“Ayehu, Almaz, Zewdie, Wubete Yenenesh and suffered through prolonged labor, unrelieved obstructed in a country with few hospitals and even fewer roads to reach them. Although he survived the experience of childbirth often fatal, they were left with a dead baby and feeling, as Ayehu tells us that “even death would be better than this.” Obstructed labor has left each with incontinence. We found Ayehu, 25, who lives in a makeshift hut behind her mother’s house, where she has hidden for four years, rejected by his brothers and neighbors. She timidly begins his journey on foot, but once it reaches the Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa, for the first time realizes that she is not the only person in the world suffer from this problem. At the hospital we met Almaz, a woman also in her 20s who was kidnapped by her now-husband in a village market and has suffered from double fistula for three years.
Zewdie, 38, has five children her mother’s desire to be well. Although abandoned by her husband, Zewdie supported by strong extended family around her. As Wubete and Yenenesh, both marriage and 17, and the beginning of his small physical stature (the result of malnutrition and heavy labor) determined the tragic outcome of her first pregnancy.
For these two girls, the cure is not simple. We are with them in their struggle with disappointing news, and later as the determination of his youthful triumphs. We each of these women on their way to the Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa, where they find solace for the first time in years, and stayed with them in their lives begin to change. (Excerpt from walktobeautiful.com)”
