BY GRETCHEN WENNER

Californian staff writer

e-mail: gwenner@bakerseld.com
Theyve vowed to restore their
agencys credibility with an outside
investigation.
On Wednesday, First 5 Kern com-
missioners will get a chance to hire
their examiners though their choic-
es are limited and all have ties to the
involved parties.
That and other meaty items will
place the oversight commissions per-
formance center stage.
County supervisors and others will
be watching to see if the nine-member
group, which controls local distribu-
tion of millions of dollars of state
tobacco-tax money, can morph from
rubber stamp to watchdog.
The meeting will be the commis-
sions rst since supervisors Nov. 14
backed off from their own investiga-
tion and a possible restructuring of the
group.
Such options had been discussed in
the wake of a Californian investigation
into a contract between First 5 and
former researchers at Cal State Bak-
erseld.
Receipts revealed some question-
able spending and, at best, lax over-
sight of taxpayer money.
Over several years, $3 million from
First 5 Kern was paid to researchers at
Cal State to evaluate whether First 5
money given to local programs was
truly helping ready young children for
school.
Some of that $3 million, instead,
bought furniture, computers that cant
now be located and helped pay a car
lease for Ken Nyberg, the head Cal
State researcher.
Now, new researchers at Cal State
have said the data Nyberg and his
team collected is seriously awed.
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C A L L U S
Christmas chopping
At Lawrences Brite Valley Tree Farm just
west of Tehachapi, a cheery crew of
Lawrence family members hands out a
pair of long-handled tree-cutting saws,
and a few straightforward instructions.
Explore the tree farm in Wednesdays
Home & Garden section.
C O MI N G WE D N E S D AY I N D E X
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Your Money . . . . . .F1
COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Bowl matchups
announced today
USCs quest for a third-straight appearance
in the national title game was
derailed Saturday by a UCLA
quarterback who didnt
know he was starting
until three days
before the game. The
Trojans loss paves
the way for a Michigan-
Ohio State rematch or an
Ohio State-Florida matchup
for the national championship
Jan. 8. The nal BCS standings and bowl
pairings will be announced today.
MONEY
Tax breaks await
Congress return
When they return this week to Washington,
D.C., to wrap up their work for the year,
lawmakers will take one last shot at
reviving billions of dollars in tax breaks that
expired 11 months ago. Everyone from
parents with children in college to
businesses conducting research and
development will take a hit if Congress
cant work it out.
Page A11
CULTURE CLASH
Womens beach volleyballs skimpy
standard uniform is raising eyebrows in
conservative
Muslim
Qatar, which
is hosting the
Asian Games
to bolster its
bid to bring
the 2016
Summer
Olympics to
the Middle
East. In a
region where
women
traditionally cover up, the bikinis worn by
the Japanese so small the country name
had to be abbreviated were a shock. Of
the 16 Muslim nations at the games, only
Iraq has a womens beach volleyball team.
SPORTS FI NAL
High 59
Low 33
Air quality: Unhealthy, 137
Complete weather, B8
W E A T H E R
B Y E MI L Y H A G E D O R N I C A L I F O R N I A N S T A F F WR I T E R
e-mail: ehagedorn@bakerseld.com
D
r. Abdul Barre is scheduled to see a woman about a mole. Later, he may see some-
one else with a sore throat and cough. Or an aching knee.
These everyday cases ll his days in Bakerseld, but his thoughts are with a hospital
half a world away.
Please turn to QUEST / A6
CASEY CHRISTIE / THE CALIFORNIAN
Dr. Abdul Barre is surrounded by medical supplies he is having shipped to Ethiopia to be used at the hospital he
opened there several years ago. Barre works at Kaiser Permanente in Bakerseld for a few months out of the year
to save money, and then he goes to work in the hospital in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia.
A DOCTORSQUEST
Former Ethiopian refugee Abdul Barre became a successful Bakerseld doctor
who gave up everything to return and help his disease-ravaged nation
First 5
on road
to repair
image
Please turn to FIRST 5 / A3
Panel may hire examiners
in wake of investigation
that questioned contract
BY JENNIFER LOVEN
The Associated Press
P
resident Bush has walked a
ne line between embrac-
ing the mission of a biparti-
san, high-prole advisory
panel on Iraq and maintaining
enough distance not to be bound by
all or even most of its upcoming
recommendations.
