The real anonimous heroes

 The Cuban doctors

Why does our press never mention the Cuban doctors helping in Haiti?

Not only are they not mentioned  but also deleted from the lists that state the countries that are helping in Haiti. This happened in “El Pais” in the issue published on 15th of January.

Is it because up to now nobody has been to Cite Soleil, where the Cuban doctors are working? Or is it because they don’t want to see them?

The Cuban doctors have already been in Haiti for 12 years. There are more than 400. They haven’t even got their own homes. They share houses with the locals. They live with and like them.

They go to places where  there has never been a doctor before. They give medical support in the poorest areas. Areas where nobody ever wanted to work before.

152 Cuban doctors were in Porto Prince at the time of the earthquake.
They improvised under extremely difficult circumstances and erected two hospitals in tents, in order to help the local people from the very first moment. The actual building where they worked before got destroyed. More doctors came from the rest of Haiti and from Cuba to offer first aid.
A thousand people were attended by them from the very first moment.
The Cuban doctors have been working in 6 different sanitary centres and on the night of the 14th, they had already attended 2000 people and carried out 111 operations.

Whilst donations, food and equipment keep being retained in the airports for so called security reasons, the security diminishes proportionally with the rise of hunger and desperation of the population.
The food should be distributed as quickly as possible amongst the population, unless it is considered that the people of Haiti can stay without food for a couple of days; unless the helpers are busy doing something else.

At the same time it seems that the Cuban doctors are not governed by the security dictated by the UN and the marines. They give the 1st world a lesson in first aid.

President René Preval:”The people of Haiti say that after God come the Cuban doctors”

Around a thousand of the local doctors were educated in Cuba. Doctors who can now help their fellowmen.

http://www.goodnesstv.org/en/videos/voir/45663: Medicos cubanos salvan vidas en Haití.


Raymundo Gómez Navia (AIN)

Puerto Prince, 16/01/10(AIN): Dr Carlos Alberto Garcia, coordinator of the Cuban Medical Cooperation in Haiti, informed today that the Cuban sanitary workers will work continuously in various medical centres in the capital. Together with the support of the fishermen and other sectors they will work night and day. Surgeons will work 18 hours a day and more, in order to assist the Haitian population in the best possible way.
An important group offers their help in Aquin, Oakay and other locations. The demand is much bigger then the help being offered at the moment.
 “University Delmas 33” hospital, one of the most important  of Puerto Prince, was able to re-open at 7 o’clock Wednesday morning. The hospital suffered major damage the night before and was without doctors and resources in order to be able to work.

Well known hospitals like Rennaissance and Ofatma are two more centres where Cuban specialists can be found.

The heroism of the Cuban staff as much as the tragedies that this capital suffers after the earthquake is impressive; like the little boy who was taken to the university hospital by the rescue brigades after having spent three days buried under the ruins of a building.

E and Z's story.

This is the third year that Mediterranea has been in Abugida.
The 4 and 5 year old children that we met three years ago have grown up, finished pre-school and are now studying in the local state school.
There are always some children who stand out more due to hardship and terrible living conditions. This is the case of E. She was only 4 years old when we took up the task of the Abugida school. She was the type of little girl that you were drawn to straight away because of her permanent wide smile and perfect plaits, never a hair out of place.
After one of our school parent meetings, we were left at the end with some mothers and grandmothers of the most needy children. To our great concern, we noticed one very young mother who was pathetically thin and whose face was etched with extreme sadness. She didn't say one word during the meeting but at the end approached us and asked us to accompany her to her home.
It turned out that Z suffered from HIV and was E's mother. Due to her illness they had both been ostracized to live in a corner of the family land. Mother and daughter lived in an unsafe, cardboard and tin, make-shift dwelling. They were not allowed to eat with the rest of the family.
E was being used by her relatives as a maid and in exchange they fed her.

