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Meet 3 Bee Keeping Trainees
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Bee Keeping Trainees
Werke Tisgay
Werkea was married when she was less than 10-yrs old and gave birth at home with a traditional birth attendant at age 14. After 5 days of prolonged labor she developed recto-vaginal fistula. After 3 months, the local hospital told her father to take her to the Addis Ababa fistula hospital for repair and even though his relative provided money for transportation he didn’t allow her to go. After 3 year, the health center staff gave her money for transportation and she went to addis but four surgical attempts failed to close her fistula. When she returned home, her father wouldn’t allow her to sleep at home so she slept where the sheep and cows live. She said, “after I came to HHOJ, I received respect that was not given by my own father. At HHOJ, I sleep in a bed and I give care to my body. At home, when guest came to our house, my father told me to get out of the house as I will offend the guests. But here when some guests come we drink coffee with them so from now onward this is my home I didn’t won’t to come go back to my home and I would like to thank for HHOJ for gave me the opportunity of living in mekelle and bee keeping work. “
Beriha Reda, age 35
Beriha was married when she was 15-yrs-old and she gave birth at 16 after prolonged labor for 3 days at home. She developed double fistula and her husband left her. She went to the fistula hospital 3 times but her surgeries failed. She is incurable. She said “before I had got training from HHOJ I didn’t think about any work, I considered myself that I was unable to work but after I had got training I start to join with my community and I open a shop and also I start to build one house. I am happy in bee keeping, HHOJ gives us prepared food so I should have to work more and more and I am sure I will do it. The Addis Ababa fistula hospital told me if you were live in town we can able to fix your fistula so this opportunity helps me to change my life and life of my only daughter. So I would like to say thanks to God and HHOJ.The training was so good they are teaching us very well.” She educated 30 pregnant mothers and all 30 of them delivered at health facility.
Asefu Tenisay, age 30
Asefu was living in Wereda Samire Tabia Dagen Kushat Adigerhi. Married at 18, she gave birth when she was 20 she developed fistula after prolonged labor for 4 days. She delivered a still birth and does not have any children. She has made 4 times surgical reparation at Addis but it failed. She bought 3 sheep and now they became 6 sheep. Her husband’s left her after she developed fistula. She said “I am happy when HHOJ asked if we wanted to live in Mekele and to work on bee keeping. I was not happy living in my village because I am not cured but I will work hard in bee keeping and I will also hope to be cure and change my life.” She educated 10 pregnant mothers and 5 of them delivered in health facility.
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Meet SMA: Harifeya Maheyo
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Harifeya was born in the Tigray Region Wereda Hwerjrat and Tabia Tsehafti. She was married at the age of nine and was pregnant at the age of 12 and 13. However, her two pregnancies ended in stillbirths. She ended up with Fistula after her second pregnancy due to prolonged labor pain for seven days.
Harifeya’s husband immediately left her when he found out she had Fistula. She believed she would have Fistula her whole life. She thought she was the only person in the Tigray region with Fistula.
Her family was very supportive and encouraging to her when she had Fistula. They even lent her 1000birr so she could travel to Addis Ababa Hamlin Hospital for her surgery. She had Fistula for seven years until finally she received three surgeries at both the Mekelle Hospital and the Addis Ababa Hamlin Hospital to repair
her Fistula. Now, she is very happy. She lives with her sister in a village with a hand pump for drinking water but no electricity.
The average time it takes to get to the nearest health center is one hour by foot.
Wereda health center recommended Harifeya to attend the training at Healing Hands of Joy. She is very proud to be a Safe Motherhood Ambassador. She loved her time at the HHOJ center and the training she received. She is passionate to put an end to early marriage and Fistula and has already begun to teach her community.
She was inspired by the motivational speech of Beriha Reda, a SMA for Healing Hands of Joy, during the recent Hintalo Wejrat workshop. The speech gave Harifeya the vision to teach other pregnant women about Fistula.
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Day 5: Evaluations and Reunions
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Yesterday we spent the day in Samre, the district of our pilot project where the majority of our Safe Motherhood Ambassadors live and work. We left Mekelle at 6AM to join 26 Safe Motherhood Ambassadors, Midwives from the surrounding Health Centers, Health Officers, and the District Women's Association head who leads our loan collection efforts. In addition to our staff, Seble from the Mekelle Women's Association and Elsa from World Vision - Samre joined our all day workshop. Frewaini, our interim project director introduced the new M&E data card collection system to the participants and then we broke up into smaller workgroups that included SMAs, midwives and Health Officers from the same village. In the afternoon, we interviewed the Safe Motherhood Ambassadors one by one to assess their SMA work and savings in order to repay their loan. Seble also registered each participant to finalize the loan system. In general, the women are doing very well and on average have educated about 25 pregnant women and have each brought about 10 women to the HC for Safe Delivery. We are incorporating the new data into an updated M&E report. It was such a blessing to sit, have a coke and catch up with women from our 1st, 4th, 8th, 10th and 14th classes...some of our first SMAs were there! Several women expressed deep gratitude for HHOJ saying it has saved their lives.
Check out our Facebook page for more pictures!
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Tonight we went to Birhan Gabrihat's village Felagala Selam to screen "Fistula is Not A Curse". Birhan is a Safe Motherhood Ambassador who remarkably brought 83 women to the Health Center for safe skilled deliveries who otherwise would have delivered at home. Birhan and representatives from the local health bureau and Mekelle Fistula hospital spoke to the crowd of a few hundred village elders, women, teens and children. Birhan is pictured here along with Safe Motherhood Ambassador Beriha Redda.
 
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Day 3: Beekeeping and Sewing
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On Saturday Beriha, Ababa, Werke and Assefu (the four incurable fistula survivors who are part of our HHOJ bee-training program) and I took a trip to our neighbors, Mums for Mums. They teach women with HIV crafts such as sewing, knitting, embroidery, and cooking. Given bee-keeping is not a 24/hour a day job we are looking to find more marketable skills for these women and perhaps many more incurable women who are finding it hard to survive. The women were all very interested in learning how to sew and perhaps make school uniforms for children in town. Afterwards I spent all afternoon with Amir from World Vision and we put together a plan to train 10 women from Western Tigray in April and conduct community engagement events in areas that have probably not ever seen a film screening.
Today, Chaina, our finance administrator invited me to lunch with his lovely wife TT and their new 6-month old baby, Fikir Chaina - in Ethiopia, you take your father's first name as your last. That would make me Allison Albert :) Fikir looks just like Chaina, she's so adorable. Tonight we're taking out Lulseged our Project Director to dinner. He's relocating to Addis and we wish him the best. He says he will continue to be an "Ambassador" for Healing Hands of Joy.
- Allison
 
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