Capacity Building

Before I started working with VSO I hadn’t thought much about the idea of “capacity building”.   I’m still not sure I completely understand what capacity building is, though I did read a shockingly long Wiki entry about this very subject. 

At any rate, a lot of our job here falls into the category or idea of capacity building.

Working in Dawit's office

The Family Medicine Program in Ethiopia is still in its infancy (actually it’s still in the gestational period).  We are here to help build the program and get people on board with improving primary care.   Fortunately, from what we have read, good primary care does save lives, so we are starting on good footing.

Abbas and Brian

Our current team is Brian, Abbas, Dawit (our Ethiopian colleague) and the two of us. Initially, things seemed to be moving at a snails pace, but things have picked up and we have more and more to do.   There is often a little ping pong match going on in my head in that one minute the task seems unmanageable and I think what are we doing here then the next minute I think we are well on our way to doing something very good here.

The cafeteria at Y12 hospital

It is however nice to have a few concrete projects on the go.  We are all helping to prepare a day of CME for GP’s and possible recruits to the program.   We are also involved in a project to teach GP’s C-sections.  As you all know, women have very limited access to safe obstetrical care in Ethiopia, so we hope this will be a good capacity building project as well.   Luckily, a lot of this capacity building and planning can be done outside while sipping machiatos and eating cake.:)

On the home front, things are good. The kids continue to enjoy school and are making friends.  They are both running on the cross country team and have a 7.5 km road race this coming weekend.  I am no longer afraid to go into our kitchen, so we are cooking a bit more and eating out a bit less (this is good).  The weather has turned spectacular.  It’s sunny and warm everyday, which is a very welcome change from rainy and gloomy everyday.