Visit to Fistula Hospital and Hamlin College of Midwives

On Tuesday november 26 the ‘broads-abroad’ women’s group assembled in front of the Phistula Hospital for a visit. We appeared to have parked  in front of the neigbours’ quite beautiful house where a Dutch family lives. So I had a pleasant introduction to Mirjam, about 10 years younger than I am and we got on very well. Her husband is the defense attaché at the Embassy.

The Fistula hospital has been started by Australian gynaecologists Catherine and Reg Hamilton in the 50ees to help the usually very young women (14-18 years old) out of their dreadful situation.  The problem is this:  when a young girl gives birth to her first child, sometimes  her pelvis is not mature enough or too narrow.  The baby is in the wrong position or too big, the labour is obstructed. The family members who assist in the birthing process press her to continue pushing, in order to get the baby out, because that is what they know from experience. After up to 4 or 6 days of pushing, the baby dies and the young woman is exhausted. This is already bad enough. The village doctor sometimes takes out the baby in pieces. After that it appears that urine and sometimes faeces is just running down the womans’ legs. This is due to a fistula'  that developed due to the endless pushing: an open connection between the uterus and the bladder or between the uterus and the colon. Of course the young woman doesn’t know what has happened to her; least of all what to do. Because she is smelling so badly and she can' thave sex, her husband marries another woman and sends her back to her family. Her own family will put her in a seprate hut and she is ostracized by the community. She doesn’t dare go out and depends on food and water that is brought or thrown to her.  In general such women emaciate and die after a  number of years. If they happen to know about the hospital they take sometimes years to get there, since they need to collect money for the bus, walk for days, travel for days or weeks because some busses will not take them as they smell so badly.  We got the chance to meet with Catherine Hamlin who will be 90 in two months time. She is still working there.

The Fistula hospital has a programme focussing on three solutions:

-       1. Treatment: ‘repairing’ the women with an operation

-    2.  Social, physical and psychological rehabilitation

-    3.  Prevention. By educating rehabilitated women as a midwife, after which they go back to their community and by awarenessraising about the existing possibility of healing and about the existence of the hospital  and - in the mean time - 5 health centres spread over the country. All the nurses are former patients.

Some women can’t be fully healed. They may have to live with a handicap. For those women a village has been built, where they live together and learn a profession, Hamlin village, see picture. There is a restaurant, they cook, they raise chicken and grow vegetables and fruit, there is a dairy farm, they make bedsheets, tablecloths and embroidery and they sell all their products. 

We visited this place as well and we were impressed with the cleanliness, the layout, everything. As the projectmanager,  a beautiful woman with the name Belasatcho, said: this is paradise for the women. And for them it is difficult to go back to their village in a remote area after they have experienced this, but hey must,  to make place for new women. 

So much happened in my first week in Ethiopia

To start with, here is a general impression of the cityscape of Addis. The first picture is in our neighbourhood, a little higher up in the hills surrounding the city.

The second picture is of Megananja Square, in the North Eastern part of Addis, where they are digging up the ringroad in order to make a metro. in the morning everbody is walking here to work and trying to find a bus.

Then this is the road that Robert takes in the morning towards the ministry; you can see the smog and the cars getting into the daily traffic jam. The 4th picture (below) is of the traditional city houses lining the street, usually with shops on the ground floor. 

Life has been so inspiring and ‘giving’ to me, this first week,  it is just unbelievable! There were so many coincidences, so many things I couldn’t even have planned or foreseen and yet they came my way and made my life fuller, giving sense.

It all started with Anne, the wife of Robert’collaegue and partner Martin, taking me out on Tuesday November 19^th to a gathering of international women,  talking about the DO’s and DONT’s in this country, very worthwhile. While there, someone announced that there was still one place available in the Amharic classes, so I said I would join. This appears to be a very interesting class. We are only three people and it is an hour’s drive, like going from Renkum to Utrecht though traffic jams  3 times a week, lessons from 5- 6.30 pm and them I am home at 20:00. Robert arranged a car with driver for me to take me there, otherwise I would not have known how to get there.  




Anne also took me to Selam village; a Swiss project, a village actually, set up for orphans to live there and get an education in growing vegetables, serving and cooking food in a well run restaurant. After a good lunch we bought some nice plants. 

