I have been trying to keep my posts short and sweet recently as I don't want you all nodding off whilst trawling through them. This is going to be a tad long so settle down and pour yourself a drink.
I am two thirds of the way through a book and it has had a profound affect on me. This book is almost like a spider sitting in the middle of it's web, casting hundreds of strands out and drawing you in to the story. I have read more about Ethiopia tonight than I ever though possible. The book is called 'The Hospital by The River - A Story of Hope' by Dr Catherine Hamlin, an Australian Gynaecologist. I picked up a ten year old copy of it in a Charity Shop in Bodmin. I think there must be an Aussie in Bodmin who donates books because this is the third book I have read that has been published in Oz but not here. I feel so strongly about this book that I had to write about it.
It is the story of a husband and wife team, Dr's Reg and Catherine Hamlin. They trained in Sydney and accepted a post in Addis Ababa in 1959. When they arrived, they had no idea of the task that they had undertaken. It's hard to precis the story but I'll give it a go. Catherine and Reg were apalled at the number of women arriving at the hospital with Fistulas. Fistula by definition is; An abnormal or surgically made passage between a hollow or tubular organ and the body surface, or between two hollow or tubular organs. Essentially, a tear or hole in the wrong place.
Ethiopian women often marry when they are 12 and are typically preganant by 13 or 14. Many of these young wives are unable to give birth naturally as their bodies are too immature to bear a child. Couple this with very rural areas, no roads and very few Hospitals and you have a problem, rarely seen in the West. These women would fail to give birth. The baby would die inside them and start to be reabsorbed into their bodies, which is when they finally managed to expel the baby. There is no easy way to put this but young women were arriving at the Hospital with terrible Fistulas and dreadful bladder and bowel incontinence caused by days of straining to deliver their baby. They would be ostracised by their husbands and families and cast out of their village society.
Reg and Catherine saved over 20,000 women and after Reg died. Catherine continues her work at the Hospital, they founded together, even though she is well into her eighties. What struck me about this book was Catherines faith in herself and Reg. Catherine came from a missionary background and her prayers to her God kept her strong. I wish I had the same strength of character and more importantly faith. She stoically went through revolutions, famines, the near loss of her son and the death of her husband but still keeps going. Please read the book if you can. It is available on Amazon.
I suppose there are many stories of triumph over adversity, like Catherines but it was the way she told it. Her calm and gentle manner inspired me beyond anything else. The other thing that influenced me was her friendship with Haile Salassie, Emperor of Ethiopia. She found herself in a social circle with him and his extended family. Catherine supported his family when they were imprisoned after a coup by Mengistu and during the terrible times of The Red Terror.
I have always been rather entranced by Haile Selassie and his story. Catherine describes him as a gentleman, concerned for his family and during the famine of 1974 (no that is not a typo - Geldof came 10 years later - Dimbleby did it first in '73) she reports him to be an old man and out of touch with his subjects. Not in a critical way, being Catherine, she merely states the obvious. Ethiopia has been a Feudal state for centuries. The gap between rich and poor is massive.
Let me tell you how I became entangled with Haile Selassie. My parents lived in the parish of Hartland in North Devon for 10 years whilst my father was working for the 'Donuts' in Morewenstow. Just a mile or so out of the village is a beautiful church called St Nectans. I would sometimes drive back from Hartland Quay and sit quietly in the church. I came across a chair with a plaque on it stating 'This Chair was used by Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia who visited this Parish on 17 August 1938'. I wondered who he was and went home and asked my mother. We had no Wikipedia or internet then. I searched the library for books about him and became transfixed with his life. To have Catherine's account of his later life and subsequent death delighted me because she wrote 'as it was' and this was a treasure to me.
Hartland has always been a special place for me. I met a magical man by the name of Satish Kumar who lives in the village. A former Jain Monk and a disciple of Ghandi, a founder of Dartington College, he has touched many lives. Mary Norton, author of The Borrowers and Bedknobs and Broomsticks made it her home. Singing carols with Joss Ackland, the actor and him judging my eldest son to be Prince of Hartland in the Carnival was another memorable moment.
Its funny how certain people touch your life. Haile Selassie touched mine and 20 years on Catherine helped me to understand more about him and the proud and wonderful women of Ethiopia.
I just wish I had her Faith.
Namaste
Muse x
That you for showing me the blog. I enjoyed reading it. I was aware of the work of the couple you wrote about and many students have gone to that centre. There is a rather different book, a novel by a doctor, that touches on that sort of work, which might be of interest to you sometime. It is called "Cutting for Stone", written by Abraham Verghese.
ReplyDeleteI was a great admirer of Joss Ackland.
I noted the Voltaire quote, and one that I have quoted myself many times. I was interested to discover recently - from Wikipendia! - that it was an Englishwoman, a biographer of Voltaire, Evelyn Hall, who coined the phrase to encapsulate his thinking:
Message from Proffesor Anthony Pinching