One on One with Half The Sky's Edna Adan

Leadership

ONE ON ONE: HALF THE SKY
A star of the new PBS documentary shares her extraordinary story.

So one of the treats for me is a medical journalist. I get to travel the world meeting very, very, very cool people. And to sit on the stage with evidence is really quite a treat because she doesn't know it. But I was at her hospital in the late she was. It was built in 2002 was it not? I was there in 2007 and knew of her. Read about her. I saw you in the PBS documentary. So it's a thrill for me to sit here and interview you today. Um let me start from the basics. Your childhood. I know Somalia well from in Somaliland. As a young woman, you were not afforded the same education as the boys. But you sneaked around and you pick the bits and pieces. How did you do that? In a primarily male dominated culture, when girls weren't allowed to go to school? Well, I'm from Somaliland. I'm not from Somalia, Right. Somaliland distinct countries. One was former British Somaliland and Somalia was Somali Italiana, right as there was love could fall, says the Somali, which is larger booty now in British Somaliland protectorate. When I was a child. There were no schools ago, period. Education was good to go. What good would come of it out of a girl who taught to read and write? Keeper told. Don't know that was the mentality that's in the school. But I had neighbors. I had boys who against school, and my father, who was a doctor and the first doctor and father gets We'll always have books, and we have space in my house. And he a signed a veranda in our house where there was a blackboard, and in the afternoon a teacher would come togather the boys from the neighborhood and go over the lessons and teach them how to read and write. So when he told them how to write the letter a island to write a letter A and the B and C and D and I just taught myself to read. So my parents discovered that I could identify letters off the alphabet from my dad's books, and this is where she can she teach yourself to read? What do we do? The nearest school full girl was in Djibouti, Lockwood Khan says. The family and French became my first foreign language. That's where with school. And then, in 1953 the very first school for girls with open. And I became a pupil teacher there. And what drew you to mid referee metal free. If you ask my mother, she would say, Oh, I have a crazy husband. Then he gave me a crazy daughter. I can't wear those combinations. I just grew around. My father and I was used to being called the middle of the night. And although I was a child and then and usually on holidays from school, I was hanging around the hospital and he was Could you go in Washington forceps for me and make sure you're clean. Would you go and get their child to swallow this medicine when you go? And he would get me to do little errands. And at the age of 11 you were ordering hospital staff around? Yes. Whenever he would go away, he would make a little list for Mei, and I'll be gone for two days and make sure that tomorrow the future come out, make sure that they released the catheter. Make sure that they do so. I don't know how to release it. I didn't know how to shoot. But I was the boss's daughter. So I would say, Did you really catheter? Did you? That's how I got into it. And then I would always always hear him wishing for things and say why we should have been a part of this. Oh, I wish I had. And I just made a mental promise, made a note to myself that one day I would build the kind of hospital and have the kind of instruments and equipment my father would have liked to use and worked in the 9 11 to me. In the meantime, you became the first lady of your home country. You became well known as U. N at the World Health Organization and developed a very global image in public health. That's the legacy I have. I'm from Tomorrowland. There's nobody else to do it And I have so many privileges that very few other women that ad I went to school, I could read. I was, I want a scholarship. British taxpayers money paid for my education. I was into England at the age of 17 and I know that thousands of us around now, but I was the only Somali female in all of London at that time. Uh, we were such a rarity that as a student my part time job was working for the BBC. And whenever they needed a female voice, I would be that female voice. So that's why instead of doing baby sitting all whatever, that's my income. That is my part time job. When you were a little girl and you dreamed of a hospital and then your life took you in this sort of global mission and then back in Somaliland, how did you get permission to build on what was a garbage dump? And how did you get government in private finance toe work together in a country that's not well known for that well granted permission to a nurse who wants to build a house like pulling teeth anywhere. Anyway, I would say the same thing in this country too. So why you wanna be the hospital? Why would I want to do that? This is going to look bad for the government that the woman has to build a hospital. Uh, this is so thin is the kind of thing that governments do. So you have to fight that hurdle and jumped older. Eventually I was granted. This is the second hospital, by the way, is my only madness. It was a previous madness. And in my official and you sold off everything. You put your own money, I Yes, I put my own money. I Well, the first hospital was in mock additional, and before it was finished, the warlords took it right. Somebody has a gun which is far more powerful than paper. Indeed. Licenses a life. Well, that's it. I tried. I know you have hospital doing that. I have to tell you it is sad. What has happened to the hospital? I've been in that hospital and, um, more war takes a terrible toll, especially on women and Children. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah. They're they're the easiest pocket. Yeah, and any bully picks up along the weekend, so I You go over this anger is not right. I failed. I didn't do it. That's it. From now on, whenever I make is mine. Anybody else can do their own shoes. And then, in 1991 my country, I will show you some slides. My country's recovered from a long civil war with Somalia. and Samal Island was totally destroyed and leveled to the ground. And I missed it. My hometown in 1991. And I couldn't even find out how we recognize our homes when they're standing the shape on the design and the architecture gives our house and identity. But when it's rubble when the whole neighborhood is flattened, you don't know where your house begins in your neighbor's house. And And I thought, No, no, I cannot stay angry. This is this I must do. And I was about to retire and the president off my country. Somaliland with my first husband. So I you know, I went to him, We were playing. I said, Well, I I'm retiring, and I would I need to build a hospital. What? Again? You're not young anymore. I'm here. You're about to retire your bill a little. Well, do you like being the president of a country that has no clothes? So that was what turned the tide. And, uh, well, what do you want me to? What do you want me to do? Them? I said, Well, I certainly I want you to give it a license. And don't let me jump all the hurdles that yet. But I made me jump when I made. And that's how I got the land. And he said, Well, how big hospital. So I said, Well, this is the design, and but that big I don't have land to take that. Except if I give you land on the outskirts of power. No outskirts of town. This is not the preparatory. Um, this is a lot of dishes in maternity hospital. It has to be Have It has to be close to where the women are. Two o'clock in the morning. A woman in labor will not go to the outskirts of town. And, well, I cannot give you the stadium. But what about that place and that place? He didn't have to give it a name. That place with the place and had one hell of a cemetery. It had been leveled, Um, my gut, but hey! And turned into a military parade ground. Uh, it was with military sites where millet army days parade that my machinery can kill more people in your machine. You know, the boy model? Yeah, that's right. And and then it became an execution ground. And then after the war became a garbage dump. So any old trash you had, that's where you would throw. And I I want to give you a hospital. Ah, hospital should be clean. A place that is nice. Saand. Well sick come to be treated and you want to give me a goblet? You men will never understand. Sensible. Wait a minute. I think about it. You know I'm not even thinking about it. So I left the house, took my u N. Flight back to Djibouti. You thinking about and the more I thought about, the more I knew that that place had to be the place where I built my Because that's the place and had no injustice, pain suffering. And was like a big ulcer in out of the city in an area where they had never had a husband before. And that's where the healing started. That's where the heating started. And I came back the next week and not quite showing my tail between my legs. I will supposing I accept that place now. What am I gonna do with a mountain of garbage? Oh, blue does it for you. And that's exactly what the government so Christy talked about the the maternal mortality rate of one in 12. You not only have reduced mortality rates, you focused a lot of your attention on fistulas, and I know that for most of the women in this room, there are cents for which your brain has no recognition. E. I can't describe to you the smell off a woman where urine and feces are dripping out of her vagina, which I know sounds quite grotesque, but it is the norm, but it is a very sweet, pungent, rare smell. The Western brain just has no recognition of until you smell it and it jolts you. So these women end up becoming the social pariahs of many countries. It is, and a midwife. That's what I see and your lies sitting here. We're clean. We were in control of our bodies seclusion. But these women have no control over. It is because of general mutilation and female circumcision. Well, I I would like to blame as many things on female genital mutilations. I can, but this time I cannot. It's one of the many causes. It's a hole that that happens between the urethra and the bladder, you know, vagina on the bladder, off the woman and with a head. Usually when the head cannot come out can be delivered and becomes impacted. It presses on that very thin tube you eat and which becomes necrotic and has a hole, and you're a leak from there. Any closer happened between the vagina and the rectum, so you can have both director vaginal fistula and a testicle vaginal official at the same time, or one or the other. And usually this is because women can't get to the hospital in time. They are not delivered by people who know how to deliver who are trained midwife. They're delivered by the grandmother, the neighbor, their friend's sister and one woman. I'm 75. I think I've seen many things in life. One of the most shocking things that I have seen with a woman who had a Transbourse Life baby was lying sideways, not by the head of the breach and prolapse alarm, and the only person I know it after breakfast. No, but wait, do take for granted in this country that you feel a few Braxton Hicks contractions and off to the hospital you go. The