This week, the congressionally
chartered Iraq Study Group will
present Bush with its suggestions
for a new way forward in the
increasingly messy and unpopular
war. Hopes went sky-high that the
commission has devised a winning
prescription for the beleaguered
U.S. effort, now well into its fourth
year with violence not abating.
Expectations rose in part because
two of Washingtons most respected
graybeards lead the group: Bush
family loyalist James A. Baker III, a
former secretary of state; and for-
mer Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton,
co-chairman of the Sept. 11 commis-
sion that produced a gold-standard
report on ghting terrorism.
Aware the study group could rec-
ommend some bitter prescriptions,
the White House has indicated it will
take the advice seriously but not
accept it automatically. The presi-
dent says the report will be only one
of many things to consider, and he
insists that American troops should
stay in Iraq until the country can
take care of itself.
Pressure growing on Bush for new strategy
Please turn to BUSH / A3
UCLA
DERAILS
USCS TITLE
BID, C1
UCLA
DERAILS
USCS TITLE
BID, C1
The very ordinariness of Barres day-to-day life as a
family practice physician at Kaiser Permanente on
Stockdale Highway makes him think of home even
more, he says. The most serious conditions Barre sees
here during his annual three-month sojourn are in sharp
contrast to those he tends to the rest of the year: a
woman with failing kidneys but no dialysis services, a
man suffering a heart attack but no cardiologists to help
him.
Barre could stay in the comfortable connes of the
United States, but he chooses differently.
You ask yourself, Whats your role in this world?
Barre, 48, says. I feel like that society needed me.
Sometimes, patients here tell him to prescribe what-
ever he wants because my insurance will cover it.
Where hes from, one day in the hospital costs $9. An X-
ray: $5. A blood test: $2.
Each sum is a fortune beyond the reach of most of his
patients.
This is a land of plenty, he says of America.
It was this bastion of riches he escaped to in a grueling
journey from his homeland Ethiopia.
BAKERSFIELD
CHRISTIAN NEW
CHAMPS, C1
BAKERSFIELD
CHRISTIAN NEW
CHAMPS, C1
Analysis: War in Iraq
ITwo days before he re-
signed from the Pentagon,
Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld sent to the White
House a classied memo recommending a major
adjustment in Iraq strategy, Page A13
IA triple car bombing struck a
food market in a predominantly
Shiite area in central Baghdad on
Saturday, killing at least
51 people, Page A18
INSIDE
Uniforms test
Muslim mores
SUNDAYDECEMBER 3, 2006
BC EDGED OUT IN SOCAL
FOOTBALL FINAL,, C1
SEARCH 422 NEW JOBS, H1 INSIDE: PARADE SPECIAL PHOTO ISSUE
I
n a family that included 13 sib-
lings, Barre grew up in Dire
Dawa, Ethiopia. Hanging around
his older brothers doctors ofce
and being raised in a family that
pushed higher education, Barre
chose medicine early on.
Life was difcult but not impossi-
ble, even as feudal wars raged
across the country between about a
dozen groups jockeying for power
in the late-1970s and early-1980s,
after Emperor Haile Selassie was
overthrown in 1974. In his place,
Mengistu Hailemariams Dergue
took up rule, under a Marxist
regime, Barre said, and tried to
solidify its reign by killing rebels.
He remembers seeing posses of
men perched along sidewalks with
menacing stares and carrying
Kalashnikov assault ries, hand-
me-downs from the Soviet Union
and Cuba.
Lawlessness had overtaken the
country, yet citizens tried to keep
on with their lives.
You dont have a choice, Barre
said. You have to go on living.
That is, until the fear of staying
outweighs the fear of leaving.
A friend, Munir Barre doesnt
remember his last name traveled
from the capital of Addis Ababa to
see Barre in Dire Dawa. Barres
hometown was much like Bakers-
eld. Dusty and surrounded by
mountains, Dire Dawa is seen by
many Ethiopians as a pit stop
between larger cities.
The 22-year-old childhood
friends walked through town on a
Sunday afternoon in 1980, on their
way to another friends house.
We were just talking about how
things were changing in the coun-
try and how scary things were
becoming, Barre said.
Some of the plain-clothed, gun-
toting men approached Barre and
Munir. They searched the friends
and found Munirs notebook, which
had the addresses of American
friends in it.
They asked ridiculous questions
like, Do you work for the CIA?
Barre said.
The two communist cadre mem-
bers told Barre and Munir to follow
them.
These are ruthless people, he
said. They can shoot you in the
street.
