Ayehu, Almaz, Zewdie, Yenenesh and Wubete endure long, unfinished labor in a country with few hospitals and even fewer roads to get them. Although they survived the often fatal birth experience, they were left with a stillborn baby who, as Ayehu told us, felt “even death was better than that.”
Working with disabled people makes each of them incontinent. We found Ayehu, 25, living in a makeshift shack behind her mother’s house, where she hid for four years, shunned by siblings and neighbors. She began the hike reluctantly, but when she arrived at Addis Ababa’s fistula hospital, she realized for the first time that she wasn’t the only person in the world suffering from the problem. In the hospital we meet Almaz, a woman in her 20s who was kidnapped by her current husband at a country market and has suffered from a double fistula for three years.
Zewdie, 38, has five children who long for their mother’s happiness. Despite being abandoned by her husband, Zewdie has the support of a strong extended family around her. As for Wubete and Yenenesh, both were 17 years old, early marriage and short stature (the result of malnutrition and hard work) dictated a tragic end to their first pregnancy.
Healing has not been easy for the two girls. We are with them as they grapple with the disappointing news and later their youthful determination to triumph. We follow each woman to Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, where they find comfort for the first time in years, and are with them as their lives begin to change.
