Healing Hands of Joy
Trip Blog
Day 3-Thursday, February 25, 2010: Today was a remarkable day for Healing Hands of Joy as we met with two important organizations with which Day 4-Friday, February 26, 2010: Today was an extraordinary day. We had the opportunity to go to the Presidential Palace and meet with the President of Ethiopia (we weren’t allowed to take our own cameras, but an official photographer is sending us pictures that we’ll post soon). We had the chance to share with him about the mission of Healing Hands of Joy and working to help fistula patients. He deeply admires Dr. Hamlin and the work of the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital and was interested to hear our plans. What an incredible opportunity—made possible by our partner organization, People to People and its amazing leader, Dr. Mehari. Our next adventure was attempting to get to the airport and on the plane to Mekelle in Addis. After arriving just on time, we found out that Allison’s ticket was voided and almost missed our flight, but we arrived safely with Ato Zewdu, our People to People representative. Mekelle is in northern Ethiopia. The land is very dry, mountainous and rocky, but also very beautiful. We’re staying in the center of town at the Axum hotel with a lovely garden. We had the pleasure of meeting with Hareg, a nurse and program director of the Clinton Foundation who is working to improve health centers and health posts in rural areas of Tigray. Having been trained at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital for several months she was very eager to hear about our work with fistula patients. Hareg thought training safe motherhood ambassadors was an excellent way to reach women who are unable to reach a health center. We brainstormed ways to incentivize fistula patients with income generating activities such as making safe motherhood kits, cloth diapers and crafts. Her most inspiring comment was that in order for the project to succeed all involved must have the pyramid of head, hands and heart working together. Hareg certainly has all three and we look forward to working with her as we build our program. Day 5-Saturday, February 27, 2010 Day 6-Sunday, February 28: We've had an exhausting, but another very incredibly successful day. After meeting with Dr. Melaku, the Head We Are Official!!! Day 8-Tuesday, March 2, 2010 
We had the privilege of meeting the President of Ethiopia and speaking to him about the mission of Healing Hands of Joy at the Presidential Palace while on our trip. We met the President along with other health professionals, including a group of neurologists from the Mayo Clinic (MN, USA) in Addis Ababa with People to People, our partner organization in Ethiopia.
Follow our Trip to Ethiopia, February 22-March 5, 2010 On this Page. Check back frequently for Pictures and Updates as We begin to launch Healing Hands of Joy in Mekelle, Ethiopia
Day 1-Tuesday, February 23:
We arrived safely after 15 hours of flying on Ethiopian airlines and were greeted by our friend and driver Aschelew (with flowers and a big hug). We spent the majority of our day with our parent organization, People to People and planning the remainder of our trip and the logistics for it (we will be traveling to Mekelle on Friday and Bahir Dar next week). We ended the evening with a great meal with Pastor Solomon, a local pastor who is helping us connect with communities both here in Addis and more importantly, in Mekelle. Connecting with the local community will be important in identifying patients that need treatment and in building a support network as we help them reintegrate back to their communities. It will also be the foundation for our Safe Motherhood Support Networks to help prevent future fistulas. Tomorrow we will be co-sposoring the conference on women's issues, Empowering Women is Empowering a Nation, as a way of launching our project here in Ethiopia. The President and First Lady of Ethiopia will be in attendance. Check back tomorrow for news from the conference!
Follow our Trip to Ethiopia, February 22-March 5, 2010 On this Page. Check back frequently for Pictures and Updates as We begin to launch in Mekelle, EthiopiaDay 2-Wednesday, February 24:
The Empowering Women is Empowering a Nation Conference was an inspiring event attended by over 100 people from various organizations (both NGO's and Ethiopian Governmental Organizations) and those interested in improving the status of Ethiopian women. Allison awarded Dr. Catherine Hamlin, founder of the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, the People to People Lifetime Achievement Award. Her speech helped kick off an inspiring day of panel discussions and presentations about issues with which Ethiopian women are confronted daily and action that can taken in the future to improve their lives. The Minister of Health and the South African Ambassador to France spoke about prioritizing policy around those issues. The conference verified the concerns of many about the problems Ethiopian women have in accessing health and education programs, and how important community support, a main objective of our program, is to improving the lives of Ethiopian women. We began our day with a meeting with Dr. Yigeremu, Country Director of the Clinton Global Foundation, who offered his support of our program, including scheduling us a visit with Clinton Global Initiative sponsored health centers in Mekelle on our trip there Friday. We ended our day with dinner with the Ambassador Konji Sabati and People to People President, Dr. Mehari at one of our favorites, The Aladdin!
