Last year I travelled to Ethiopia. My academic background is in public/global health and at the time I was working at Brighton and Sussex Medical School on a project focusing on neglected tropical diseases in the country. I had been to North Africa before including Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt but had never been to Sub-Saharan Africa so it was an exciting trip. This was also my first time working on a project specialising in a rare neglected tropical disease on the foot/legs. I didn’t know what to expect from Ethiopia. Sadly, the country came to focus in the 1980s with the Band Aid movement because of the widespread famine affecting the country which left 1.2 million people dead. Thankfully those days are long gone and friends who had visited told me the country is vibrant and booming. They were right!