Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Our day started off quite similarly to the previous days, so I wont elaborate too much, but we all had a delicious breakfast including eggs, fresh fruit, banana bread, yogurt, and muffins which happened between 8:00-9:00am. After getting changed and packing bags for the day, we gathered in the living room to watch a documentary called, “A Walk to Beautiful” which explained the hard lives of young women with fistula, a problem that develops from complications during childbirth for women who do not have proper medical care. I found the documentary to be incredibly interesting and I was immediately inspired and wanted to meet the patients. Luckily, that is exactly what we were about to do!

We put our shoes on and moved the party outside to the van which took us to a place called Desta Mender, which is a college and a rehabilitation facility. The facility is a place the patients can go after having surgery. The patients stay in the hospital for about 2 weeks to make sure all went well, but then all go their separate ways. Many of them are often rejected by their families and friends and therefore don’t feel comfortable traveling back home.  This center puts some of them through a four-year school curriculum and training to be a midwife to help provide medical care for women in the future. The campus was very beautiful and, although still not conditions to standards we have all previously held, I thought it was respectable and definitely a “step-up” from the lives of kids we have seen in the city. We took a tour of the campus with a guide who talked probably the quietest I have ever heard a person speak (while still producing sounds) and really got to enjoy the scenery. After the tour, we walked over to a little building where some women who have had the fistula surgery cooked us lunch. Our options were vegetables and rice, chicken/beef pot pie, or chicken/beef goulash. I had the chicken pot pie which was very, very good and I’m pretty sure everyone was more than satisfied with their meals as well. After lunch, I went to speak to some of the cooks with Senait as my translator from English to Amharic and then Amharic back to English :) because I wanted to know more about them and how difficult their lives must have been. Obviously, this is a pretty hard topic to talk about with people directly affected, so it was slightly awkward. Right before leaving, we went outside to take a picture and then headed to the cars.

On our way to Connected in Hope, we had possibly the most rambunctious car ride ever. We pulled the windows down in the van and blasted music from Caroline’s phone via an aux cord. Not only was it fun to hang out the windows and sing really loudly, but it was also fun to see peoples’ reactions. We saw everything from confused to so excited and happy to see new (and very strange) people!Connected in Hope is an organization that helps transition women from being a fuel wood carrier to being a weaver. (To show your support for this amazing organization, do some shopping and buy some cool things at www.connectedinhope.org!) These women carry things heavier than you and I can carry starting from the age of 6 (some even from ages 2-3). We all bought many many scarfs from the women because a) the scarves are beautiful and b) we loved supporting these women.

One last quick stop was to the market at Shiromeda where we looked at/bought blankets and pants (*cough cough* Ms. Turlington *cough*) [Edit from Turls: my pants are amazing!] We headed home, had a wonderful dinner of stir-fry and ended the night with yay duck/yuck duck and some lively conversation!

Fun Highlights!

-       Visiting Connected in Hope and splurging on scarves

-       Finding Abi (our driver) a girl o the side of the road – still working on that, but well keep you posted!

-       Hearing about Senait’s proposal and her video!

-       Sam got “petted” by a child because they liked her light skin

-       Dougie’s entrance

-       The landscape!
-    On the Ethiopian calendar, it's July 20, 2008... so it's Ruthie's 10th birthday! HBD RUTHIE!

Dehna ederu!! (Good night in Amharic!)

-       Zoe Johnson, ‘16