“If she wasn’t bleeding, she would have suffered like I did and delivered at home,” said Fasika’s* mother Menesch at a Lie and Wait center for expectant mothers in rural Ethiopia.
Menesch was inside the room with her expecting daughter Fasika while nursing her three-month-old daughter on a chair. It was Menesch’s eighth child who, like all the rest, she delivered at home with no trained labor assistant.
Menesch cradling her with-child in her lap at the Lie and Wait house in rural Ethiopia.
Fasika was a mere 15 years old with baby fat still surrounding her cheeks and a shy smile that often looked down at her largely pregnant belly. Meeting Fasika and her mother on the last day of my trip was the defining moment of my two weeks of reporting on maternal and newborn health in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia, a magical land of over 90 million people, is one of the most diverse nations in the world with over 83 distinct languages and 200 dialects. What stunned me the most about Ethiopians is how such a diverse group of people live in peace and harmony. Over half the population is Orthodox Christian and the next largest religious group is Muslims making up around 45% of the population. Despite their different religious beliefs, Muslims and Christians live side by side and oftentimes there can be a mixture of religions within families due to marriage. The main eight ethnic groups also live together peacefully which says a lot about this poverty-stricken nation in the heart of Africa.
While I was in Ethiopia these past two weeks, Oxford University released The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), ranking Ethiopia as the second poorest country in the world just ahead of Niger. The report claims that although Ethiopia has made some progress, Ethiopia is still home to more than 76 million poor people, the fifth largest number in the world after India, China, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The report also claims that the highest percentage of poor live within the rural areas which is no surprise given the fact that over 85% of Ethiopians earn a living off the land.
Despite the often heartbreaking, overwhelming poverty of the Ethiopian people, the one thing they all seemed to have in common is resilience and resolve with their place in this world. I had never seen so many genuine, welcoming smiles upon their faces despite the hardships they face. I was always greeted with curiosity, warmth and kindness by the Ethiopians I met. Here are some of my favorite faces of Ethiopia.
Reaching Mosebo village, about 42 kilometers outside of Bahir Dar in rural Ethiopia is not for the faint at heart. It requires a land cruiser, patience, and a bit of adventure to cover the hour and a half drive on bumpy, muddy roads to reach Mosebo and see how over 90% of Ethiopians live. If it starts to rain as it frequently does during Ethiopia’s three month rainy season, the road becomes dangerous and impassable.
Once you leave the tarmac, you reach endless gravel roads and see the way the majority of Ethiopians live.
I visited Mosebo village as an International Reporting Project fellow to learn more about the miraculous success Ethiopia has made by achieving MDG 4 – reducing child mortality rates for children under five by two-thirds. Ethiopia stunned the world by achieving MDG 4 well ahead of the 2015 deadline yet there is still much progress to be made in reducing newborn deaths, particularly within the first 28 days of life which are the most dangerous days to be alive.
Per Save the Children’s “Ending Newborn Deaths Report”, every year one million babies die on the first and only day of life accounting for 44% of all deaths for children under the age of five. Nearly two million more children will die within their first month. Four out of five of these deaths are due to preventable, treatable causes such as preterm birth, infections and complications during childbirth.
I have been in Ethiopia as an International Reporting fellow for a little over a week now and it has been an amazing, eye-opening trip so far. I have learned so much about this beautiful landlocked country of 90 million people. I have been warmly welcomed into their lives and have enjoyed the curiosity of the children at my blond hair and light skin. I am sure I will have stories and photos to share for months.
In the meantime, I would like to give you a snapshot of Ethiopia: The beautiful countryside, the warm geniune smiles of the children, the mix between tradition and modernity that encapsulates every aspect of Ethiopian life.
Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in Africa with a population of 90 million people, stunned the world by achieving the Millennium Development Goal #4 of reducing the mortality rates of children under age 5 by two-thirds well ahead of the 2015 deadline. In a country in which 95% of the population lives outside of an urban center in rural, remote and hard to reach areas and a shocking 80% of women birth at home without a midwife. Health Extension Workers (HEW) have been the key ingredient to Ethiopia’s success. However, sadly the rate of newborn survival in Ethiopia has not shown nearly as much progress.
Children in Mosebo Village 42 k away from Bahir Dar in Ethiopia.
