A Note on Education and Training

Dear Reader

during the last few days I was able to sit and talk to a number of women from different walks of life. I interviewed the poorest of the poor in the refugee camp in Hargeisa, women who have seen and experienced things we cannot even imagine. I also sat with leaders of NGOs, women who are well educated and some of them have even been living abroad for several years. Tomorrow I will interview the vice-minister of the Ministry of Social Affairs, she is one of only 4 ministers in Somaliland. All the women I have spoken to agree that the most important issue is to get Somaliland acknowledged by the world community. Second on the list is education beyond the secondary level and third is the health of women and children and. Only since two years is elementary education (up to 8th grade) free of charge for all girls and boys. Still there's a lot of girls who are not sent to school for various reasons. Education past the 8th grade is subject to a fee. This leaves the poor without enough education to be able to find meaningful and financially supporting jobs. And once more, the women are the ones with the least support and the hardest struggles.

Here at the Edna Adan University Hospital we have two fine female doctors, Dr. Shoukri and
Dr. Naima. Both intelligent and gifted professionals who tell me that there is a dire need for more female doctors and better trained and educated doctors in general. Women generally like to be treated by women - mind you, I feel the same way - and there are just not enough around. Also, the education and training possibilities for doctors here in Somaliland are limited. They need to be able to study and work abroad and bring that know-how back to their country. Both Shoukri and Naima are very dedicated to their country and are looking for possibilities to get scholarships to countries of the first world to train and learn. Here at the EAUH there are foreign doctors coming in every 6 weeks to train and teach the local doctors. Yesterday an Australian orthopedic surgeon arrived at the hospital with his wife woh is a trained midwife. They are both working for the organisation called Australian Doctors for Africa. They will stay here and work and teach during the next 4 weeks. Currently there is also an English doctor staying at the hospital for a whole year. She is, however, on vacation at this time and we will meet her just before we are leaving ourselves.

Dr. Andy Norman who has just left a few days ago, is a neo-gynaegologist who worked with the staff here. Here's a rare picture taken during an operation Dr. Shoukri and Dr. Norman performed together:

 



To illustrate how difficult it can be to get women from Somaliland to Switzerland for training, here's the story of two nurses/midwifes who have been invited by the Inselspital in Bern to train for 6 weeks on location in Bern.

First you must understand that because Somaliland is considered a region of Somalia, there are no embassies in Somaliland. Now, the Swiss Embassy responsible for the country of Somalia is in Nairobi, Kenya. The two women would have to travel to Nairobi to pick up their visas for Switzerland. Now, with a Somalilander passport they need a visa to go to Kenya. The Kenyan embassy is in Addis Ababa. They would have to travel to Addis in order to get the visa to Nairobi and then travel to Nairobi to get the Swiss visa. Then they can go to Switzerland. Got it?

Now, we all know that Edna for example, gets her visas in Addis Ababa. And we know about others from Somaliland who get their visas in Addis. After talking to the Swiss Embassy in Addis, we learned that they are making those exceptions but only for people they 'know' and who have traveled before. I guess they want to be sure that Somalilanders return to Somaliland and don't disappear in the countries they travel to. Well, now we have to put together all necessary documents plus a written Statement by Edna guaranteeing that the two will return, also we will activate all possible means and contacts we have to convince the Swiss Embassy in Addis that it is safe to grant the two women the visa there. And this has been going forth and back for more than a year now! You need good nerves and total perseverance.

If any of you know of a possibility to get one of the female doctors here sponsored to a Hospital in Switzerland for training, let me know. I could not think of a better way to support a county who's women are so determined to preserve peace, learn as much as they can and help their country become a better place. They deserve our support!

Regards,
Liana
:-)

Women and Children in Somaliland: Some Facts and Figures

Dear Reader

here's an interesting Survey Report on the Situation of women and children in Somaliand.

The Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) was carried out in 2011 by the Somaliland Ministry of National Planning and Development with technical and financial support from UNICEF.

MICS is an international household survey programme developed by UNICEF. MICS was conducted as part of the fourth global round of MICS surveys (MICS4). It provides up-to-date information on the situation of children and women and measures key indicators that allow countries to monitor progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other internationally agreed upon commitments.
Download here: Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2011 - Preliminary Results: Somaliland (Summary)

Happy reading!
Regards,
Liana
:-)

The Thing with Food

Dear reader
I have been asked what kind of food we are eating here. Well, let me show you and tell you via todays blog.

