Why the silence about Obstetric Fistula?

Was it a year ago? I used to tutor a little boy in my city. The little tiny boy was five years old. He has a sister who is tinier than him. She was stammering and stared at me every other day I went to their place. The little girl was not older than two years. I do remember clearly, that small little girl struggles with her big doll every afternoon.

The baby girl grabs the hand of the doll and drugs it to the sitting room. The nanny told me, the girl wants to show me her belongings.

Just after a month, I saw the little girl carried by other maid when I went to their place. She doesn’t come to the room where I sit to help her older brother to study. When I leave their place, I asked the mother of the children a question.

“Where is the big dolly? Where’s the baby girl’s nanny?”

The mother of the children answers smiling.

“The big girl is not a nanny; she’s a cousin to my husband. She went to country side to attend her brother’s wedding. She carried the big dolly as present for the new bride.”

“Ok, I taught she is Mimi’s nanny. She’s your relative.”

“Yes.”

“By the way, what kind of bride is this who wants to have Mimi’s dolly?”

“Miss, the bride is also little girl. She’s only eight. She will play with the dolly. That’s why I allow the girl to carry Mimi’s doll to her.” A kind of chill spread through my body.

“Are you serious? How old is the groom?”

“I don’t know his exact age, but he is in his early twenties.”

“Good Lord! Now, you’re telling me you’re sending present to this wedding. You are approving it. You supposed to report this to the government. According to the media, the government is protecting these little girls. Child marriage destroys many women’s lives. Don’t you know that? Your in law goes to attend this wedding, instead of standing for the little girl’s right? ”

“You think people in the country side obey to what the government says? They don’t. They do what they believe in. Even if you go and report them, they’ll do it in a hidden way.” said the mother of my student.

The child marriage causes a lot of damage to the young girls in different places of my country.

An Australian couples who came to Ethiopia, established a hospital to help these girls. The Hamilin Fistula Hospital works more than forty years. They reach few of the women who suffered from obsteric fistula. Let me share you this:

Obstetric fistula’ is a severe medical condition in which a hole develops between either the rectum and the passage or between the bladder and birth passage after severe or failed childbirth, when adequate medical care is not available. That’s how the nurse explains to us when our school visits the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital.

“Those beautiful young girls back home are fighting to give birth before their bodies are ready. Poverty is the basic factor. The girl child is the last one to be fed in the family, she has to look after the old people first, the men, then her husband and lastly or her brothers. Lastly she will get food because she is the last person to be of any importance in the family...the girl.” Poor young girls of my tribe, their parents would give them for husbands to get some dowry. Those parents of the child brides used the dowry to solve their financial problems for the time being. They put their young daughters in a problem which they can’t face it alone. The girls were not fed well in their families’ house. The husbands of those young and weak girls sleep with them. When the young girls get pregnant, they’ll be forcing to give birth before their body gets ready.

The baby's head is pressing on the bony pelvis and the muscle of the uterus which is the most powerful muscle in the body and its pounding away to get this baby through a passage that's too small, or the baby's in a bad position. It's either the passage at fault or the passenger. The baby is the passenger coming through this passage, a bony passage and the bladder is in between the baby's bony head and the bone of the pelvis in the front and in the back, the rectum pressing against the sacrum. That’s how the hole made which is known as fistula in the young women’s body. But the most embarrassing thing is how they’re treated in the country after they’ve gone through all this. I can’t forget what I read on the fistula hospital website and what Doctor Catherine Hamlin answered when Monica Attard an Australian journalist interviewed her. ‘When she loses her child, usually she says, 'look, don't bother to take me to the hospital'. She knows the movements have stopped and very often they know the baby has died. She then thinks 'well never mind, I've got the baby out, maybe next year I'll have a live baby. She sleeps from exhaustion and she wakes up to find the bed soaked. She thinks 'I'm bleeding', but she's not bleeding, she's passing urine into the bed and twenty percent are passing stool contents as well. And her life has been ruined. She's appalled at her condition; she's ashamed because she's smelling. They're very clean people, they wash in the river time and time again before they even come to our hospital and she has no way of keeping this...no underclothes, no pants, nothing. Perhaps some banana leaves and her condition is one of hopelessness and despair. The mother and father love the girl, it's their daughter but they can't put her with the rest of the family. So she'll be put alone somewhere in a lean-to of sticks and some little hut somewhere in the village where she will anguish to death unless she can be cured. The community believes she is cursed by God.’

May be the little girl who married my student’s relative is suffering from fistula by now. This child marriage is not a problem in Africa, I read that it’s also done in Asia. Who can fight for our little sisters, if we keep silent?

I wrote a book about this, but not published it yet. That book will show all the problems of the girls who suffer from fistula. Many of them died. Some of them try to escape from that life, and put their lives in danger of the city life. Let’s say NO FOR CHILD MARRIAGE.