As an international reporting fellow with the International Reporting Project, I am in Ethiopia for two weeks reporting on newborn health. I am meeting with a diverse variety of people around the country such as doctors, health officials, mothers, NGOs, midwives and health extension workers to learn about Ethiopia’s maternal, newborn and child health systems, policies and strategies for improving newborn health. On Monday, we had a presentation on maternal, newborn and child health in Ethiopia given by Dr. Abeba Bekele, the Program Manager at Save the Children Ethiopia’s Saving Newborn Lives Program.
I arrived early Sunday morning into Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, after a long haul flight from home. My day began Saturday at 3 am and after two fights totaling 16 hours I found myself in Africa’s highest capital Addis Ababa which translates into “new flower”.
Street shots of Addis Ababa
The earliest people living in the Shewa region surrounding Addis Ababa date back to the 9th century and are believed to be the Gurage people. Over the centuries the Somalis and Abyssinian kingdoms laid claim to the land, followed by the arrival of the Oromo in the 1500s. The actual city of Addis Ababa was not founded until 1886 when Emperor Menelik II decided to move his military base from Mount Entoto to the vast fertile plains below of Addis Ababa.
Today, Addis Ababa is Ethiopia’s largest city with an estimated population of over 3 million people and is a magical place where tradition and modernity are intertwined in unexpected ways. Walking down the busy streets of Addis Ababa you can see high rises and western hotels reaching towards the sky juxtaposed with dirt sidewalks, donkeys leaving the market and undeveloped slums. It is a place filled with contradiction. Looking outside the window of my newly built luxurious western hotel lies one of many slums slightly hidden behind corrugated tin fences and walls. Men in well-tailored suits sit outside in a chairs along dirt sidewalks getting a shoe shine. High rise buildings are going up alongside a pell-mell of depressing slums. Everywhere you look is something that makes you scratch your head and wonder.
The highlight of my visit to Cienfuegos was our late afternoon lunch at the spectacular Palacio de Valle. Built in 1913 for the wealthy business tycoon Don Acisclo del Valle, the palace is an unbelievable mix of Romanesque, Gothic, Mudejar and Baroque styles influenced by Spain’s Moorish past. The palace was designed by an Italian architect, Alfredo Colli and took over four years to complete.
Today the Palacio de Valle is open to tourists at its lovely first floor restaurant and also holds various cultural events throughout the year. After traveling to the South of Spain and Morocco, I fell in love with the Moorish architecture of that part of the world and was a bit surprised to find it in Cuba.
The Palacio de Valle was my favorite building that I saw during my trip to Cuba due to its sheer beauty and architectural genius. The entire place is enchanting and the craftsmanship inside the palace’s interior is a feast for the eyes.
An hour drive west of Trinidad in Central Cuba lies the port city of Cienfuegos. Known as the “Pearl of the South“, Cienfuegos was built along a peninsula overlooking one of Cuba’s largest bays, Bahia de Cienfuegos. Cienfuegos was originally inhabited by the French who arrived in 1803 with 40 families from Bordeaux and Louisiana. In 1819, the Spanish arrived and founded the town which would become an important industrial area after the Cuban Revolution. Sugar refineries, flour mills, cement factories and a naval base transformed Cienfuegos into an important economic hub for Cuba.
Photo Source: Wikipedia Free Commons
Most people visit Cienfuegos today for its amazing location along the Caribbean Sea and its access to beaches and culture. The historic center of Cienfuegos is a World Heritage Site lined with gorgeous Spanish and French colonial architecture reminiscent of Cienfuegos’ heritage and past. Cienfuegos also boasts a strong cultural scene with one of Cuba’s finest Chamber Orchestras (which we got to hear) and a surprisingly developed art scene. Unfortunately we only had a few hours to spend in Cienfuegos but it was well worth the visit. Here are some highlights.
One of my absolute favorite things to do when I travel is see the countryside. As much as I love the vibrant culture and pulse of a city, there is something special to be found in the countryside. Our drive from Trinidad to Cienfuegos was as nostalgic as I’d imagined. We passed farms, tobacco and sugar plantations and lush mountains in the distance. The deep blue colors of the Caribbean Sea sporadically appeared upon the horizon as we neared our next stop for the day: The lovely, historic town of Cienfuegos, Cuba.
Photo Source: Wikipedia Free Commons
We only had a few hours to spend in Cienfuegos before heading on the long drive back to Havana. The drive from Trinidad was beautiful and sadly the only pictures I could snap of the passing, verdant countryside were from the window of our Cuban tour bus. The glare was bad, the motion a little fuzzy but at least I captured a few good shots of the beautiful Cuban countryside.
