn over beds when Ebola has such a long infectious period?  How do you motivate health workers to come to work when their peers are dying from the disease all around them?

My friend talked of a major spread in one of her villages in Sierra Leone because two gang members got into a bloody fight. One died in the fight and the other contracted Ebola from blood contact.  He went into hiding because he was now running from murder.  In the process he infected hundreds of people and would not surrender to the hospital for fear of being jailed.

Now the questions are, how do you prevent a future outbreak if we do not know the animal reservoir?  And what are the long term effects the disease on Ebola survivors?  What about how we know Ebola can stay in the semen but we have no data on how long it lasts for?