From All Of Us At Classic Valet, Inc. We Wish Everyone A Happy, Healthy & Prosperous New Year For Valet Parking at Corporate and Private Events Please Call David or Kenny Wittenberg at 626-7177 THE SHOPS & SERVICES OF LINCOLN CENTER WISH TO EXTEND A HAPPY & JOYOUS NEW YEAR TO ALL OUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS! A & P Save-A-Center Baskin & Robbins Beds ETC Bread Basket Checker Bar-B-Q Coats Unlimited Dil!man Chiropractic Life Dots Dollar Castle K-Mart King Lim's Garden Lincoln Barber Shop Magic Touch Beauty Shop Marianne Plus Metro Optical of Oak Park Metropolitan Dry Cleaners Nora's Fashions Perry Drug Store LINCOLN CENTER Radio Shack Richard's Boys & Girls Wear Secretary of State Sherman's Foot Care Strictly Kosher Meats The Book Beat Towne Theatre Winkelman's 1IN MILE & GREENFIELD Problems Cause Pains Of Body SHARON KANON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS M y head hurts; may- be it's because of my tooth. My sto- mach also hurts, and so does my heart," be- moaned the young Ethiopian woman. The nurse at Hadassah's Center for Com- munity Health at the Jerusalem neighborhood of Kiryat Yovel was confounded. So many diverse complaints at the same time. She asked the patient to describe her problems in more detail. "I'm alone here. My husband died," said the woman. "My father and sisters are in Ethiopia and I long for them." "When we first started treating Ethiopians, and they complained about pains in the heart and stomach, we took them literally," said Pnina Naveh, the clinic's head nurse. "Then we began to realize that they internal- ized all their problems and felt them as actual pains in the body. Now we have a bet- ter understanding. Avraham Yitzhak, now a medical stu- dent at Ben-Gurion Univer- sity, helped bridge the cultural gap between the medical staff and the Ethio- pian immigrants."I was translating from Amharic to Hebrew and back, but I was also trying to translate cultural codes," recalled Mr. Yitzhak, who completed three years at the Addis Ababa Medical School before joining his parents in Israel. "If a woman said that her ab- domen hurt, the doctor might suggest Maalox. In fact, the woman could really be saying that she has an infertility problem. "When an Ethiopian says: `I have a pain in my heart,' he doesn't usually need a car- diologist. What he is saying is that he is very sad and his heart is heavy. One patient said desperately, 'My pain is blood,' " related Mr. Yitzhak. The belief that bad blood should be removed to cure a sickness is part of the psychological, cultural tradi- tion," he said. In fact, Ethiopian culture views physical pain as spiritual intervention; as "punishment from God." Ac- cording to Ms. Naveh, when physical pain is especially acute, it is believed that Satan or a spirit has entered the body. To relieve pain, the Beta Isarel frequently asked the doctor to be bloodlet. "Ethiopians lack knowledge of anatomy, physiology and disease," said Dr. Benjamin Wondemeneh, an Ethiopian now living in Israel, who was sent by former Ethiopian President Haile Selasie to Moscow to study medicine, and went on to Sweden to study psychiatry. "Somatization — in which emotional problems are expressed by the body — is a result of the Ethiopian cultural code," he explained. "They believe in tolerating extreme suffering without losing patience or showing emotion, and without telling anybody. Their problems are not communicated, they are accumulated in the stomach." Health issues have to be handled very delicately. "When 14,000 Ethiopian Jews arrived in Israel in Operation Solomon in 1991," continued Ms. Naveh, "We had no concept of their culture. We discovered very quickly that translating their language was not enough." In Ethiopian culture, for exam- ple, it is a breach of ethics to ask direct questions. "It's simply not proper," said Ms. Naveh. Riling an Ethiopian woman she has a serious ill- ness is also unacceptable. "One man was very angry when we told his wife that she needed an operation. The husband muse be told first." Health workers found that separate group meetings for men and women on treating tuberculosis, nutrition, etc., were more successful than joint meetings. Women don't ask questions or participate in meetings with men present. These days, according to veteran Ethiopian communi- ty worker Benny Nadav, "The younger people are getting used to the health system in Israel and taking medication. But the older Ethiopians still feel more comfortable with traditional healing methods." Injections are often re- quested by patients. "When the Italians colonized