Chapter Two: I come from conservative Christian stock.

I come from conservative Christian Stock, a missionary kid who grew up with her family in Ethiopia. My parents worked hard to spread the Word of God (and proper health and hygiene) to everyone they met. I know the Bible. In Ethiopia, this is a lucky thing, because it helps me understand why, at four-thirty in the morning, the church loudspeakers get turned on and the priest starts praying over it. It helps me understand these daily chants, and it helps me grasp the reason why people living near the loudspeakers don’t burn the church down so they can go back to sleep. People are scared. Ethiopians grow up with a strong fear of God and the knowledge that, if they don’t follow God’s commands, they will burn in hell forever. Their God is not a forgiving god. This is a very ancient, very proud, very religious culture.

            Ethiopia is also a culture where FGM, child marriage, fistula, and prostitution flourish. The UN estimates that up to 80% of Ethiopia’s female population has been circumcised. Thousands of women each year suffer from vaginal fistulas, and thousands more die in childbirth. In the post-missionary world of today, NGOs are sprouting up to offer assistance to women’s issues. The Department of Women’s Affairs has claimed that number two on its list of five-year goals is to get equal rights for the women of Ethiopia. Ethiopia is a “Donor’s darling,” so it seems something good might happen. But as I drive down the streets of Addis Ababa in the early evening hours and see the lines of young girls waiting for men to pick them up for a night of “fun,” I see Ethiopia’s reality as much less optimistic. Dr. Hamlin’s Fistula Hospital down the road is still overflowing with women who need surgery to fix the holes in their bladders, and I know that outside of the cities especially, girls are pulled out of school at young ages to get married so their families don’t have to deal with them anymore. Yes, we should support the causes for women’s rights. But we should do something ourselves in the meantime. Last year, I was introduced to a grass roots movement that tried to do just that. We raised over 60,000 birr, about 6,000 dollars, to give to three women’s charities in Addis that needed it. This year, I was going to do more to help. With this in mind, I went to my first meeting of The Vagina Monologues.