Pestilence in Abyssinia: A Novella

Twice divorced and often lonely sixty-three-year-old Robert Caanen is a member of a small international contingent of physicians sent to help Ethiopians initiate antiretroviral drugs for the treatment of AIDS. Hes assigned to a clinic in Dessie a city northeast of Addis. Its only two hundred miles by road but nine hours of driving due to the appalling road conditions. Dessie has a storied past in Ethiopias history.Like so much of Ethiopia the hospital seems frozen in time but it has already enrolled more than 3000 patients the vast majority of them from rural areas without electricity water or an address. Its Caanens job to mentor the doctors in the art and science of HIV patient care.He meets and befriends fellow volunteer Floyd Handel. Together the two men encounter the beauty as well as the ugliness of this backward and impoverished country enduring the frustrations of trying to deliver health care in spite of self-serving NGOs a lack of resources and ignorance of HIV.