College-aged people mostly
men were common victims of the
group. Since before Selassies over-
throw, college students rallied for
reform and pleaded with Selassie to
help alleviate the effects of the
1973-74 drought. They rallied again
for the Dergue to relinquish power.
The two young men were brought
to several small buildings that
made up the cadres compound.
Meanwhile, news of Barres
arrest had traveled to his family,
which was trying to nd a way to
get them out.
Barre and Munir talked in their
cell while they waited for either
death or reprieve. Barre wasnt tor-
tured, but it happened to others,
usually at night when the cadre
men got drunk, he said.
He broke down, Barre said of
Munir. It was like he knew he was
dying.
Around 11 p.m., a cadre youth
leader from Barres neighborhood,
who Barres family had found,
came and vouched for Barres non-
involvement in an opposition
group. He was released.
Dont worry, Barre told Munir.
We will be back for you in the
morning. The next step was nd-
ing a cadre leader from Munirs
neighborhood in Addis Ababa to
conrm that Munir wasnt a reac-
tionary.
But that didnt happen.
Munir, in his red shirt and
khakis, was shot in the head and
thrown in Barres front yard during
the night. Munirs family couldnt
touch his body; no one could per the
cadres rules. Usually, bodies were
left in the open for about a day to
scare residents before the cadres
disposed of them, Barre said.
I knew I had to get out, or they
could come for me next.
F
reedom was 200 miles away in
the country of Djibouti, across
an arm of the Danakil Desert that
locals call the Benka, which in
Somali means an open expanse.
The rst task was to nd a guide, or
issa, one of the nomads who take
livestock through the desert.
Since the Dergue took over, the
nomads had a lucrative side busi-
ness human trafcking. With no
mountains or trees and only at
land stretching out to the horizon,
city dwellers were often swallowed
up by the Benka.
Barre met his guide in a rela-
tives home early the next morning.
You have to be careful with
word of mouth because if the gov-
ernment knew you were planning
this, you could easily get in trou-
ble, he said.
Barre had to dress the part: san-
dals, an undershirt and a skirt-like
bottom that tied at the waist.
Finding an honest guide was also
important. Guides were known to
rape women and leave people in the
middle of the desert to die if not
given what they wanted.
It was pure bravado that made
me do this, he said. Desperation
is whats going to get you out.
Barre didnt think about his fami-
ly and possessions when he was
leaving, he said. He was too scared
to think.
With one camel, bread and sugar
for tea that the guide would make
from shrubs found along the way,
the men set out that evening.
Barre soon understood the mean-
ing behind many nomadic prac-
tices.
A6 THE BAKERSFIELD CALIFORNIAN SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2006
Background
Unique among African coun-
tries, the ancient Ethiopian
monarchy maintained its free-
dom from colonial rule with the
exception of the 1936-41
Italian occupation during World
War II. In 1974, a military junta,
the Dergue, deposed Emperor
Haile Selassie (who had ruled
since 1930) and established a
socialist state. Torn by bloody
coups, uprisings, widespread
drought and massive refugee
problems, the regime was nally
toppled in 1991 by a coalition of
rebel forces, the Ethiopian Peo-
ple's Revolutionary Democratic
Front . A constitution was adopt-
ed in 1994, and Ethiopia's rst
multiparty elections were held in 1995. A border war with Eritrea late in the
1990s ended with a peace treaty in December 2000. Final demarcation of
the boundary is currently on hold due to Ethiopian objections to an interna-
tional commission's nding requiring it to surrender territory considered
sensitive to Ethiopia.
