Without the small three-wheeled vehicles, little gets done in Ethiopia. Alongside the small taxi buses, the Bajaj is the number one means of transport. And it's surprisingly spacious if you leave the loading to the driver. The GoStar team usually travels with Tasfaj, our trusted driver. Tasfaj used to play for the city soccer club Jimma Aba Jifar, the FC Bayern of Ethiopia. Tasfaj speaks very little English, but somehow he always got us where we wanted to go. And of course, we also got to see a soccer match live.

My Ethiopian running group. Most of them haven't missed a single one of the three weekly running sessions over the past 16 years. And they run accordingly. Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, we ran for two hours through the Ethiopian countryside. After an hour, there was a short “break” accompanied by cardio exercises and music from a Bluetooth speaker. All this in breathtaking scenery.

Visiting patients with Joseph, a young assistant doctor who, after completing his training as a trauma surgeon, wants to return to his home village in Sudan to work as one of only two trauma surgeons in the country.

Preparing for surgery the next day. For a small patient with a fracture of the right lower leg, I try to estimate how much I need to shorten the only plate currently available by looking at the opposite side. The only X-ray we have is a poor-quality photo on his brother's cell phone, and his brother is usually not present.

Visiting under the stairs in the emergency room. It turned out that the patient had been lying there for several days. She had simply been overlooked. We were able to operate on her lower leg fracture the following day. The patient never complained.

In the absence of an X-ray image, I try to visualize the patient's complex upper arm fracture in the operating room using sketches and an artificial bone. This helps me to predict the position of plates and screws during the operation, even without an image intensifier in the room.

In the operating room with three of my assistants. They watch intently as I attempt to gently free a nerve that is caught in the fracture.

Impressions from the operating room.

In an emergency, it is also possible to operate with a headlamp.

At first, I found it difficult to imagine performing trauma surgery without X-rays in the operating room. However, I quickly learned that meticulous preparation is more important. And I still benefit from this today. Even though I can rely on intraoperative X-rays again in Lucerne, I still prepare for every operation with detailed sketches, even more so than before my time in Ethiopia.

My temporary home with everything I need and, by Ethiopian standards, downright luxurious.

I even had my own “gym” in the garden.

The garden at the GoStar guesthouse is a lovely place to spend time. This is where I prepared for the next day. That's why Nighat, the housekeeper and heart and soul of the house, always referred to the garden as my office. I wish I had an office like that in Lucerne.

The saleswomen at the avocado stand look at me skeptically. After a few weeks, they got to know me and always kept the best avocados hidden away for me. Ethiopian hospitality. And yet none of us understood each other's language.

At the fruit stand with Nighat, on the left in the picture, and the “Fruit Woman,” who always had a smile on her face and the best fruit in the market.