While we were visiting another family, Z came into the house to see us and showed us a picture album of her life before HIV.She wanted to let us see how she used to live, to make us understand that once-upon-a-time she had been "normal".Z used to be a model. She had been married. She had baby E. She showed us the photos of when she had been a model; her wedding photos with her husband (what a spectacularly beautiful bride she had been);the lovely baby photos of E.Then tragedy struck. Her husband died of AIDS and she was diagnosed with HIV.Her whole family life just fell apart. She had to return with E to her home town of Akaki because she had nowhere else to go.
Her health was getting worse.
One day when we returned to Akaki, the official version was, quite simply, that Z had left home.E went to live with her aunt and grandmother. The child we had known had changed. She was unhappy. She wasn't smiling. E left the Abugida school at the end of the academic year. She, along with a group of children attends the state school but she comes to have breakfast and lunch in Abugida.

During our last trip, as chance would have it, we found Z. She was emaciated. The family had thrown her out of the house but she left E with them so that her child could continue attending school. Z had found a job working in a bar 20 kilometres away from Addis Ababa. They were paying her 10 birrs a month (0.55 euros). She would use the money to visit her daughter every month. At one point her situation became so bad that she almost ended up prostituting herself. She would cry and cry while her daughter did her best to console her mother during her visits.

Z's life has now changed. She is working in Abugida and is living with her daughter. She is happy and has put on weight.She has dreams and hopes for a better future. She aspires to become a teacher.

Z's experience is a drop in the ocean. At the moment her story has a happy ending but there are so many more mothers like her, victims of poverty, illness and fate.

Mothers who can't live with their children... children who can't live with their mothers. All of them are victims. Gulity of nothing but circumstance, of poverty. Like all of us, all they want is to survive, prosper, live without fear, hunger or suffering. They dream of a better life and of ways of improving their lot and of being independent.

Every day, one fifth of the inhabitants of this planet, 1.200 million people, are unable to fulfill their basic needs never mind have dreams or aspirations. So many of them, through circumstances, cannot even live under the same roof as their children.

The building project in the Abugida school is underway.

Construction work underway.
The walls of the two new classrooms and the dining-room have now been built.
The kitchen that Mediterranea built in 2008 is too small now, therefore, we will soon start extending this area. We will also start soon on the building of a nursery school for the one to two year old children.

We have already started to construct 8 new latrines in the public school Fitauri Abeyh Metekia situated in Akaki near Abugida.
Some of the labourers involved in the construction work are unemployed mothers and fathers of our pupils.

INNOCENCE VERSUS EVIL

Hello dear friends of Mediterranea,

As you already know our experiences in our struggle to maintain our project in the Birhan school have not always been sweet but often bitter.

From the very beginning, we have been subjected to lies from the retired teachers. We have been lied to by our former representative, Adugna Tesfaye Woldekirkos. We have been lied to by the Edir whose president was Tadesse Mengesha and the trend has been adopted by the present Edir.

We have also been subjected to many cases of theft, starting with Adugna Tesfaye Woldekirkos, the former buyer for the school and Tadesse Mengesha.
They have all been caught with their hand in the till, in an attempt to steal the future of the 187 children who, at last, had the opportunity to escape from a life of begging in the streets and who were presently being educated with the hope of moving forward.

During my last visit, their enemies took their vengence to a highter level. I was arrested by the secret police under a false accusation, made by Adugna Tesfaye Woldekirkos and Tadess Mengesha, claiming that our organisation is a covert operation involved in the trafficking of children.

This accusation was, of course, proved to be a lie, after many hours of questioning by the police, the support of the Edir of Akaki, the chief of all of the kebeles of Akaki, the employees and families of the pupils attending the Birhan school. The present Edir's failure to appear during my detention did not  go unnoticed.

Adugna Tesfaye Woldekirkos swore vengence and carried out his cowardly promise. His intention being to destroy all of our work and put an end to the Birhan school.

His report to the police was supported by Tadesse Mengesha and the former school buyer in an act of revenge for having being dismissed by Mediterranea for theft ( In the case of Tadesse Mengesha it was his own people who dismissed him).

There are ulterior motives attached to this act of revenge. The father of Tadesse Mengesha owns a fee-paying nursery school in the area.
From the very beginning his attitude was suspect. He was unhappy with the fact that Mediterranea was providing free lunches when in his father's school the children had to pay extra to eat on the premises. This sinister character even suspended, until we realised, then restored the school lunches, claiming that such poor people had no need to eat so much.
The whole situation exploded when he realised that we were serious, determined and were on our way with Barry to build a new, improved Birhan school. He couldn't permit that without a fight!