Population: 74,777,981
Median age
ITotal: 17.8 years
I Male: 17.7 years
I Female: 17.9 years*
Population growth rate
I 2.31 percent*
I Birth rate: 37.98 births/1,000 population*
I Death rate: 14.86 deaths/1,000 population*
I Net migration rate: 0 migrant(s)/1,000 population
Note: Repatriation of Ethiopian refugees residing in Sudan is expected to
continue for several years; some Sudanese, Somali, and Eritrean refugees,
who ed to Ethiopia from the ghting or famine in their own countries, con-
tinue to return to their homes.*
Sex ratio
I At birth: 1.03 male(s)/female
I Under 15 years: 1.01 male(s)/female
I 15-64 years: 1 male(s)/female
I 65 years and over: 0.83 male(s)/female
I Total population: 1 male(s)/female*
Infant mortality rate
I Total: 93.62 deaths/1,000 live births
I Male: 103.43 deaths/1,000 live births
I Female: 83.51 deaths/1,000 live births*
Life expectancy at birth
I Total population: 49.03 years
I Male: 47.86 years
I Female: 50.24 years*
Total fertility rate
I 5.22 children born/woman*
HIV/AIDS-adult prevalence rate
I 4.4 percent**
I HIV/AIDS people living with HIV/AIDS: 1.5 million**
I HIV/AIDS deaths: 120,000**
Major infectious diseases
Degree of risk: very high
I Food or waterborne diseases: bacterial and protozoal diarrhea,
hepatitis A, typhoid fever, and hepatitis E
I Vectorborne diseases: malaria and cutaneous leishmaniasis are high
risks in some locations
I Respiratory disease: meningococcal meningitis
I Animal contact disease: rabies
I Water contact disease: schistosomiasis (2005)
*2006 estimate **2003 estimate
Source: The CIA World Factbook 2006
On the Web: www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/et.html
Dr. Barres 200-
mile trek from
Dire Dawa to
Dikhil
Goba
Addis
Ababa
Djibouti
Dir
Dawa
Berbera
Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Gulf of
Aden
Africa
100 mi.
Kebri
Dehar
Jima
THE CALIFORNIAN
HENRY A. BARRIOS / THE CALIFORNIAN
In Bakerseld for several months of the year, Barre is a doctor at Kaiser Permanente, saving up money to live the rest of the year in Ethiopia. After
eeing Ethiopia and coming to the United States as a refugee, he put himself through medical school. He returned to his country, saw the need for a
hospital and built one in his hometown of Dire Dawa, where he works part of the year.
You ask yourself, Whats your role in this world? I feel like that society needed me.
Dr. Abdul Barre, Ethiopian refugee-turned-American citizen and doctor who funds a hospital and orphanage
in his native Dire Dawa by working several months a year as a physician at Kaiser Permanente
Continued from A1
ETHIOPIA PRIMER
KIP TULIN / SPECIAL TO THE CALIFORNIAN
Barre conducts twice-a-day hospital rounds with his medical team. In a country with few medical resources,
Ethiopian physicians must rely more on a patients history and physical exam than in countries with easily
available tests, said Dr. Kip Tulin, a Kaiser Permanente pediatrician who visted Barre in Dire Dawa. The patient
in the photo was ultimately diagnosed with coronary artery disease, Tulin said. A few weeks after Tulin
returned to the United States, he was told the patient had died.
Please turn to QUEST / A7
KIP TULIN / SPECIAL TO THE CALIFORNIAN
Dr. Abdul Barre is in his ofce at Bilal Hospital in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia.
Completed in 2003, the facility has 40 beds, one surgeon and full-time
pediatrics, family practice, obstetrics and gynecology departments.
QUEST: After friends slaying, man says I knew I had to get out
You need a stick, Barre
remembers the guide telling him on
their rst day. Nomads would walk
with a stick across their shoulders
with their arms draped over it, like
a scarecrow. City folk often looked
at this practice as rustic, uncivi-
lized.
No, Im not a country man like
you, Barre replied. By the third
day, he said, my hands were
swollen from hanging all day as he
walked.
His feet became raw from walk-
ing over 30 miles a day in sandals.
The guide put him atop the
camel, but his bare skin soon
chafed against the camels coarse
hairs.
I would rather walk, he said.
Night was the only escape from
the heat, but thats when the hyenas
and wild pigs came out.
By the time the men stopped to
rest, Barre was too exhausted to
care, he said.
We will have a little bit of re,
the guide told him. The camel will
know that theres something, and
hell make noise, and well wake
up.
They were awakened a couple
times by hyenas, Barre said. You
just throw a rock or something and
then go back to sleep.
The guide had the water holes
mapped out in his mind from years
of experience. Still, there was no
guarantee water would be there
when they reached the spots.
We were passing an elderly lady
who was dying of thirst, and she
said, Can you give me water? and
we had a little bit, Barre remem-
bers. And he (the guide) said no
because its either her or us who
die because I dont know where
another water hole will be.
So we left her there I dont
think she would have lasted in the
heat.
As the men came closer to the
Djibouti border, many of Barres
concerns lessened.
On the fth day the last day
Barre suffered diarrhea from the
brackish water they had lucked out
in nding.
T
he men reached the border
town of Dikhil in Djibouti, and
Barre rested in the refugee camp
that sprouted across the border.
The only thing I could think of
with the thirst, sickness it was
not water, he said. All I wanted
was a Coke.
