Ethiopia - Day 7

The couple of you that have read my blog from the beginning of this journey may remember me posting about the Hamlin Fistula hospital awhile back. If not, watch "A Walk to Beautiful", it's an amazing documentary about it. It's on PBS often, or you can get it at the library. Fistula is the result of an extremely long labor (sometimes 4 or 5 days!) which puts huge stress on the body and results in a small hole in the bladder. The result is constant urine leaking and the woman being ostracized from her village. Those that are lucky enough to hear about this hospital can come and have surgery free of charge. (That's the short version of the story...) We went to visit the Addis hospital today and it is an amazing place. Like a tropical oasis in the midst of a big city. The women are also taught to sew or make jewelry and you can buy the stuff they've made and the profits go completely to the specific woman who made it. I'd highly recommend taking a tour if you have some free time. I emailed them ahead of time to set up the time, but you can also just call once you're in country. On our next trip I'm hoping we can have lunch at Juniper Cafe. The women who aren't able to be cured can live on this beautiful farm in Desta Mender (just outside of Addis) and they run the cafe which serves food from their garden. It's open on weekends, no reservation needed...or you can go during the week if you let them know ahead if time.

For lunch we ate at Makush (on Bole above Ethio Supermarket). It's Italian and the food was decent (the spaghetti with veggies looked great, my Gorgonzola sauce was just okay). The food isn't the real draw of this place though...it is also an art gallery. All of the best Ethiopian artists hang their art all throughout the restaurant. Some amazing stuff...unfortunately our budget wasn't big enough to buy any of it!

After lunch we headed to Churchill (at post office road) for some shopping. We tried our hand at haggling (not sure how successful we were, but I'm going to pretend we got good deals) and got a couple traditional dresses for baby girl, a ball and drum for the boys, and a framed cross and stone nativity set for ourselves. Then we went to Tomoca and bought a ton (almost literally!) of fresh roasted coffee. It smells amazing! I can't wait to see if it tastes as good as it did there... Our final stop was a jewelry store to get a silver Ethiopian cross necklace to give baby girl when she gets older.

For dinner we went to Habesha 2000 for some Ethiopian food and a show of traditional dancing. It was fun to see! Most of the dancing looks like some kind of chicken dance with lots of shoulder movement...pretty entertaining stuff. The food was a buffet...was good, but we had no idea what anything was! (We did see others ordering from the menu later, that's probably a better option.) Steve tried the tej (honey wine), served in a glass bulb. Too sour for me, but he liked it. I don't think you need a reservation, but when we told our driver that's where we wanted to go, he called and made one for us. Show starts warming up at 7:30ish every night, so arrive about that time. Definitely a must do!