DIRE DAWA, ETHIOPIA (IRIN) – Like many teenagers in rural Ethiopia, Shekuria Mume, 19, became pregnant, quit school and got married at 15. The birth of her first baby remains one of her most traumatic experiences, as an untrained traditional birth attendant (TBA) delivered her.
“I had heard that some women die while giving birth so I was scared most of the time during my pregnancy; I didn’t sleep much,” Shekuria told IRIN.
With no health facility near her village of Shuna, in West Hararghe zone of Oromiya state, Shekuria relied on a TBA. She was in labour for two days.
“The attendant kept checking my progress using her bare hands; when I gave birth, she used dirty sheets to wrap up the baby,” Shekuria recalled.
Although Shekuria survived, many Ethiopian women are not so lucky. According to the 2005 Demographic and Health Survey, the country has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, with 673 deaths per 100,000 live births.
The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that 25,000 maternal deaths occur in Ethiopia annually and at least 500,000 women suffer pregnancy-related disabilities such as fistula.
After giving birth, Shekuria and her husband moved to the town of Chelenko, about 440km east of Addis Ababa. Here, she had access to family planning.
Now 19, Shekuria decided to have another baby. When she went into labour, the TBA, Fate Adem, 65, was called to assist.
This time, Shekuria was expecting twins and experienced complications. Luckily, Fate was one of 80 graduates of safe delivery techniques and referred Shekuria to Harar Hospital nearby.
“She was bleeding too much,” Fate told IRIN. “Following my training, I brought her to the hospital.”
Shekuria safely delivered the babies and is now planning to resume her schooling.
Dearth of midwives
Fate received her TBA training courtesy of the International Medical Corps (IMC) and UNFPA’s joint reproductive health response in drought-affected areas of East and West Hararghe zones of Oromiya region.
TBAs are crucial in a country such as Ethiopia, which has the lowest number of trained midwives in sub-Saharan Africa. According to UNFPA, there is only one nurse or midwife for every 62,000 Ethiopians.
“Though medical birth attendance in health facilities is the best way to prevent and address delivery-related complications, in communities where most of the women deliver at home, traditional birth attendants have proven a critical stop-gap,” a UNFPA document stated.
A high maternal mortality rate, coupled with a high under-five mortality rate – 123 children per 1,000 live births – means Ethiopia is far from achieving the Millennium Development Goal to cut maternal mortality by more than half and children’s deaths by half.
Improvements
At least 80,000 beneficiaries of the UNFPA-IMC project live in East and West Hararghe zones, where some change has become evident.
Yusuf Ibrahim, head of the health department in Meta woreda, where Shekuria and Fate live, said maternal mortality had decreased. The situation was similar in West Hararghe zone, where 88 percent of mothers delivered their children with the help of health workers or trained TBAs.
“Our assessment showed TBAs assisted 2,652 mothers to have safe deliveries in East Hararghe,” Marefia Mamo, the project coordinator for IMC, said.
Agents of change
Yusuf said besides helping in safe delivery, TBAs were “agents of change”, who advocate within the community for better health practices.
“Our people do not have enough awareness on contraceptive use; they give birth year after year and the attendants have tried to teach them better practices,” Yusuf said.
Fate said some of the tasks she had taken on since graduation included informing mothers about hygiene, vaccination, regular health check-ups at health centres and the importance of a balanced diet.
Shekuria said she had taken the advice seriously, especially on family planning. As a result, she and her husband had decided not to have another baby until she completes high school.
Anticipation that Barack Obama may become the next president has sent a steady stream of visitors to the colonial-era Jakarta house he lived in as a child, from potential buyers and journalists to an entrepreneur who wants to turn it into the “Sweet Home Obama Bar.”
Tata Aboe Bakar, the 78-year-old owner, is in no mood to move out.
His family has lived in the airy, cream-colored house, located on a sprawling plot of land in one of the most prestigious neighborhoods in Indonesia’s capital, since it was built in 1939.
But with a potential price tag of $3 million — and even more if Aboe Bakar can believe one broker’s claims that a U.S. Embassy official is ready to pay five times the market price if Obama wins — he says he’ll seriously consider it.
Obama’s family moved to Indonesia in 1967 and spent two years in a humble home where chickens and ducks cackled in the backyard and two baby crocodiles slithered around in a fenced-off pond.
The United States embassy in Sofia gave Bulgarians the opportunity to “vote” in mock presidential elections in the city of Karlovo and in the village of Banya on November 2 2008. Bulgarian National Television reported on the initiative on its evening programme Po sveta i u nas (Around the World and at Home) the same day.
The preferences were clear: 61 per cent preferred Democratic candidate Barack Obama to 39 per cent for Republican pretendant John McCain.
The experimental elections were held in the open, with 800 ballots available and lots of patriotic promotional material like flags. Throughout the day, two groups of “party reps” canvassed the voting areas, campaigning.
“We just wanted to see what people thought,” Branimir Botev, head of the Obama “campaign”, who is otherwise director of the supervisory council of the Banya winery. McCain’s “campaign” was headed by chairman of the municipal council of Karlovo, Toshko Stoev.
Asked for why he chose one candidate over another, one man in his late 30s said to BNT that he voted for McCain because “Republicans are hardliners compared to the rest of the world”.