reality is that not. They had a lot of video nursing. That woman with a bullet with a bullet showed the presentation was had nine. Yet old daughter and all the nine year old daughter could do was just And I am, You know, the arm comes off on where the woman was. What? She was still alive. We saved her baby was very, very dead. And can you imagine the trauma of the little girl, right? Who her mother think Paul Paul, Right. Get it out. Not knowing that it will not come out. And then the the damage done later for future pregnancy. Off course, of course, the emotional, the physical, the cycle, everything is. And it's all because they do not have trade midwives. And that's why I have set myself this gold that we must train Moment was not only in Somaliland, but everywhere. One of the things we talked about a lot of breakout sessions Here is how to get people the talents into various organizations. How do you attract the talent you need? I go, I speak. I talk. I pray Come hear me. Many don't, um and I'm here because I have Well, certainly on the screen. You have the friends of the hospital, the group of of American women and Somali, the men and women who have formed a charity registered in the U. S. And they gather the race funds for us. I build a hospital with my own funds. But when my funds ran out, they with support. Um, I had they make your taxpayer money building out patient for me. I have a generator today when the power goes out that door right by then, lock The British gave me a lot of equipment and then the operating theatre. I am black. I am when I have my U N pension. When I die, that's what Stop. If you die, I you might be one of those people who gets an option for the world. What is the one mistake that Western, well meaning nonprofit organizations make when they come into somebody else's country? I think, um, criticism pats list criticism rather than helping the Third World or that country to solve the problem giving advice. Very often they criticized, which brings out the shop in between between those needing help and those who have the potential potential toe help. So I contact is a good way that brings people together. Not why you're doing this. This is savage. This is barbaric. This is It doesn't make friends. Are you surprised when people talk about you in terms of getting a Nobel Prize? Oh, well, I wish you would give me instruments, Give me equipment. And I think that's analogous. Yesterday. Size doesn't always matter comment. I think, if you want my my opinion, my my hero, Dr Katherine Hamlin, someone who really in an Australian, that'll be anyway. And why? And who has been a life 16 vestal and available. It deserves the Nobel. She does. Um, But when are closing moments? You have a few pictures you wanted, so I would love to show you. Please do that. I think they'll be on everyone extreme. I know where this queen is. Oh, yeah, it's her technologically advanced. It's just to tell us about lenders and perspective. No, that picture I'm sorry, is horrible, but that was my country after the Civil war. The human human remains there, and many of them are Children. What the military advantages off killing two and five year old and 10 year old kids and problem in the mass grave. I will never know. Somebody felt heroic doing that. That's the hospital. After that. Before the war. That's like previous reincarnation President Johnson and then Dean Rack and Lady Bird in the White House lawn being entertained on a government on an official state visit to the deal. Country 1958 landed there with the presidential helicopter. The 21 gun salute, and it's pretty heady stuff. This is a banquet, of course, in the White House. Um, Vice President Hubert Humphrey Humphrey. And in my husband next toe Ladybird. May I say you're really beautiful. Thank you. Uh, this is in Germany, Johnson Johnson. And this is the beginning of my hospital. I don't have pictures of the garbage dump, but that's what we're laying the foundation and Bill and Bill and built. I love this place. Uh, the open letter. You know the gap here. That's my apartment. That's what I live. I cannot live anywhere else. If I live away. I think my pension with me. So I live on the hospital premises. I live there. And if you were to visit me, you would be living with me. Then that's where Nicholas and Save the Girl and dialogue lane. And that's the hospital. That's my baby. I love it some something. I own it. I know. It's only me. I plan. That's the first baby born in the hospital, but eight hours. Um, now, these are my Children. These are the girls. These are there. That's the future of my country. That's the future of off hospitals. As the first group of students being drained and some graduating. And these the girls and read, These are the midwife. These are the ones that would like to clone. And we need over 1000 of them. And I have some documents here that I can share with you with everybody, Um, the blue dark blue or the more senior one. We just graduated our very 1st 21 midwives who got the bachelor of science degree in bigotry. It took me a lifetime, but we just got it. Congratulations this month, and we don't discriminate against boy retrain lab technicians in pharmacist. Well, I like men in the subservient position. Well, and this is bizarre O r. And, uh, this is we do a lot of surgery. Um and oh, this is anybody from the Cold cola. That's the second biggest Coca Cola plug in Africa. And it's in Somaliland. And students are having a field trip there. Specks of coke. There you go. And they are on the grounds of the Coca Cola factory. I think I don't know clicking, but I did. Time's up. Time's up. Thank you, Thank you. Thank you, everyone.