Ann also introduced me to a German lady who invited me and Robert as ‘unknown guests’ to their birthday party last Saturday. This turned out to be a real nice party, where I met some interesting people, involved in wildlife, in (strengthening) beekeeping  in Ethiopia, an Iranian lady married to a German guy, a very nice Ugandan woman married to an American; I mostly talked with her 13 year old daughter, a real ‘third culture kid’. 

Also together with Anne and Martin we went to the artisan fair, a big twice yearly event where all Ethiopian artisans bring their special products. Robert and I bought some plates, covers for the (ugly) sofa, two nice paintings, cushions, Christmas decorations and a laundry basket. 

One painting (photo) I like particularly since it depicts an Ethiopian priestess or goddess and it feels good to have her in the house. Before buying it form the guy who painted it, I had a long discussion woth him:  why he painted a woman and not a man. When I said women are better in connecting people he agreed and said that he couldn’t live without his mum, who, as a woman, made the difference to his family as she was the glue, keeping everyone together.

On  Sunday November 24^th  we went to the Ayurvedic massage for our weekly treatment, but couldn’t get there because of the annual Ethiopian RUN. So we returned home (which takes half an hour with the traffic here), pottered around, had a coffee ( with nice Italian home baked cookies)  and then went to see Belatech (Hanna’s mum) to have traditional coffee and lunch: Injera with a lovely sauce, cabbage (Gomen) and green salad. Meanwhile she and her daughter Zedewnesh washed our  laundry, since we haven’t got a washing machine yet. 

On the way back Robert got some money from a cashpoint (very modern indeed) and we went home. There, Veronika, our Tsjech student/ family member had just returned from 2 weeks in the village (research for her Wageningen University masters degree). There was lots  to share over many cups of tea, while Robert picked up the new Sebanja (watchman/ gardenboy). A nice young guy, 26 years old, who is on his first job, living in the boy’s quarters behind our house  and –luckily-  speaking English quite well.  

It’s amazing that I have been here for only a week now and so much has happened. 

Settling in in Addis Abeba

 Here I am, on monday 18th of november at 10 a.m., sitting at the back of our big house, in the shade, at a plastic table which I have covered with a very old Indonesian tablecloth that I brought - it makes me feel at home.  There is a lot of wind, I had forgotten about that. And since there is a mountain climate here at 2600 meters (8500 feet), the nights , mornings and evenings are rather chilly. So I draped the Ethiopian Airlines blanket (which I didn’t steel but asked to take home as a souvenir) around my neck and body not to catch a cold. Throat aches  and colds are common here since the air is very  dry and there is a lot of dirty dust in the air.

Our house is in a new suburb reserved for ‘Diaspora’ Ethiopians at the very East of the city, past Bole International airport.  Diaspora Ethiopians are people who have fled the country when Mengistu took over from Haile Selassi in the 1980ies; 
they are mostly higher educated, English speaking  and wealthier Ethiopians. The present government likes them to come back to help build a stronger economy, so they were provided with this area to build their houses.  As everywhere in this city, they build houses first  and infrastructure (roads) later or never. So to reach our house you sort from the newly constructed and only halfway finished ring road onto a recently built tar road, with views onto the heaps of trash and the countryside further away; then you turn right at the sign ‘Tiny Tots’, towards  what must be a childrens’s nursery school in the neighbourhood,  into a very bumpy stony dirt track in between walled villa’s. And that’s where we are.

Garden and birds. Robert choose this house – I am sure! - because of the small but lovely garden, with roses, oleander, Pelargonium (Geranium in Dutch). He has already organised pots on the veranda with different Fuchsia’s, his hobby. We are frequently visited by a variety of special birds: a Lark (leeuwerik), a  White collared Pigeon (Duif, met twee jongen op ons dak) black kite (valk) mountain Trush ( soort lijster) Superb Starling( een oranje met blauw en groene  spreeuw), black bellied Starling ( glanzend blauw-paarse spreeuw) , Kamerkop and Black winged Lovebird (knalgroene papagaaitjes) 
Posted on wednesday 20st, the day I got internet!Thanks to Robert, who also organised a car for me to go to my first Amharic lessonthis evening. I 'll write more soon!