A Saturday of adventure

Today was a day I will keep thinking about for a long time!  Jim and I invited our neighbor and fellow-English teacher Carolyn Weber to go on an outing and having some adventures together. She jumped on board and arranged for a taxi driver to take us around throughout the day.  Our program was as follows:  first, go to Sabahat, in the neighborhood, then go to Desta Mender, about 18 kilometers outside of Addis, and then go to the top of Entoto, the home of the Emperor when Addis Ababa was founded. So off we went!

Sabahat is a cloth-manufacturing business, located in a beautiful woody glade on the side of a neighborhood hill. You couldn’t see how lovely a place it was until the big iron gates on the street opened for our car to enter through the concrete walls surrounding the large compound. First we visited the silk house, saw silk worms fat as could be squiggling around stuffing themselves with leaves in boxes.  Next we saw empty cocoons, surviving a mature butterfly’s escape. Then there was a room full of Ashford spinning wheels (made in New Zealand) surrounded by half-done spinning, but silent because today was Saturday and a day off for the workers.  Then a room of yarns, some pure white like the silk cocoons, and some bearing bright dyes.  The grounds had warping wheels and boards around, and we saw a big rack with bright dyed yarns drying outside. The loom room was closed too, because it wasn’t a work day.  Then we entered the shop and saw beautifully hand-woven scarves, towels, tablecloths, blankets in lovely colors. We spoke to the owner of the business who told us weaving need not be taught in Ethiopia, there are many master weavers and it is a skill that has been maintained and used. Jim had to drag me out, I love seeing handmade fabric so much. 

But the coolest thing was that the owner was a Canadian woman, living in Ethiopia with her husband and kids, and that she was from the Peace River country in northern Alberta. So she and I chatted about our Canadian heritage, and she could hardly believe we knew where her hometown was.

Then we headed out of town to Desta Mender. I had mentioned to the other Carolyn when I arrived that I had recently read Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and his wife and would really like to see the Fistula Hospital here in Addis. I guess it is not far from the seminary.  But Carolyn suggested that we go out to Desta Mender, a project of the Hamlin Fistula organization, where girls who have had repair operations that have not been totally successful go after being discharged from the hospital itself for counseling and training. They stay a year to a year and a half before being placed in a job somewhere else.  They operate a retreat center and their café is open to the public only on Saturdays. So it seemed like a good day to go.  Wow.  Let me first say, though, that on www.pbs.org you can order a DVD called The Road to Beautiful that describes the hospital and its mission (Carolyn lent it to us a couple of weeks ago) so we were familiar with some of the tragic stories of broken young girls haunted by family rejection, still born babies and physical difficulties because during childbirth holes have been torn in their bladders and rectums so they become incontinent and smelly.  The fistula hospital repairs these in a wonderful nurturing environment.  In the DVD these girls are walking around wearing crocheted afghans of brightly colored crocheted squares.

So we got to this retreat center out of town and the first thing we saw were girls walking around wearing these same afghans! We knew we were in the right place. Several of them were making meat pies in the café and chattering away happily.   We were the only guests today, and we had a wonderful lunch, in a glass enclosed café where we could watch the exotic birds and Egyptian geese swimming in the pond.  The director introduced himself to us and offered to give us a tour after we had eaten. So for about an hour, he walked us around the whole place, a peaceful tasteful compound with lovely flowers and views of the surrounding mountains. He explained that this facility takes in the 2% of women for whom the surgery is not successful and may give them more surgery or help them deal with the problem in other ways. They have 68 women now and are always rotating some in and others out to jobs. He showed us the classroom where they teach these women jobs skills and hygiene, the therapy center where they have physical and psycho-social therapy, as well as the houses where they live, 8 per house, the kitchen where they take turns cooking for housemates, and the gardens where they grow produce.

Then he took us to the midwifery school, which he called their preventative strategy, which is currently being expanded. Last year they had 23 graduates. Now they have 60 students, and anticipate 200 within 5 years. They are taught by Swiss and Australian doctors and midwives.  All students come for four years, only women from countryside towns and villages can enter the school, and all of them are on full scholarships. When they graduate, they are committed to return to their hometown/village for 6 years.

The dream is to develop this site into a retreat center with guest houses and recreation. They have a farm with cows whose milk is used mostly by the hospital there, chickens for their eggs, and horses, for recreation. The director said they teach these girls hospitality.  Can you imagine how it is for someone who has been shunned and rejected and who is ashamed of herself to learn to smile and serve others? It just brings tears to my eyes to see them.

My friend Andrea told me if I visited the hospital to give them a donation from her. I said I’d do the same. So I told the director I wanted to do that, but hadn’t brought enough money today. He was thrilled, and offered to stop by the seminary tomorrow morning to pick it up. He also asked me if I would like a small afghan like the ones the girls are so fond of. I said I would be honored, so he presented one to me. I will cover myself with it with pride and feeling immense solidarity with these lovely women!

Late in the afternoon we headed up the tall mountain that overlooks Addis, at the top of which is Emperor Menelik’s palace, an Orthodox church and a wonderful view of the city.  Eucalyptus trees grow all over Entoto. The most remarkable site on the road to the top is girls and women walking down the mountain, having spent part of the day cutting and gathering branches and twigs to tie together, haul down the mountain and sell for firewood.  The guide we had at the palace said these women have no other way of making money, do all this work, and sell the bundle for 30 birr, or $1.80.  Look at the picture of the size of this bundle and ask yourself whether you would do it for that amount of pay!

So it was a day for me to appreciate being first a girl and then a woman in North America, where life is safer, healthier and so much easier. And to give thanks for the wonderful people who see a need and find a way to help these girls physically, vocationally and mentally. I thank God for them.