This is Naomi writing with some editing and additions by Gareth,
This morning we went to visit the famous Fistula Hospital (via a brief stop at Addis Golf Country Club). This is a hospital for Women with childbirth injuries (look up Fistula on google).
The thing that most struck me was the cleanliness, the white buildings and a huge number of patients. Each ward was light with good views of landscaped gardens. Stone paths wind around the hillside that overlooks a quarry (quite beautiful really for a quarry-view).
We had a tour by a very articulate young Ethiopian lady who told us amazing stories of how a life can be transformed through Fistula surgery. There was even an Oprah wing. The language barrier of about 80 languages (some variations on Amharic I guess) seemed to be a big problem. It was actually a little overwhelming seeing the Women there struggling with simple physical life so much; however they were in the best place they could be and on a good road to recovery.
We then went to the airport to try get our luggage which was still visiting Hong Kong and after some further searching were told it was indeed still there and would be flown in to Bahir Dar later in the week. I wonder if we will ever see it again.
We had lunch above a restaurant lining the "Churchhill Road" markets. The food took maybe 50 mins to come because they made sure all 12 persons food was cooked before serving anything. So half of the meals were half cold. But our waiter was lovely and his passionate, joyful waiting was worth every minute. I had pineapple Fanta.
We then Taxi-Bussed it "Sister Zenebesh's Baby Home" - who looks after abandoned babies until they can be adopted. She usually has 20 babies at a time. I got to hold and feed one baby a bottle. We will upload a cool photo showing the construction of this wild mansion right next to this shackish little orphanage.
We decided to head back to Churchhill Road for some shopping. I bought 10birr earings and Gareth bought a T-Shirt for 40 birr. Michael had a wonderful shoe shine for would you believe 1birr!.... that is around 20c AU. After shopping it was back to the hotel for some quick refreshment and then straight to a house called "Aussie-Opia. This is where a cool young man named Abebe lives with his family; the family hosts some Australian visitors throughout the year. Abebe was sponsored from little guy by the Hardings and is now 20 and just the best of guys you could ever meet. At Aussie-Opia we had a banquet of a dinner, bonfire, fireworks, singing and dancing by Abebe and friends, an Ethiopian coffee ceremony and finally a 3 hour hair braiding session for Helens hair. We will upload a great of photo of our evening there ASAP... internet is like 5 kb/s here!
Thanks for getting through that. Much love,
Gareth&Naomi.