During Ramadan, eating habits are of course a bit different than at normal non-Ramadan times. All of us, muslim or not, are eating dinner around half past six in the evening. Only that we call it break-fast during Ramadan. At around 18.28pm the muezzin starts singing and that's the sign of sunset and thus of breaking the time of fasting. We eat two things at that first breakfast: Samosas, those triangle thingies we know from India and a kind of bakery, sweet and a bit like doughnuts but thicker and less soft. Also on the table are two bowls, one with vanilla-custard (vanille creme) and the other with a kind of soup and bones. The bones can be sucked dry of the marrow, I think it's goat, I have to ask Edna about it. The soup consists off wabbly, brownish stuff, like fat put through a mixer. I have never tasted it and most probably never will if you understand what I mean. I usually add melon or banana to the vanilla custard, that's jammy.

But the most important thing are the dates. Every fasting should be broken with a mouthful of dates. They are of course delicious, sweet and sticky. By the way, did you know that you can survive on dates and camel milk in the desert for a very long time, several months long in fact. With the food there is of course liquids on the table. Here at Edna's table there's always water, fresh mango, lemon and melon juice and Karkadé, sirup of the Hibiscus flower.

The muslims eat quietly for a few minutes to kill the worst hunger and thurst, then they get up and go praying. There's a small mosque on the hospital grounds, that's were a lot of them go, the men on one side the women on the other, as everywhere in the world. The non-muslims either stay at the table and talk or they too go and do something else for a while.

Samosas and the sweet stuff

 

Dates

 

Karkadé, Mango, Lemon, Water and more Mango

 

the table after the first breakfast

 

About an hour later the table is set again for dinner. This time it's 'real' dinner, most of the time with either rice or pasta, liver, meat and potatoes, lettuce and tomatoes, or vegetables like beans or cabbage. Food here is seasonal and completely unprocessed. Some of it comes from Edna's farm. There's always watermelon and banana on the table too, sometimes also papayas. To me, the meat dishes are quite spicy and hot, yesterday the beans were too spicy for me too, but generally there's a more spicy and a less spicy dish to chose from. Again water and juices are served in abundance.

People show up for the second dinner at different times. Some are there at 8pm, others at 8.30 or even 9pm. Depending on who's at the table we have more or less heated discussions. And sometimes we just laugh at the latest exercise videos from Barakat. Sometimes we drink a cup of tea after dinner.

 The Buffet: everyone just serves themselves

 

Meat with Chips (French fries, Pommes Frites)

 

The Meat and Potato Mix (rather spicy)

 

 Rice
 

The Jammy Stuff

 

believe me, these bananas taste like bananas!

 

this is Angelika's favourite spicy Sauce (too hot for me)

Muslims are allowed to eat all night until dawn. That's when I sleep so I don't see the 4am crowd eating. The non-muslims eat breakfast like we normally do, around 7am or 8am. There's fresh bread (like the baguette cut in pieces of approx. 10cm), Somali pancakes, porridge (Haferbrei), cornflakes, peanut-butter, marmelade, nutella, something they call cheese but it looks like white-stuff-you-can-smear-on-your-bread-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-cheese! and honey. The honey has a chili-sting to it, it's a bit hot. I wonder since we're here where that comes from. Angelika says it's 'wild forest' honey, but I still don't believe it because I have not seen nor heard of wild forests in Somaliland. We'll find out before we leave. Like in so many places worldwide we find Lipton teabags and guess what? Correctamente, Nescafé! The stuff that they call coffée but people who have had real coffée know, it's a fake. Of course there's milk powder and of course Nestlé is quite dominant here too. There are other brands and we try and use those.

While I write there's another gigantic thunderstorm and heavy rain going down on Hargeisa. It's refresing and has a great cleansing effect. Besides, it helps the plants and all other living creatures short on water. Actually, this one is bigger than the ones last week. There's even hail hitting the windows. Wow.... well, let me finish this blog first.

Ladies and gents, that's what we eat here at the Edna Adan University Hospital. We have been out twice so far, once to the Ambassador hotel where I had camel meat and once to the Ethiopian restaurant where we all eat from the same platters. Other than that, we've been happy here at Edna's table of the united nations.

Question: how do you always know a Swissie has been there?

Greetings!

Liana

:-)

 

Message from Salomé

Hello everyone
So the american cople is gone and the southafrican cople too. There are less and less people at the table and it is more quiet than before.
The Food is still okey. The exercise of today was more difficuld because Liana wasn`t here. But  after tomoro i will coach them! :D I`m looking forword.
tomoro we have things to do but after i will go and make a long healthy sleep like today;)
Okey,by guys;))

Faatumo Bihi and the Faatumo Bihi School

Dear Reader

Frank our fotographer has arrived safe and sound in Hargeisa and has moved in at the Edna Adan University Hospital on the second floor were the single male guests reside.
Edna took him for a drive around town on his first afternoon and Frank got a good idea of the the place now.

