Celebrating Timkat in Ethiopia

Timkat celebrations in Ethiopia are marked by priests dressed in white carrying colorful umbrellas.

January is an important month for Ethiopians.

For starters, the country celebrates Genna, or the Ethiopian Christmas, in early January. According to the ancient Julian calendar, which is used in Ethiopia, Christmas falls on January 7 on the popular Gregorian calendar most of us are familiar with.

The word Gennana, which means “imminent” in Amharic, is a reference to the coming of the Lord Jesus and the freeing of mankind from sin.

Another important holiday is Timkat, which falls on January 20 this year due to the leap year. Timkat is an Othodox Christian celebration of the Ethiopian Epiphany. It marks the baptism of Jesus Christ in the Jordan River.

 Pilgrims come from far and wide to take part in the three-day festival and witness the reenactment of the baptism. All over the country, including in southwestern Ethiopia where WEEMA largely works, large crowds assemble as the religious festivities commence, with spectacular processions, song, dance and prayer.

In the capital, Addis Ababa, the festival is particularly spectacular. The streets are adorned with green, red and yellow to represent the Ethiopian flag and priests walk through the streets holding colorful, richly decorated umbrellas. 

We wish a happy Genna and wonderful Timkat celebration to our friends who are honoring these special days.

End of year gains on cataracts, digital health and hospital sanitation

This 18-year-old boy was one of hundreds whose eyesight was restored by cataract surgery in 2019.

Sure, it’s 2020, but we have a few more end-of-the-year successes we’d like to share, all of them related to improved healthcare delivery in Ethiopia. Among them: 

·      Imagine running a hospital without a laundry machine. Day after day, large piles of soiled linens, surgical towels and hospital gowns need to be washed by hand. Last fall WEEMA installed a new washing machine at the Mudula Primary Hospital, the only hospital in Tembaro. It’s been enormously appreciated, saving staff time and ensuring clean and safe linens for patients and hospital workers.  

·      Based on feedback from a dozen government officials, hospital representatives and other groups at a year-end evaluation meeting, our 2019 Cataract Campaign in Hosanna was a smashing success and plans for a 2020 campaign in February, again in Hosanna, are already well underway. The cataract campaigns are organized every year with the Himalayan Cataract Project. Last year’s five-day campaign restored eyesight for more than 900 Ethiopians. Cataracts are the leading cause of preventable blindness in the country, affecting an estimated 2.4 percent of rural populations.

·      We successfully trained more than 100 local health extension workers (HEWs), midwives and primary health unit directors in Kembata-Tembaro on a digital healthcare tool that has shown enormous promise in improving healthcare delivery services for children and mothers in rural areas. Training sessions were held in Mudula, Hadero and Durame.

 We’ll surely have many more successes to report in 2020!

Why Giac Nguyen is Running for WEEMA in the Falmouth Road Race

18-year-old patient and his mother soon after surgery

Giac Nguyen cannot shake the image of seeing hundreds of blind Ethiopians get their eyesight restored.

One of the patients he saw in February was a tall 18-year-old boy who had developed cataracts from his diabetes.

“He’d just gone blind 3 or 4 months before (I met him.) It was sad to see him walking in with help from his mom, who he towered over,” Giac recalled. 

Twelve hours later, moments after removing the bandages following cataract surgery, the boy’s life was transformed. He could see again, and he no longer needed his mom’s help. “The next morning, he walked his mom out,” Giac said. 

Nguyen saw 954 such transformations during a five-day stint helping the Cataract Campaign, organized every year in Ethiopia by WEEMA and the Himalayan Cataract Project. Cataracts are the leading cause of preventable blindness in Ethiopia, affecting an estimated 2.4 percent of rural populations.

This year’s effort was held in Hosanna, an area six hours southwest of the capital, Addis Ababa. Ethiopians of all ages were helped, most of them older.

“It’s beautiful to see the immediate change in people when they remove the bandages,” said Giac, who assisted the doctors by trimming patients’ eyelashes before surgery and removing bandages. “People were singing, praying and bowing to God in joy and celebration.”

Giac, a 54-year-old refugee from Vietnam, is a big supporter of WEEMA’s work. He raised money running for WEEMA at last summer’s Falmouth Road Race. In fact, he attracted more donations than any of WEEMA’s non-staff runners, qualifying him for a free roundtrip to Ethiopia (compliments of Ethiopian Airlines).

His five-week trip – a week with the Cataract Campaign, three weeks working with WEEMA’s Ethiopia staff and a side visit to ancient Christian churches in Lalibela – was eye-opening both personally and professionally.

It rekindled powerful memories of Vietnam, his childhood home until he was age 10, when his family made their escape – on a boat - after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Visiting Ethiopia reminded him of his first return to Vietnam in the mid 1990s.

“I was delightedly surprised by the similarities between Ethiopia and Vietnam,” said Giac, a Health Unit Coordinator who now lives in Oregon. “How Ethiopia is emerging as a developing country just as Vietnam was 25 years ago. The way they treat each other, the nuclear family, reminded me of my people.”

He was also impressed by the work WEEMA’s Ethiopia staff is doing in rural communities – so impressed that he’s flying back to Massachusetts this week so he can run for WEEMA in this year’s Falmouth Road Race on Sunday.

“Being able to see it firsthand and meeting the WEEMA team really brought it home that I want to continue to help,” he said.

To support Giac and/or any of  the other WEEMA runners, click here

18-year-old patient delighted with the results of his surgery