“I long for the countryside. That’s where I get my calm and tranquillity – from being able to come and find a spot of green”. – Emilia Clarke
Marseille. The oldest city in all of France renown for le Vieux Port and its fisherman has recently become the culture capital of Europe and it shows. Restaurants and cafes dot the Vieux Port affording gorgeous views of the Notre Dame de la Garde that overlooks the city.
Our hotel, the Residence du Vieux Port was the perfect place to base ourselves for our stay in Marseille. Strategically located along the Vieux Port, we were walking distance to restaurants, nightlife and shopping along La Canebière, the historic street in the old quarter of Marseille leading to the Vieux Port. But the best part of all about our hotel was the view off the balcony.
Try a room with a view like ours located along the boardwalk of the Vieux Port for watching the sun set and morning strolls to admire the fisherman selling the daily catch. A gem of a city that has obviously found its place in European culture.
The view from our room was beautiful at any time of day…
Tucked away atop the hillside of the surrounding Sierra del Escambray mountains in Central Cuba lies one of Cuba’s most precious colonial jewels: The beautiful colonial city of Trinidad. Founded in 1514 as Villa de la Santísima Trinidad by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, a Spanish conquistador, Trinidad has rightfully earned the reputation as one of the most beautiful and well-preserved colonial cities in all of Latin America.
Sometimes it is true that a picture can paint a thousand words. This week’s photo challenge: A Split-Second Story, inspired me to dig deep throughout my vast archive of photographs, each one telling a story of a certain place and time. In my opinion, there is no place on earth that a simple photo can tell so much about a place than India.
India, one of the most populous countries on the earth, is full of color, contradiction, glory and pain. It is a place of wonder, sorrow, fear and hope. India bursts with humanity on every street or corner you pass. You can see it all there – poverty, wealth, good, bad, happy, sad, beauty and tragedy.
Behind the beautiful, lavish parts of India always lies the most abject poverty imaginable. Nothing can prepare you for the stark reality of desperation, misery and despair of walking through a real live slum in the heart of India’s capital. Sometimes the most severe poverty is hidden behind the walls and within the confines of a slum. Other times, it stares right back at you like a hard slap across your face. You try to look away, and ignore the creeping, uncomfortable nagging guilt. But you can’t.
Dignity
Woman leaving the newly constructed toilet compound thanks to WaterAid.
Irony
Women living on the street, outside the walls of the American Embassy near Vivekananda Slums in Delhi, India.
In the background of the lush green, beautiful grounds of the American Embassy lies the Vivekananda Camp, one of many unauthorized slums that surround every single part of Delhi. I visited this slum as part of a tour with WaterAid, a global NGO that provides safe drinking water and sanitation to areas around the world that do not have access to it.
The stark contrast between the neighboring American Embassy and the Vivekananda Slum were almost too hard to morally comprehend. These two places represent the immense contradictions and inequalities that can be found all throughout Delhi and India as a whole. One of the greatest inequalities ever seen anywhere in the world is right there staring into your face, making it impossible to not feel deeply distraught.
In the Vivekananda Camp, a slum of approximately 500 households, there is no running water, no sewer lines and people live in absolute dire circumstances. Thanks to WaterAid, improvements to sanitation have been made by the building of a Community Toilet Complex (CTC), a compound containing 20 toilets for women, 20 for men and a few for children as well as a couple of showers, providing some sort of dignity in a place where dignity hardly exists.
When I saw the old woman leaving the Community Toilet Complex, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was moving slowly, at a snail’s pace, with the help of an old wooden cane. She was heading back into the deep confines of the dirty, dingy slum, to her home. I watched her gait with wonder and hope. She had to be in her eighties and most likely spent almost all her life without a proper toilet. Finally after all these years she had the one thing every human being on this earth is entitled to: Dignity. It brought tears to my eyes for the simple things we take for granted.
Less than a third of people ( 772 million people) have access to sanitation in India, and 90 million people in India do not have access to safe water per WaterAid. Over 186,000 children under five die from diarrhea every year. With 17% of the world’s population (over a billion people), the water crisis in India is only getting worse and is becoming life or death for millions of people.
-WaterAid
This post was inspired by the Weekly Photo Challenge: Split-Second Story. To view more entries, click here.
