My trip to work with our partners this past November took me to both Tanzania and Ethiopia. This entry is about a night I spent in the Afar Region of Ethiopia in a town called Loggia. Loggia sits on the main road that runs from the port in Djibouti to Addis Ababa. Although it is only two lanes wide and often has a 6-7” drop-off on either side into soft sand (not the soft shoulder one wants to drive into at 75 miles an hour) the road feels anomalous in many senses. It is a paved road through land that can sometimes look like the moon. It is one of the best roads in the country - a very important trucking road. Giant blocky trucks, many with Chinese on them as that country has many development projects here, cruise with incredible speed down this two-lane highway. They race up to one another’s bumpers and pass each other just when I would think one might want to exercise caution….you know, like when a head-on is about to happen or a blind curve. And so you can imagine the accidents are frequent and fairly dramatic. (In all truth, I did nearly meet my end twice on this road so I do indeed have a good feeling about what a very very near head on with a Chinese dump truck feels like.) As the road rushes by, the bones of many past accidents, poking now out of the sand and dirt that covers them, look like prehistoric sites ready for excavation. All this big machinery flies past the slow and anachronistic lives of the Pastoralist Oromo people and the Afar people with their lovely and simple houses of sticks, blankets and such. Pastoralists watch trucks rumble by as they graze their goats, herd their camels or try to wave a truck down for a ride.
I drove to Loggia, a good thirteen hours from Addis, Ismael and Valerie to work on our partnership with the Afar Pastoralist Development Association. (Valerie and Ismael, husband and wife, are two of thirty-two founding members of the organization Afar Pastoralist Development Association that work on improving myriad components of Afar people’s lives. We are proud to be working with ADPA on ways to improve maternal health in the Afar region where women are at great risk for childbirth injuries like fistula. In a future posting, I will write further about them in particular.)
My goal today is to relay the story of Fatuma Abuacker, an Afar fistula survivor. Fatuma is a beautiful woman around thirty years old who lives with Valerie and her husband Ismael.
I admire Valerie and Ismael greatly. They work effectively and tirelessly not only for the Afar people as a whole but they also help individuals with equal vigor. When I stayed with them a short while this past November, I met numerous people who live amongst them in their family compound. Valerie and Ismael have taken these folks in, in many cases, as they needed very particular help and would not have received it from many other sources.
The story included here in pink writing is an interview I did with Fatuma just before we all went to bed one evening. She was brave to tell me her story so frankly.
I am proud to have worked with a young man named Mohammed Saleh Mohammed who was my translator for this interview and who ultimately transcribed Fatuma’s words into the writing you see here. Mohammed is a young man with a leg injury who is also being helped by Valerie and Ismael. He aspires to be a journalist so he can tell the story of the Afar people to the world. I send my deep appreciation to Fatuma, Mohammed and of course Valerie, Ismael and all of ADPA’s amazing staff who bring a perfect mix of compassion and pragmatism to their important grassroots work for the Afar people.
In case you cannot read all of the pink handwriting, I have slightly edited Mohammed’s translation of Fatuma’s story here but I do believe his actual handwriting and choice of words are quite beautiful in their unedited form.
Fatuma Abubacker, fistula survivor’s story, as translated and written by Mohammed Saleh Mohammed on November 26, 2009
“My name is Fatuma Abubacker. I am 30 years old. I got fistula from my first baby and I had no more babies. I had pain or suffering for ten years because of the traditional circumcising they did for me. Also sewing the vulva was very small to give birth normally and safely. Also because of under age marriage and my womb was very small. The baby died. I suffered with this disease in my body for ten years without having any treatment and there was nobody to stand beside me to get to hospital or what I deserve.
When I was very close to give birth the woman who is the traditional midwife or birth attendant was there and she was not ready to use traditional tools as we have in our tradition. To use the fire for the knife.”
[Heidi’s inserted note for clarity in case it is useful: For women who have been ‘infibulated’ or sewn shut, the traditional birth attendant heats a knife blade and at the time of birth the laboring mother has her scar re-opened so that the baby may be born. Without this cut being made, the baby will be unable to pass through and out of the vagina.]
“It was getting dark, no light. It is far to the village and because of that people were getting upset. They were running here and there. Despite the circumstances I became two. But my life was in between and my relatives had no hope. The consequences were very bad. I was not any more productive for the society and dependent.
After that Maalika [Valerie’s Afar name] came suddenly and took me to Addis Ababa to go to the fistula hospital. They gave me a surgery and they told me my kidneys were damaged. That is why they gave me a mechanism outside of the body. I urinate in a plastic bag.” [urostomy bag]
“I was very lucky to be saved by Maalika and Ismael. I still stay close to them and get support emotionally, mentally and physically. I would like to give them endless thanks for everything they did for me.”
After Fatuma told me her story, she kindly pulled out a cot for me to sleep on and all of us, perhaps ten or more in the compound, slept on different cots and bedrolls under the innumerable stars that had little electricity with which to compete to show off their brilliance.
Fatuma and Mohammed, I am excited to see you both and all those stars again soon!
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