I woke up at 6 am and met my coworker downstairs for
breakfast. We were going to a rural town
in West Ethiopia called Assosa. I would
be visiting the clinics in my project to see, for the first time, how they were
running the programs I only read and wrote about. It was a 1 ½ hour plane ride and I knew I was
getting close when the captain said, “we will be landing after some time and
some time and the weather in Assosa is fine.”
Assosa is bright, primary colors. Red dirt and green bushes
and women with yellow and blue head scarves.
We drove for hours in a bumpy land cruiser to get from clinic to
clinic. Every time my jaded eyes glazed
over “this looks like Uganda” something would jar me back to Ethiopia.
Mud hut. Mud hut. Mud hut. MAN RIDING DONKEY. Mud hut. Mud
hut. Mud hut. CAMEL.
The differences are subtle but I make myself savor them
because I don’t want to be so world-weary at 26 that my eyes barely flicker.
At the clinics we asked the health care workers and a focus
group of mothers how they felt about the calendar we developed to help them
remember their Antenatal Care and immunization visit dates. The interviews had to be translated from the
local language to Amharic to English.
They would talk for an hour and by the time it would get to me the
translator would tell me “they love it.” During all this translation I had time to
squeeze a lot of baby cheeks. It was
damn cool to hear what they think about a tool that was so abstract to me
before. That I had helped convince
donors about and yet had never seen actually being used. Many of the women had deep tribal scars on
their face that made them look like they were perpetually crying.
We visited women at their homes and they showed us how they
used the calendar to remind them of important dates. The mud walls and straw roofs make their
homes very cool. There is usually a tarp
separating the kitchen area (coal fire, a few bowls and pots), and the main
part which has 1 or two big beds for the family to sleep on. They sometimes hang dried corn from the ceilings and paint pictures on the walls. The women
told us how even their kids and husbands read the calendar and help them remember important dates.
Back at the office, I ran to the squat toilet because I had
been holding it in all day. Just as I
was congratulating myself for aiming properly, I realized I didn’t have toilet
paper. I had to inconspicuously waddle around
the office until I found some.
The next day we traveled to a remote hospital to see the new
infant warmer they had installed. I have
learned to guard myself when I go into clinics. There are always things I don’t
want to see. And if I don’t see them,
then I don’t have to look away. http://chelseatosea.blogspot.com/2014/05/a-moment.html
In the delivery room I saw the newborn warmer. My colleagues oooed and ahhed at the
wonderful advancement. The room looked
like a scene out of Jacob’s Ladder. Beds
were falling apart and the delivery bed looked like a medieval torture device. I’ve seen maternity wards in these countries
hundreds of times. But my friends in the US are starting to have babies. Recently on
Facebook, a friend took us through her experience giving birth to a premature
baby. Every day she posted pictures of
the baby hooked up to all sorts of machines, fighting for life. And she looked
so small. Here, a baby must look
microscopic. I can’t imagine how hard it’s
going to be to come back here once I have children of my own. The guilt just might do me in. We congratulated the clinic staff on their
new machine and got back in the car.
I ended my field trip with honey wine, communal eating and a
scary butcher that posed for a photo.