He (the guide) left me at the out-
skirts and went into town and
bought a big Coke.
The guide also took a trip to Dji-
bouti City to nd Barres sister,
Neima, who paid the guide 1,000
birr ($115) and picked up Barre.
For the next 15 months, Barre
was a parasite. Refugees couldnt
get jobs. A lot of other people who
didnt have family members were
begging to survive.
Barre joined several other
refugees, waiting in line at the local
Ofce of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees, a U.N.
agency that ensures refugees nd
safe passage into another country.
Barre registered and waited.
With two weeks notice in
December 1981, he was told he was
going to California, randomly
assigned to the Archdiocese of Los
Angeles.
Barre was own with only $20 in
his pocket from his sister and a cou-
ple hundred dollars from the dio-
cese to New York City, where all
the refugees were given winter
coats. From there, he was own to
Los Angeles.
Barre, whos Muslim, wasnt
mandated to become Catholic or
attend mass. The archdioceses
help was purely humanitarian, he
said.
A friend of a friend, who was also
a refugee, picked him up from the
airport, and the diocese set him up
with a job as a parking attendant at
Los Angeles International Airport.
By February, he started classes
at Santa Monica College as a pre-
med student.
Two years later, he transferred to
University of California, Berkeley,
where he got a bachelors degree in
biology. And then U.C. Davis for
medical school.
He met his future wife, Nejah,
who also had ed Ethiopia, at
school. In 1990, they were married.
By his fth year in the country,
Barre had his U.S. citizenship.
B
arre came to Bakerseld in
1990 to become a medical res-
ident at Kern Medical Center.
From there, he got a job with Bak-
erselds Kaiser Permanente.
Shortly after graduating, the
Dergue was overthrown in 1991
and Ethiopia became democratic.
Barre went back for the rst time
in 1992.
It was unspeakable, he said.
Kids everywhere, begging its
worse than when you left.
Barre searched for his old
friends. You learn the way they
died, and it was HIV, he said.
But more than scaring him, it
hardened his resolve to move back
to Ethiopia and open a hospital.
By this time he was chief of fami-
ly practice at Kaiser. His two
young daughters were in school.
His wife was a medical technolo-
gist at Good Samaritan and Bakers-
eld Memorial hospitals.
But why am I in the comfort-
able United States? Barre asked
himself.
Going back to Dire Dawa every
other year after his rst visit,
Barre set upon the overwhelm-
ing task of opening a hospital in a
country wary of outsiders, even
ones who used to live there.
He found affordable equipment
from India and China. His moth-
ers land his father died in 1986
would be used for the hospital.
His father-in-law, a civil engineer
in Ethiopia, helped oversee the
construction while Barre was in
the United States.
He raised $1 million for the hos-
pital, half of which was his life sav-
ings.
In 1999, his family moved to Dire
Dawa. Barre rst built a home for
his mother, since he used her land
for the hospital. As funds were run-
ning short he realized he couldnt
nish his own home, so the whole
family moved in together.
Completed in 2003, the hospital
called Bilal Hospital after an
Ethiopian slave who became the
rst black Islamic convert was
ofcially dedicated in 2004.
The hospital has 40 beds, one
surgeon, full-time pediatrics, fami-
ly practice, obstetrics and gynecol-
ogy departments. It also disperses
free AIDS medicine. About 100
people come through Bilals doors
each day, he said.
The hospital is probably the
only modern one in Dire Dawa,
said Fitsum Hailu, senior second
secretary in the economic affairs
ofce at the Ethiopian Embassy in
Washington, D.C.
Bilal Hospital has been giving
valuable services to our people in
Dire Dawa ... and southeastern
parts of the country, Hailu said
via e-mail.
Made of concrete, the grey-and
blue-painted hospital has three
oors with balconies off most
patient rooms.
Shortly after the hospital
opened, two Bakerseld Kaiser
doctors visited and worked in the
hospital for two weeks.
Considering that Bilal cant
afford much high-tech equipment,
like most other hospitals in the
Third World, diagnoses are usually
based off gut instinct, said Dr.
David Harmon, physician in
charge at the East Hills Kaiser
facility.
Its entirely eye-balling, he
said. You just do what you can for
the patient. Youre not thinking
about lawsuits.
One man came in with shoulder
pain, which was probably a heart
attack, Harmon said. There are no
stress tests or even cardiologists,
so all they could do was make him
comfortable. This gentleman end-
ed up dying.
