Visions & Views from a Visiting Voyeur

Loud mouth insight to the nothing and nowhere. Deep thoughts and questions that have no where else to go...






Last night I found another interesting story via my Netflix. It is called "A Walk to Beautiful". The story surrounds 3 women, I think it says 5 but I only remember them really speaking about 3 of them, who are Ethiopians. It really touched me and perhaps it will touch you as well.



The basic story line follows these three/five women on their journey to a hospital that specializes in fixing fistulas. A fistula, I believe, is a tear in the wall of the bladder or rectum that leaks into the woman's birth canal and it continues out of the body in an almost constant stream of excrement. I am trying to be as polite about it as I possibly can. The women developed the fistulas after having difficult birthing which related in the babies dying. That in itself is heartbreaking. Many of the women were in hard labor for days and one saw her baby pulled out in pieces.

In Ethiopia is shameful to not be able to have children or to not be a productive working member. Females carry up the water, take care of the garden, keep the house and children. I believe one of the doctor's said that as soon as they can walk they are given a jug to carry water and by the time this one girl was 8 years old she was carrying more than the doctor could lift. She said that the females do a lot of work and eat very poorly. This results in them being small in stature and their frames being narrow and tiny. This means that they have difficulty giving birth because their pelvis is to narrow and small. Many get married at a very early age, 12 or 13 and babies are soon had there after. There very few hospitals and many are really far from the villages in the big cities.
So these women with fistulas are shunned and pushed out of their homes. They can't work because of the constant pain, discomfort and issue of the fistula. They can't give birth because of the problems caused by the previous birth. Their husbands and families turn them out and marry other women. They are seen as shameful and weak. So when they get the hope that their fistula/leaking issue can possibly be fixed they pack up whatever they can and journey to end their shame.

This really impacted me because it one had me face that though I don't agree with their culture it is their culture. Two it made me want to write this and ask those who can to help. Without the life restoring surgery these women live a life of despair. Many take their own lives to end their shame. Please take a moment and consider watching this...http://www.walktobeautiful.com/ or


Ta ta for now.




1 comments:

They truly live very hard lives these women. The only thing that can help in the long run is information to the men i their societies. I think that is already done in some parts of Afrika. It seemes that in these areas the problems then are getting less usual.
Christer.

Who is the better cook?

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