Values Against VVF

I saw her, one of many girls, for girls they were, lying under the searing Northern sun, with thin tubes attached in the mysterious place under their wrappers that drip waste into the bowls they take everywhere for fear. I saw the hand hold another’s engorged uterus in latexed palms, bloodied. I saw the milky fluid, mixed with feces drool from her vagina. Only then could I imagine the stench that permeated from her, the revulsion her loved ones felt towards her, for being less than a woman for not birthing a live child; for being less than human for she lived an accursed life of the Vesico Vaginal Fistula victim.

I lived a sheltered life before those images were seared into memory. A life of self-centeredness and naivete. I never knew of thirteen year olds without choices, whose parents could no longer carry the burden of a female child, married off to older men. Of young girls, bodies yet undeveloped, whose lives if things went well would be filled with children, a providing husband and her only true knowledge of happiness and acceptance by her people; if things did not go so well, would be plagued by difficult pregnancies, terrible labors and subsequently death in most cases: either her or the child. And if she survived, would be left with a keepsake, ruining her life, causing her disowning by her husband and family: Vaginal Fistula. The stench from it is enough to drive him into another marriage and to keep her family’s doors locked permanently.

How could this be happening in my own country? Women still going through this emotional and physical trauma in the 21st century? People had to know this! But why don’t they? This is a situation of life and death, literally. I could not sit back and pretend this was just something that didn’t happen to me: I had to act. How unfortunately is it that not much is being done against it?

Stories that highlight news affecting women are often sidelined as they are thought to be too soft, too unimportant for a second glance. Most take interest in them, but then lose it in favor of other seemingly hard hitting stories or daily concerns. But I believe, as I did a year ago, that World Pulse is a place where women who value each other would help make a difference to fistula sufferers.

World pulse provides a haven for us to air our views, to understand and appreciate our femininity, to lend a helping hand or a shoulder to cry on. I have chosen to create a possibility where vaginal fistulas would not be a threat to womanhood; a choice to connect with others to spread the word and stop these atrocities from occurring. To speak where they are silenced; to fight where they are helpless; and to celebrate with them, for they are born cherished and loved, no matter what difficulties beset them in life.