Doctor Rick's

Although I am about to leave Addis, I feel like I have settled into
the ex-pat scene here, confirmed by my visit to Dr. Rick's house. I
did not visit this doctor because I had any rare disease (that would
truly cement my local status). Rather, I went to one of his regular
Friday night dinners, that evidently are a staple of ex-pat life in
Addis Ababa.

Dr. Rick is an MD from Long Island, who came to Ethiopia twenty years
ago, and basically never left. He works as a doctor doing various
incredible things including rounds at Mother Teresa's clinic,
traveling to surrounding countries and performing miracles (on Friday
he had just flew in from Rwanda where he is helping to start an
orphanage for 500 kids who lost their parents to the genocide), he
also raises thousands of dollars to send kids with a rare spinal
disorder to a specialist in Ghana for surgery, and he's taken in
around 20 orphans (most of them were around for dinner, all had
excellent manners). If you are interested in more details, I'm sure
you can google him (I'm told there was a recent reader's digest
article about him). He is a pretty mild mannered guy, the first thing
he asked me about was where I went to college, and weirdly enough he
also is a Middlebury alum, he even sent one of his sons out to photo
copy an article about Tanzania he had for me.

Anyway, every Friday he has dinner at his house that anyone is welcome
to come to (somewhat shabbat related). The food was great (all
vegetarian), and the crowd was classic. Apart from his bakers dozen of
boys, there was a medical student from Chicago, his volunteer
assistant from Michigan, a few Israelis, and an motley crew
representing your typical faranjosh (white people) in Addis. I ended
up talking with this one guy from LA that escorted a kid back to
Ethiopia who had surgery in America. He seemed like your normal
traveler working for some foundation, talking about buying
handicrafts, selling them in the States and giving all the profits
back to an NGO here, etc.

Only after we left did I find out, that the person I was talking was
not just your average faranji. He was Mel Gibson's Son! He said he was
raised outside LA and didn't seem to have too much direction in his
life, but he didn't talk like William Wallace or anything.
This is Addis.