Among others we met a very special woman yesterday, her name is Faatumo Bihi Koshin. And here is her story.

In 1988 when Edna was still working for the WHO and living in Djibouti, she got a phone call from Hargeisa asking her to accomodate a little 6 year old girl for two days before transferring her to the military hospital in Djibouti. The girl was an orphan and had lost both legs when accidentally stepping onto a landmine a few months prior. Now, she needed more operations which would have to be performed in Djibouti. Edna would not be Edna if she would not have agreed after only a short moment of 'what on earth am I going to do with a little girl?'. So Faatumo was sent off to Djibouti where she was picked-up by Edna. The little girl was very scared and tense so Edna decided to take her on a drive around town and down to the seaside. Once they got there, Faatumo started screaming and seemed to be terrified at the sight of the sea. Edna did not understand at first but when she realised it was the waves and the water the child was so scared off, she drove away and the girl slowly calmed down again.

Again, Edna would not be Edna, had she not immediately started to thinking of a way to 'cure' Faatumo from this fear of the sea. She called some friends, a couple with three kids who loved to swim. She asked them to meet with her the next day down at the beach with the children. So they did and when Faatumo saw where they were heading, she started panicking again. This time, they got out of the car and Edna held her tight while walking towards the water. The others were already there and having fun, swimming and splashing around. Edna reached the water and slowly introduced Faatumo to it, pouring it over her while talking to her calmly. The little girl could not but notice that nothing bad was happening and that the other kids were having heaps of fun. She slowly calmed down and before long, she too was playing. By the time they were ready to leave, Edna could not get her out of the water anymore that's how much Faatumo liked it.

Edna realised that this was a very special child she had on her hands and she decided to support Faatumo so she could get proper medical attention as well as a proper education. And that's exactly what happend.

A few years later, Faatumo was now 12 years old, she was invited to Geneva to represent her country Somaliland at a congress on the elimination of landmines. Lady Diana was a strong advocate on that topic and she was present at the congress. When Faatumo met Lady Di, she was asked what her greatest wish would be. Faatumo replied that she wants to go to school every day. Lady Di looked at Kofi Annan who stood right behind her and they agreed that this should be made possible and Faatumo should be picked-up and returned every day between her home and school. But that was not what Faatumo had in mind. She thanked Lady Diana and Kofi Annan for their good intentions and said: 'I want a school in the village I live for ALL the children to attend'. And so it happend. A school was built in the village, actually in the direct neighbourhood of Faatumo's house. It includes several buildings and a canteena and they called it the Faatumo Bihi Elementary School.

Today, Faatumo is 25 years old, married and the mother of two little kids. After completing both primary and secondary school she studied ICT (Information and Computer Technology) and she intends to continue studying. If you did not know it you would never guess that she walks on a pair of artificial legs. She works for an organisation who helps handicapped people. Her smile is heartwarming and the power radiating from her eyes is humbling. She is very kind and I feel honored to have met her.

If I find a way to do it, I will clean that board myself!

 

In front of the colors of Somaliland

Faatumo, this is how she herself spells her name

The school hosts 14 classrooms, a canteena, a nursery and admin building

 

 

Regards from Liana and Salomé and Angelika

:-)



Future Anesthesists at the Edna Adan University Hospital

And one more story for today: yesterday the class of Hosea has sat the first part of a two part exam. The second part will take place on Thursday. Since Hosea is leaving for a month tomorrow early morning (you remember he's just become a daddy and needs to be with his wife and baby-girl), the class has asked to have pictures taken before he's gone. We chose a nice location out on one of the terrasses where Edna keeps a beautiful bush of flowers (don't ask me their name) and here's a greeting from the class of future anesthesists of Somaliland being traned at the Edna Adan University Hospital in Hargeisa.

An Ethiopian Dinner

Dear reader

last night our two ethiopian friends, Barakat and Andala, organised a dinner at one of the Ethiopian restaurants in Hargeisa. We were 10 who spread into two cars and off we went accross town in darkness. You must understand that the roads are a challenge by day but become outright dangerous at night. The sun sets at around 6.30 here and by 7pm it's completely dark. We had a fulll moon last night, that did not seem to make any difference though. There are barely any street-lights, matter of fact I haven't seen any real street-lights yet except for the few that lit-up a parking lot in front of a hotel, but I cannot seriously count them as 'street'-light, more as parking-lot-lights.

Anyway, we actually made it to the destined location; a tiny restaurant with just a few tables. They knew that we were coming and had prepared everything in advance.

first we all sit around one table like this

Judy and Andy Norman - a happy couple,

she works as an International Travel Health Expert 

while he is a Neuro-Gynaecologist and they both

work for free at the EAUH every now and then

 

Angelika telling one of her many stories

then we all get to wash our hands...

with soap and water

me too

becauser eating happens hands-on

here she's still smiling....