we will collaborate in our project. Intrahealth operates three fistula pre-repair sites in the Amhara region of Ethiopia that assist women with fistula who are waiting for surgery. The Director of Operations stressed the importance of the need for reintegration programs after surgery so that women “could move past the stigma of fistula to have a sustainable life” and no other organizations were actively meeting that need. We then visited the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital and met with Mark Bennet the CEO of the hospital, to discuss our plan to work with the women at the Mekelle Fistula Hospital. These two meetings helped establish the focus of our program and lay important groundwork for the next few days as we visit Mekelle Fistula Hospital, the surrounding health centers, survey fistula patients and visit the Bahar Dar Pre-Repair Center. Both are excited about the mission of Healing Hands and are looking forward to working with us. We also met with UNICEF to discuss educational outreach to communities using innovative strategies such as film screenings and dramas. Today’s picture includes Aschelew, our friend and driver at Allison’s favorite pizza place (in Addis of course!), Metro Pizza! Tomorrow we fly to Mekelle for five days and may or may not have internet access.
The dream of our project became reality today in many transformative events. We visited the Mekelle Fistula Hospital, a beautiful location and met many of the patients from around the Tigray region. Some had been there for 15 days; others longer. All gave us a shy smile and gathered around us as we waited in the reception room. We began the process of staffing our project by interviewing a midwife and a emergency obstetric surgeon who has performed many c-sections. We met with Roman Selassie, the head of Women’s Affairs Bureau who emphasized that women are the most oppressed people in Ethiopia and welcomed our efforts to empower victims of fistula. She suggested we form a steering committee with the Women’s Affairs group, the Tigray Women’s Association and the Tigray Health Bureau. We have organized a meeting with all three parties tomorrow. Pictured is Tirfu, the head of the Tigray Women’s Associations who we met with at a café under a huge tree. The TWA has organized grassroots networks in rural communities and trains women in small business skills. She offered to help us support our safe motherhood ambassadors within their network to make the women’s lives sustainable. Finally, we had an amazing dinner with Dr. Gebre’ab, the head of the Tigray Health Bureau and a passionate, committed man to the health and growth of Ethiopia. He had just come from a community education workshop advocating the importance of safe delivery to over 400 people. He loved our program and the idea of fistula patients being safe motherhood ambassadors to reach the 80% of women who give birth at home. He said “If trained, she’s empowered” and offered his support in creating an effective program. This agreement and partnership with the Tigray Health Bureau allows our work to start in Mekelle.
of the Mekelle Fistula Hospital (pictured here), we had our first steering committee meeting at the Tigray Health Bureau where for two and a half hours we hashed (Allison's word) out details for our project and how we'll work with our steering committee members; the Tigray Health Bureau, the Women's Affairs Bureau, the Woman's Association of Tigray and the Tigray Bureau of Education. We had a dinner meeting with a potential candidate for the Project Director over Mekelle's best Italian with Christmas music playing in the background! We started our day by attending a lively church service with our guide Bereket. We'll add pics and more details tomorrow.
Day 7-Monday, March 1, 2010
This morning we signed and sealed our agreement with the Tigray, Ethiopian Government Health Bureau (Dr. Barnabas Gebreab, Tigray Bureau of Health Head pictured) and now we’ve cemented our working relationship, roles, responsibilities and steering committee to carry out the work to train Safe Motherhood Ambassadors. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. We also attended a conference for mothers, “Giving Birth Shouldn’t Take a Life,” sponsored by the Tigray Women’s Affairs Bureau, one of our Steering Committee members (also pictured). The conference was held at the Memorial for Freedom Fighters and Patriots (the head of the conference gave us a private tour of the museum honoring the Tigray People Liberation Front, including many women, who fought against the Derg Communist Regime). Over 500 women from across the region attended the conference. Allison spent most of the day interviewing fistula patients at the Mekelle Fistula Hospital. Speaking to the women and hearing their stories of surviving several days of labor and traveling many hours by foot and bus to reach the hospital was a sobering reminder of how systemic the problem of fistula is. But their eyes lit
up when we asked the women if they wanted to continue their education, learn new skills and everyone said yes to becoming safe motherhood ambassadors. We scouted potential office space and rental facilities for the Healing Hands Center and met with our community outreach partner the Tigray Women’s Association. We’re doing our best to now learn the language of Tigray (different than Amharic which is spoken in most of Ethiopia) through the "Mekelle taxi cab driver school of language" and Allison is definitely excelling. We’re off to a more remote area of Ethiopia tomorrow (Samura) and then to Bahar Dar tomorrow night (we fly back to Addis and then fly to Bahar Dar where we’ll tour a fistula pre-repair center) so we’ll blog literally on the fly tomorrow! We’re both very tired, but also extremely excited about the progress we made here in Mekelle!! The goal of opening our center is in sight and a soon reality!
