The trip began in Barcelona at 4:45 in the morning with the sound of an alarm clock. And after almost 24 hours of travel, we arrive at our destination, where the first chapter of this adventure began.
 
These last 8 days have included a lot of work, many problems and inconveniences. A lot of effort, a lot of heat but above all human warmth. Seeing the brightness of the eyes, the smiles and the admiration of the patients and their relatives towards us, confirmed that everything for which we had prepared ourselves this last time, made a lot of sense.
 
Newborns, children, women, men. People of all ages, they all trusted us to improve their lives. A newborn with an infected mielomengingocele, another more severe case in a baby only 20 days old, a 37-year-old man with a cervical myelopathy with additional respiratory dysfunction. Another child with a lumbar meningocele, another case with an occipital meningocele, a boy with a fracture at L1, a patient with two cervical hernias, a woman with an advanced Chiari, another woman with a sulcus meningioma, etc… Precarious conditions, few drugs, lack of hospital resources. Situations that we do not see in first world cities.

I work at Instituto Clavel as a scrub nurse specializing in neurosurgery and attended the mission in Ethiopia last February. 12 hours of flight separated us from our destination but when I arrived and saw how everything changed there, they seemed to me to be too little time.

The experience has marked me, I am not the same person. The cultural shock I experienced caring for people at Adama was greater than I expected. In the Western world we live in a hurry, obsessed by technology and social networks, and all this vanishes when we see how humble and grateful people are there despite the little they have.

Their culture is totally different, and although we will help and teach local professionals, we always end up learning more about them and their incredible ability to make the most of the few resources they have. It is inevitable to think about how everything changes according to the place where you were born. We must be very grateful for what we have and take for granted.

I want to thank Doctor Clavel Foundation for their work and express my pride in being part of the team. Thank you for the opportunity to be able to help in each mission carried out.

Ethiopia has stolen my heart. 
I hope to go back soon!

We return to Adama with renewed energy and with a desire to work and get the most out of the mission. During the days that we were at Addis Abeba Hospital we visited many recently operated patients, some of whom were still surprised to be cared for by people of another race and color. And this is due to the fact that in Africa there are people who have had very little or no contact with other races. It's a strange feeling for us, as it certainly is for those patients seeing us.

This mission made it possible for us to learn a lot, but it left us with a bitter aftertaste because we were not able to carry out an operation that would have restored a child’s ability to walk. The lack of technical resources was not the impediment on this occasion, but cultural shock and the different beliefs of the people of Ethiopia, which however much it costs us, as medical professionals, we must respect. 

We returned home with the feeling of having done our job, but with the helplessness of knowing we could have done more.

After a long trip by plane, we landed at Adama (Ethiopia). The whole team was excited to start the mission.

The local inhabitants received us, offering us what little they had and were incredibly kind. They made us feel very welcome, especially as we were far from home. The team of local professionals was involved at every step, showing great interest in our methods and techniques and absorbing with great interest everything that we explained and showed them.

Throughout the mission, Dr. Clavel collaborated closely with Dr. Tewodros, who has demonstrated a great capacity to adapt his knowledge to the limited resources available in the Addis Abeba Hospital. This hospital was founded by missionaries, it is divided into different pavilions in which a certain organized chaos prevails and at all hours there are people waiting in long queues, from elderly people to women with babies in their arms waiting to be seen by the medical staff.

These were days charged with emotion and with many new and unforgettable experiences. The outcome of the mission has been totally positive, far exceeding the expectations of the team. We return with the feeling of having done a good job, but with a desire to return to move forward with the project.

At Zanzibar there are many diseases which are completely different to those we see on our continent. Brain tumors attack the younger population. Pediatric cases of hydrocephalus abound and the lack of infrastructures in the workplace, added to the poor state of the roads, causes an increase of cranial and spinal injuries. On our last visit to the Mnazi Moja Hospital, we carried out fifteen interventions that represented a great neurosurgical challenge since in most cases patients arrive when the problem is very advanced.

At Doctor Clavel Foundation we consider it is our mission offer people care, to train local surgeons to continue our work when we are no longer there. During this visit to Ethiopia, and after carrying out operations on six patients, we entered into a collaboration agreement with Adama Hospital Medical College to create the neurosurgery unit and develop an assistance project that includes the training of future surgeons of Ethiopian origin. Although this hospital-school already trains several professionals per year, it is necessary to increase this figure if we want to improve the quality of life of these people.

In the waiting rooms of the Mnazi Moja Hospital the inhabitants of Stone Town were waiting in the hope that our medical team would improve their lives. During our last visit to the city hospital, we carried out fifteen operations and fifty diagnoses. The majority of the adults attended suffered lumbar injuries at levels L4 and L5; the children, however, in the majority of cases suffered from hydrocephalus.