Another man, a gentleman in his 70s, said that he voted for Obama because he “looks like a nice guy, he has great promise, he said he will lower taxes, he’ll get the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and he just looks nice”.
NAIROBI, KENYA – Senator Barrack Obama’s relatives have congregated at Nyangoma Kogelo village and will remain together until after Tuesday’s US presidential elections.
They have set aside a bull to slaughter in celebration should the Illinois senator whose father was Kenyan win, according to family spokesperson Mr Malik Abongo. – Daily Nation
Worshippers in Kisumu, in the heartland of Obama’s Kenyan family, on Sunday prayed for the Democrat senator’s victory in the November 4 presidential poll.
Sarah Palin, the vice presidential candidate on the rival Republican ticket, famously received a blessing earlier this year in Alaska from a visiting Kenyan pastor who claims special powers against witchcraft.
But two days before the crucial vote, Obama received the less controversial backing of thousands of church-goers in Kisumu and the surrounding region, where his 86-year-old grandmother still lives.
At Kisumu’s Baptist Church, dozens of Christian faithful sang and prayed for Obama, who has become the East African nation’s favorite son and whose White House bid has triggered a wave of enthusiasm and seen support groups crop up all over Kenya.
Raising their hands in the air, grimacing worshipers weaved their prayers into a chorus over keyboard tunes belting through a home-made woofer.
“We put Barack Obama in your hands. It is you who chooses leaders, help him in the elections so that he can win,” prayed Reverend Samson Otieno, likening the contest between Obama and Republican candidate John McCain to the biblical duel between David and Goliath.
“We will give you thanks and praise when he wins,” Otieno said.
“I am praying the will of God be done so that people do not despise Africans,” said Olivia Achieng, sweat pearling on her forehead, after an energetic prayer for her favourite candidate.
Other special prayer sessions were scheduled across the western Kenyan region in the final run-up to Tuesday’s vote. – AFP
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – A last-minute visa hitch has forced a Melbourne Ethiopian refugee to wait one more day to be reunited with four of his children he hasn’t seen in a decade.
Jemal Ambo fled Ethiopia in 1998, leaving behind his six young children, then aged one, two, three, five, seven and nine.
Two years later his wife Rumana Kedir Osmar also fled, able only to take with her one of their sons, who was then four years old.
The mother and son joined Mr Ambo in a Kenyan refugee camp and in 2003 the three were granted a refugee visa to Australia.
Their five other children were left behind with relatives. However, the oldest son is now missing, his fate or whereabouts in the war-torn nation unknown.
This week, more than 10 years after he fled for his life, Mr Ambo was set to be re-united with his four other children at Melbourne Airport on Tuesday.
But a last-minute visa hitch in Ethiopia delayed the children’s departure by one day and they are now not due to arrive until Wednesday.
Mr Ambo has worked with Spectrum Migrant Resource Centre (SMRC) to bring his children, now aged 11, 13, 15 and 17, to Australia.
“There are no words to describe the desperation we felt at leaving our children to be cared for by relatives and there will be no words to describe the joy of having them finally with us,” Mr Ambo said in an SMRC statement.
“We didn’t know whether our children were alive, one child is still missing.
“But we hoped and prayed and now we are overjoyed at the thought that they will soon be with us.”
Two of the children are Mr Ambo’s with his previous wife, who died in jail while being detained.
Mr Ambo and his wife Rumana have had three daughters since arriving in Melbourne and have also succeeded in bringing Rumana’s 19-year-old daughter from another marriage to live with them as well.
SMRC case officer Lyda Dankha said it took two years to bring the couple’s other four children over, as it had taken much longer than expected to get them Ethiopian passports.
“It is a great story of family reunion, in spite of war and against all odds,” SMRC settlement and family services manager Sonia Vignjevic said.
She said the re-united family, which will then be nine children and two parents, will now need support for their next challenge, finding an affordable home big enough for them all in Melbourne’s inner-city Collingwood, where they now live.
MOGADISHU (Xinhua) — Islamist insurgents have peacefully taken over the coastal town of Marka in the south of Somalia and announced the formation of an Islamic administration, local residents and reports from the southern town said Sunday.
“There were no fighting in the town (of Marka) and we just saw Islamist forces in the town and their commanders speaking with people in the town,” Aden Omar, a local resident told Xinhua by phone.
Yusuf Siyad Indha Adde, the Defense Secretary for the main opposition group, the Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia (ARS), who led the Islamist forces that took over the town, spoke with local residents.
“We will form an Islamic administration for this town, which will represent all residents of this town, which will not be governed other than by the Islamic law,” Indha Adde told a crowd of people who gathered near the town hall.
The takeover came days after two senior local officials, the deputy regional governor, and vice chief of police, who were allegedly government appointed but insurgent sympathizers, were killed when their vehicle hit a landmine in Marka, the provincial capital of Lower Shabelle, 90 km south of Mogadishu.
Indha Adde said that the officials were not killed by opposition fighters and he thanked the two officials for “keeping their promise with the insurgents”, a reference that indicated link between the two sides.
Marka, a relatively peaceful town, has recently been the scene of numerous attacks on local and international humanitarian workers.
Anticipation that Barack Obama may become the next president has sent a steady stream of visitors to the colonial-era Jakarta house he lived in as a child, from potential buyers and journalists to an entrepreneur who wants to turn it into the “Sweet Home Obama Bar.”