We’ve had no internet service for the last couple of days, but we’ll catch up today (Thursday). Tuesday was a day marked by the stark reality of these women who are afflicted with fistula coupled with the encouragement of the necessity of our work as we spent the day in the field. We traveled about 40 miles outside of Mekelle to a small town called Samre on a mountainous, unpaved road that caused the trip to be twice as long as on an American road. We stopped at a small village and met with a woman who had incurable fistula and a seven year old daughter. Berihrida (pictured left) had been married when she was fifteen became pregnant and developed a fistula. Unfortunately, she is incurable, husbandless and supporting her family by farming a small track of land. She was very eager to participate in our program to become a Safe Motherhood Ambassador and increase her own skills as long as she could care for her daughter while doing so—that is our mission! We also met with the health extension workers who are responsible for over 1300 households in that area. They are overwhelmed by the magnitude of maternal health problems and were glad to learn of our project and the help that we can provide to them. After the arduous drive, Samre seemed like an oasis. We visited the Health Center and spoke with the director and the coordinator of a local fistula association comprised of 12 former fistula patients that meet every three months to discuss any issues that might affect their wellbeing. We loved the concept of the fistula support group and think that our program can expand fistula associations across Tigray. On the road back to Mekelle, we stopped to talk with two sisters who were part of the fistula association and walked 4 hours to meet us. They shared their stories; they had both suffered with fistula for 10 years before being identified by a women’s association volunteer and brought to the Mekelle Fistula Hospital. They both were cured, but their husbands divorced them
so they joined the association. They both would like the opportunity to participate in further learning. Our good friends Hareg and Mulu accompanied us on the trip and Hareg joked Allison should move to Mekelle, marry an Ethiopian and have macchiato babies (Ethiopian cappuccino:) BIG NEWS! On the way to airport we stopped to look at a potential rental for the Healing Hands of Joy Center. Our guide Bereket, our People to People representative, Zewdu and a local real estate broker found an outstanding place with six perfect rooms with a great courtyard and a grape trellis. The price—1500 birr per month or about $115.00 US dollars per month! Healing Hands of Joy has found its Mekelle home!
Day 9-Wednesday, March 3
We arrived very late in Bahar Dar on Tuesday night. Allison calls Bahar Dar the "Miami" of Ethiopia because it sits on Lake Tana (the lake that feeds the Blue Nile River, has Palm Trees, and is flat with flood plains. It's one of the more lush places in Ethiopia). We began our day early with a trip to Woreta to visit an Intrahealth Fistula Pre-repair Center that houses women waiting to go the Bahar Dar Fistula Hospital for their surgey. We met five fistula patients, two that were cured and three that were waiting for surgery (two of them are pictured here). The difference in the attitudes between the two groups was remarkable. One woman who was waiting for her surgery had four children and developed a fistula with the fourth child. She told us that she thought the fistula was a curse and had attempted to commit suicide. We ended the night at dinner on the shore of Lake Tana with Dr. Andrew Browning from the Bahar Dar Fistula Hospital and his family. Dr. Andrew, from Australia, has been serving in Ethiopia for many years and currently heads the hospital. He told us that on many nights his hospital has more patients than they have beds. It was Dr. Andrew who gave us the idea for calling the fistula patients we train, "Safe Motherhood Ambassadors." This will be the last post until we get back to the United States. We have full days of meetings in Addis before our flight home on Friday. Thanks to all of our friends and family for your thoughts and prayers (and for all kind words of support many of you have emailed to us while we have been in Ethiopia). The trip has gone extremely well, even beyond what we had hoped and the vision of Healing Hands is very close to reality.