Conservation of resources is also
key, said Dr. Kip Tulin, a Kaiser
pediatrician. Medicine and time
cant be spent on patients who
probably wont make it.
Early one morning, an elderly
man was brought to the hospital
with an advanced terminal disease.
Dr. Barre had to tell him,
Theres nothing more I can do for
you. Take him home to die, Tulin
said. It tears him up. These are
the realities of the Third World.
Money is also hard to come by.
Many patients cant afford the 20
birr ($2.50) that is requested to see
a physician, Barre said. His Ameri-
can colleagues joke that Barre gets
paid in goats and chickens which
is the case sometimes, he said.
The hospital pays its bills mostly
by the meager income gained from
the patients and donations, he said.
Bilal doesnt make enough to pay
Barre, so he comes back to Bakers-
eld to work at Kaiser for a few
months of the year, staying with a
fellow Ethiopian. He and his family
live off the roughly $20,000 he
brings back.
Barres wife, Nejah, is also open-
ing an orphanage called New Hope
Dire Dawa, to help homeless chil-
dren.
In a compound donated by
Barres father-in-law, the orphan-
age is set to open by the end of the
year. For $20 a month, people can
sponsor a child.
The plan is to take as many kids
as possible based on how many
sponsors we can get, Barre said.
I
n Bakerseld this past Septem-
ber, Barre loaded a moving
truck with the donated medical
supplies he had collected over the
past few months.
Boxes over boxes, crutches
slipped into the cracks, a few
rolling tables thrown on top, Barre
was determined to make the equip-
ment t.
In about a month, the contents of
storage unit 117E at A-American
Self Storage on Wible Road will be
half a world away, at Bilal Hospital.
Everything is something you
need, he said, assessing the pack-
ing. Theres not really anything
thats needed more than anything
else.
His friend Shekib Bekeri, who
also ed across the desert to Dji-
bouti several years ago, pointed to a
pre-existing tear and exposed stuff-
ing in an exam bed, which is also
missing a drawer.
Its ne, Barre replied.
First in the truck went several
dozen boxes, lled with donated
medical supplies and medical text-
books. There were also a few boxes
of clothes to help people left home-
less by the ood that tore through
Dire Dawa in early August. The
ash ood killed more than 200
people and displaced 10,000,
according to several news
accounts.
Barres home and the hospital
were spared.
Next into the truck went some
used exam beds, a very heavy
mechanical exam chair, a rolling
oxygen tank carrier, a circa-1980s
gold exercise bike the otsam
and jetsam of hospital upgrades
and technological advances.
Sweat beaded on Barres balding
head and streaked down the patch-
es of grey on his temples. From
street level, all that could be seen of
Bekeri was a bobbing straw hat
behind rows of boxes, as he moved
some of the packing around to
make room for more.
The two men exchanged sugges-
tions in Harari, one of the roughly
100 languages in Ethiopia.
Throwing some last remaining
odds and ends into the back seat of
the truck, Barre pulled down the
metal door and hopped into the
front seat.
Hell be back in about nine
months, collecting more for his hos-
pital and saving up money.
Continued from A6
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To learn more about donating to
Bilal Hospital and the orphanage
New Hope Dire Dawa, e-mail
nwhpdd@hotmail.com.
ISend donations for
the hospital to:
Dr. Abdul Barre
10724 Arden Villa Drive
Bakerseld 93311
I Send donations for
the orphanage to:
New Hope Dire Dawa Inc.
8200 Stockdale Highway
Suite M-10 #250
Bakerseld 93311
HOW TO HELP
IHear Dr. Abdul Barre talk
about his journey and see more
photos from Ethiopia and Bilal
Hospital.
I Check out The Pulse, Emily
Hagedorns blog on health and med-
icine at people.bakerseld.com/
blogs/ehagedorn.
On bakerseld.com
QUEST: Man
put life savings
in the hospital
KIP TULIN / SPECIAL TO THE CALIFORNIAN
Barre and Dr. David Harmon, physicians with Bakerselds Kaiser Permanente, stand in front of Bilal
Hospital, the hospital Barre founded in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia.
Dr. Barre had to
tell him, Theres
nothing more I can
do for you. Take him
home to die. It
tears him up. These
are the realities of
the Third World.
Dr. Kip Tulin, a Bakerseld pediatrici-
tan visiting Barres hospital, witnessing
Barre tend to an elderly man who was
brought to the hospital with an
advanced terminal disease