Today has been yet another eventful day. We went back to the Gulele women to have one more session of health education. They had told us on monday they wanted to learn more about family planning, so we prepared some teaching about different ways to prevent pregnancy. A lot of them start having children very early, maybe at 14-15 years old, which is dangerous, they tend to have many children and having them close together. On top of that they work very hard doing physical labor (I will enclose some pictures of women carrying tons of firewood down from the mountains) which gives them extra problems during pregnancy and birth. They were very good at asking questions, and thankfully we had Ababa the nurse there as well to answer when we couldn't! There were some pretty funny episodes when everyone started cracking up because Birikit got so embarrassed by some of the things she had to translate and started to laugh (and yes, I have that all on tape ;)
We also brought 10 boxes of soap (about 150 bars in each) and lots of sanitary pads to hand out, that the norske kvinners sanitetsforening sponsored. We went through some interesting episodes yesterday when we went to buy it from the suppliers at Mercato, which is the biggest marked in Addis and actually in the entire Africa as far as we have heard. Thankfully we had some Ethiopians with us to help find what we were looking for. The drove us right up front of the right place, but not without trouble. When we were leaving again we had to back up several hundred meters in a very uneven gravel road swarming with people and cars, we were sure we were going to crash several times! And all of a sudden a butt naked guy just walked by..go figure. You also get used to see people just pee anywhere, and I mean anywhere. Even women will just sit down and pee at the side of the road!
Anyways, we got all the stuff and had a fun time carrying it all in to the village this morning. We also brought some clothes, some more baby clothes, some footballs and some toys. And they loved it all. We were given a gift from the village, a really nice painted cloth (tapestry) for the wall that they presented along with a speech. It was almost sad to leave the place. Hopefully the students that come here next will be able to go and teach and visit there as well :)
Afterwards we went up to the top of the mountain Entoto and had a tour in a museum at a Orthodox church, during which Torunn got really sick to her stomach so we had to hurry back to the hotel. She is thankfully feeling a bit better now. Sigrid had to go to the Swedish clinic and get tested because she had really bad stomach cramps and pain had had to go to the toilet all the time, and she found out she has amoeba, which is tiny parasites, in the intestines. The Swedish clinic happened to be the only place in town you can get the medicines, so it was really good she went there. Hopefully Torunn doesn't have that as well, and hopefully not the rest of us either! Or we will be bringing lots of extra little passengers back to Norway, yuk!
This afternoon we have been out hunting for coffee beans, and I am now the owner of several kg of nice Ethiopia beans :)
We also brought 10 boxes of soap (about 150 bars in each) and lots of sanitary pads to hand out, that the norske kvinners sanitetsforening sponsored. We went through some interesting episodes yesterday when we went to buy it from the suppliers at Mercato, which is the biggest marked in Addis and actually in the entire Africa as far as we have heard. Thankfully we had some Ethiopians with us to help find what we were looking for. The drove us right up front of the right place, but not without trouble. When we were leaving again we had to back up several hundred meters in a very uneven gravel road swarming with people and cars, we were sure we were going to crash several times! And all of a sudden a butt naked guy just walked by..go figure. You also get used to see people just pee anywhere, and I mean anywhere. Even women will just sit down and pee at the side of the road!
Anyways, we got all the stuff and had a fun time carrying it all in to the village this morning. We also brought some clothes, some more baby clothes, some footballs and some toys. And they loved it all. We were given a gift from the village, a really nice painted cloth (tapestry) for the wall that they presented along with a speech. It was almost sad to leave the place. Hopefully the students that come here next will be able to go and teach and visit there as well :)
Afterwards we went up to the top of the mountain Entoto and had a tour in a museum at a Orthodox church, during which Torunn got really sick to her stomach so we had to hurry back to the hotel. She is thankfully feeling a bit better now. Sigrid had to go to the Swedish clinic and get tested because she had really bad stomach cramps and pain had had to go to the toilet all the time, and she found out she has amoeba, which is tiny parasites, in the intestines. The Swedish clinic happened to be the only place in town you can get the medicines, so it was really good she went there. Hopefully Torunn doesn't have that as well, and hopefully not the rest of us either! Or we will be bringing lots of extra little passengers back to Norway, yuk!
This afternoon we have been out hunting for coffee beans, and I am now the owner of several kg of nice Ethiopia beans :)
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