Barakat shows us how it's done

after Food there's another round of hand-washing and

some good-smeller for the ladies and the gents

our Kenian brother has important

business to take care of

for desert there's pop-corn....

...and coffee, freshly roasted...

...right in front of us....

and poured into the good old...

  

...little turkish/arabic coffee cups.

Thanks, Barakat and Andala - it was great last night!

The dress-code

Dear Reader

let me say this; it takes years of practice and experience to wear the clothes women wear here and not get totally undone every time they go outside. It's ALWAYS windy here in Hargeisa (and I suspect that goes for the rest of Somaliland too). I've tried, several times. First, the material which is not entirely cotton but a mix of cotton and synthetics, slips off my head all the time. Since I don't have long hair I cannot tie a piece of cloth around a hair-bun the way the locals do it. I wrapped a big nice colorful towel around my divinely full-figured body and guess what? It kept on slipping off of me just as the one on my head did. We went to the market and got fabric which was then sewn into a traditional S.Land dress (one size fits all). These dresses are longer than I'm tall and what the S.Landers do, they squeeze the access fabric into the waistband of the skirt they are wearing underneath. So, of course I'm doing that too only it does not seem to hold. Every time I get into or out of a car and every time I sit down and get back up, that stuff gets undone and I'm trampling on my own dress when I want to walk away. Add to it the constant wind, I'm totally lost. I can't function with the local Dress-code. The other night when we went out for dinner with Edna, I got into the full gear but let me tell you this; I was more than happy to get out of it again.

that's the bun I cannot make,

the women wear this underneath the hijgab

 

too long to wear like that...

 

...that's why they tug it in at the waist

 

underneath they wear 'plastic'-skirts...

 

...wholly synthetic and very warm

 

women walking in the wind...

...holding on to her wrapping

 

and even though Edna has her

very own style, including the

head-cover, she too is subject to the winds.

 

So much for now on the topic on dressing.
:-)
L

Three Hunks and a Dinner at the Ambassador

You have already met Barakat, our truly gifted and totally dedicated trainer who never fails to show up at 6am (more or less) to squeeze our bones and muscles. But we don't want to talk about THAT again, don't we.

Well, we've made friends not only with Barakat but also with his Ethiopian pal Andale and the Kenian hunk Hosea. While Barakat teaches the future Apothecaries, Andale works at the Somaliland Family Health Agency (SOFHA) and lives in the guest wing of the Edna Adan University Hospital. Hosea is an Anesthesist from Nairobi who is teaching a class of future Anesthesists here in Hargeisa because there are none in Somaliland!
Hosea's wife gave birth prematurely to a baby-girl last week and he's leaving in a couple of days to spend  a month with his new family in Nairobi. Before he leaves, we wanted to have a few pictures taken and decided to use the roof for this undertaking. Well, I don't want to keep the beautiful result from you:

 

Barakat                                                   Hosea

Andale

 

 

The Three Friends...

 

...always ready for a joke

  

Salomé has become 'the sister'

and I think she likes the attention :-)

 

 

 

 

While we were up there taking all These pics, I heard a cat miauing all the time. First I thought the sound came from below but then it was too close and we started looking for the source. We found a tiny little kitty hiding behind the water tanks. She was too shy and would not let us get near her. She eventually made her way down the stairs and hopefully out of the building. When Edna heard about it she wasn't too pleased... to say the least!

 

 

Madame Edna invited her current residing guests for a dinner at the Hotel Ambassador in Hargeisa. I've heard of it and was told, it's a very nice hotel. So, at 7:15pm we gathered at the hospital entrance and spread out into two cars, one driven by Edna herself, the other by her driver Faisal. He was dressed in his sunday best, nice beige linen suit and tie. I would say he was the best dressed male at the table. Food was delicious, I had grilled camel meat with vegies and fries. For desert a fruit salad and an espresso. I would have thought that they have this really strong arabic coffee that we know from countries like Lebanon or Egypt, but they don't. Even the espresso tastes like a stronger Version of Nescafé, which in my books is not really coffee. Anyway, camel meat is quite traditional in Somaliland even though rather on the expensive side. So is camel milk, by the way. Well, I like it a lot, it's tasty and tender and my guess is that this one was not one of the old camels but rather a younger one.

 

 

Andy and Judith from Nashville and Amal, Edna's niece

 

nope, that's definitely not for me

 

 

 

Sahira, Amal, Edna, Angelika, Judith, Andy, Tom, Hosea, Salomé, Liana, Tarek

 

Thank you, Edna!

 

 

Wishing you all a very nice day!

Regards,

Liana

:-)