A Walk to Beautiful

From the leaflet sent by Médecins Sans Frontières, a story of an 11 year old, raped, who became pregnant and had a very difficult birth. She ended up with a dead baby and an obstetric fistula. Four years later she had surgery to repair the fistula, a breach between the bladder and the vagina, but in the meantime her adolescence had been a time of suffering, misery and rejection.

Many women in Africa suffer a fistula because of a difficult birth, the result of pregnancy in the very young, or of female genital mutilation. They can rarely get to a hospital in time: they are too far away, there are no roads, there are no qualified surgeons. As a result the women become incontinent, are shunned even by their families, and live a reclusive life.

Thanks to the blog Rebuilding Sierra Leone One Child at a Time, in my sidebar as SaLonePikin (shorter), I have found out about the film A Walk to Beautiful. It is a documentary:
It tells the stories of five Ethiopian women who suffer from devastating childbirth injuries and embark on a journey to reclaim their lost dignity. Rejected by their husbands and ostracized by their communities, these women are left to spend the rest of their lives in loneliness and shame. The trials they endure -- and their attempts to rebuild their lives -- tell a universal story of hope, courage, and transformation. See also The Fistula Foundation.

I recommend the SaLonePikin blog if you are interested in Africa in general, or Sierra Leone in particular, and it has recipes too!