Ethiopia - Interview with street children in Awassa reveals struggle of living in poverty
Marty Nathan, M.D., of Northampton was a 2011 Fulbright specialist grantee at the Hawassa University Referral Hospital School of Medicine in Hawassa, Ethiopia. This is the first of a two-part series on street people in Hawassa, Ethiopia. The second article examines the plight of street women and explores local efforts to help the town confront the needs of beggars and homeless people. Photo from http://www.lonehomeranger.com/2012/10/on-street-children-and-how-we-can-help.html Early one morning I was riding my bike to work at the Referral Hospital in Hawassa, Ethiopia. My husband, Elliot Fratkin, and I had lived in the city for six months, sent on federal Fulbright grants to teach students at the University of Hawassa. He taught undergraduates at the main campus and I lectured and oversaw medical students and interns in the internal medicine department at the hospital. As I pedaled down a broad boulevard in this, the fastest-growing city in Ethiopia and a tourist center due