He falsely reported us to the police and on the last day of our visit they were waiting to detain me.


How did they know about all of our plans? Well... very simple.
The Edir had been feeding them information all along. He lied to us by saying that he no longer had dealings with them but, in actual fact, he was their puppet!

Once his guilt was confirmed, the Mediterranea committee decided to cut off all relations with the Teramaj Edir.

The proposed Birhan installations which were to be built on the land owned by the Teramaj Edir will be built elsewhere.

We are currently negotiating our building plans with another Edir in the same area. Meanwhile both staff and children have been left without a school.

After having sent a letter to both the staff and families affected, explaining the situation, we received the following communication.

"Greetings for dv-victoria valsdld and board members of meditranian NGO
Dv.victoria  we teachers of birihan school first wish you a happy new year Dr.victoria we heard about the decision of the board and we are very sorry for the incovenience Created by terainmaj mer edaja idir we knau that you and the board don not want to close the schiool dand stop the aid we  know that it is impossible to continue the work at the cument situation we are trying to find other altematves or another means to make sure the school is not closed we hope to find ancther location for the school soon and we want to thank you for the chance you go we us to find a sollstion for the problem. finally we also want to tell you that we are traing to put to justice the people who tried to put false accusation on you . Wish a happy new year"

Mediterranea hopes to find a solution to this problem which affects 187 children and the 21 employees.

Seasons greetings to you all.

Mediterranea would like to thank all of its members, volunteers, helpers, the companies, schools and all of those organisations who have collaborated with us during the whole of 2009.

Your support and efforts have made it possible for us to achieve the following:

1. Set up 2 schools with 400 pupils in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) providing them with 3 meals a day, uniforms, medical care and a summer school which means that they continue to eat 3 times daily.
2. Provide jobs for 40 people in Ethiopia. For every person in paid employment in Subsaharian Africa 10 other people benefit.
3. Create the women's centre in Addis Ababa. Many groups of women attend this centre giving them the  opportunity to later find work.
4. Organise reading and writing classes for 100 women and some men who use our schools in the evenings.
5. The construction of an open-air dining room, 2 new classrooms and a nursery for one to two year olds in one of the schools in Ethiopia.
6. Break the tabu against all of those children and adults ( parents and workers) suffering from HIV in our schools and within other areas that we control in Addis.
7. Develop a sponsorship program for children in the Abugida school in Addis which supports single mothers, widows or pupils under the guardianship of grandparents, other family members or foster-parents.
8.The delivery of 8 wheelchairs and a computer to a centre run by the Order of the MOthers of Calcutta in Addis (1.200 people).
9.Bring 2 children from Ethiopia to receive treatment in Son Dureta hospital. We take this opportunity to thank the management of this hospital and all of the staff concerned.
10.The construction of a sleeping area for mothers with several children to stay near the Dangme East hospital in Ghana when one of their offspring is undergoing treatment.
11.The delivery of a container with sufficient material to set up a complete physiotherapy service in the Dangme East hospital in Ghana. The delivery included computering supplies, medical apparatus, (ECG, nebulisers, >4000 pairs of glasses etc).
12.The installation of running water in the Drifting Angels orphanage in Ghana.
13.The delivery of sanitary materials, clothes and toys to the Drifting Angels orphanage in Ghana.
14.The sending of computer materials and glasses to a school in Kenia on behalf of another NGO.
15. The delivery of medical supplies to a hospital in Sierra Leone.
16.Collaborating with Ca'n Gaza. ( a refuge for homeless people in Mallorca)
17. Collaboration with Zaqueo. ( a soup kitchen for the homeless in Mallorca)
18.The weekly program organised to provide basic food supplies to 300 immigrants without resources.
19.The setting up of language classes for immigrants.
20.Blogs in English, Spanish, Catalan, Galician and German.

Oranges for the 4th World

What a great morning! Really got me in a Christmas mood. Thanks to the generosity of a very nice lady we could this morning pick lots and lots of fruit from her beautiful orchard. There were mainly clementinas and lemons, the oranges were not yet ripe enough.

It was done in no time with a group of seven volunteers. So it's fresh fruit for Christmas for a lot of people. Luckily we can come on a regular basis, like once every three weeks. So when you feel like helping, please let me know.

Natalie