This column is established to recognize and honor those rare selfless heroes who served Ethiopia and Ethiopians over an extended period of time without regard to their own welfare. Every month one such great person is honored in our Website. In truth, such selfless individuals cannot be confined by our conventions of citizenship or nationality to anyone country, for they belong to all of us, to all of humankind unbounded by time or geography.

Our first honoree is a woman who is not an Ethiopian by nationality; however, Dr. Catherine Hamlin is more of an Ethiopian than any of us in her selfless humility, kindness, love, absolute devotion, and service beyond and above the call of her professional duty to Ethiopia and Ethiopians for over forty years. To date, over twenty thousand Ethiopian young women who once were suffering, living lives filled with fear and humiliation with bowed heads of shame, were healed in body and spirit by Dr. Catherine Hamlin and her late husband Dr. Reginald Hamlin (deceased in 1993), and their assistants of patriotic Ethiopian doctors and nurses. Dr. Catherine Hamlin is lovingly called �Saint Catherine� by the thousands of Ethiopians she served and healed with boundless kindness.

Almost forty five years ago in 1959, Dr. Catherine Hamlin and her late husband Dr. Reginald Hamlin, came to Ethiopia from Sydney, Australia answering an advertisement put up by the Ethiopian Government for doctors for a three-year contract to start a much needed comprehensive and specialized medical services for women in Addis Ababa. The dynamite duo were fully engaged in setting up a treatment ward for women and focused on fistula conditions. During their period of three-year contract, they developed treatment procedures for Fistula conditions and treated several hundred victims bringing great joy to young women with lost causes.

The Hamlins decided to stay on at the end of their contract because they were moved by the suffering of so many young Ethiopian girls and women. They were aware of the fact of the great need for their services. Moreover, by that time they were already in love with the people of Ethiopia and genuinely impressed with the history of the country and the breath taking beauty of the many young women and girls they healed. They decided to stay putting on hold their lives. By 1974 they succeeded in building a hospital fully equipped and devoted to treat the thousands of young Ethiopian women from rural Ethiopia suffering such personal tragedy. Patients received free treatment and free medication until they are properly healed. In addition they were given training and time to heal not only from the physical damage to their bodies but also to their spirit that was damaged through years of being ostracized and shunned by families and the community.

Those Ethiopians who have no idea what a �fistula� condition is, please, read carefully the statement quoted below, and reflect on its significance for a moment. [I may add also that you should show some contortion for your lax of concern to the welfare of your �Ethiopian sisters� and not knowing about such condition.] According to a statement contained in Dr. Hamlin�s Fistula Trust organization�s Website, fistulae is a devastating medical condition. �As a result of prolonged and obstructed labour, the woman�s bladder or vagina is torn so that a hole or fistula is caused in the bladder, and sometimes in the rectum. Usually the baby is stillborn. When fistulae occur, the woman is unable to control the flow of urine or excreta. Because of the objectionable smell associated with the condition, these women are mostly rejected by husband and family. They become social outcasts and have a deep sense of rejection and �shame�.� [From www.fistulatrust.org]

In Ethiopia, Fistula is mostly a medical condition that is purely a result of the horrible practice of forcing girls barely out of their puberty to marry at an age when their pelvises and reproductive organs are not fully developed to handle pregnancies and the birthing of children. Other than the fact of such arranged marriage is no different than socially sanctioned �rape� of an underage often malnourished girl by fully grown adult �husband,� the resulting complication involved when pregnancy occurs is devastating. Such young female would likely die after prolonged hard labor at times lasting three to four days, or deliver a stillborn and suffer permanent damage to her reproductive system and to her pelvis, or suffer the degrading Fistula condition. The problem is compounded in some parts of Ethiopia because of the practice of female circumcision. The scar left behind after circumcision becomes an additional hindrance during the delivery of babies because of the lose of elasticity of the muscle around the opening to the birthing canal.  Imagine the pain such a fragile little body has to endure by comparing the pain involved with the pain one experiences trying to expel a particularly dry stool a process that may last less than a minute. And all this pain could have been easily solved by a concerted effort of the government and citizens by changing that horrible customary practice.  

Successive Ethiopian governments, the Ethiopian community at large, Christian and Moslem religious leaders, and custom bound parents have failed in discharging a fraction of their duties to ban arranged marriages of young girls barely out of their puberty. We all have a duty to discourage harmful customary practices especially when such custom results in gut wrenching painful consequences to defenseless young girls. Our leaders were more interested in frivolous activities obsessed in building high-rises and international conference halls in the middle of a devastatingly underdeveloped and the poorest of the poorest nations on Earth, a nation with great needs and great tragedies of human suffering of the worst kind, than solving real social and economic problems of the nation such as the health of Ethiopian girls and women. Neither the political leaders nor the religious leaders of Ethiopia have taken constructive steps to teach society the danger of early marriages of little girls. It is a shame that there is no general outcry by Ethiopians against such evil and degenerate custom of forcing into marriage girls barely coming into their puberty. Ethiopians who are first to boast about their Ethiopianess have done very little to bring about lasting changes to very many real social ills.