Hope. It seems like such a simple word.
Look at Fernanda* (name changed for privacy). Her joy. Her energy. The life in her eyes.
Since 2007, when she was 16, she has lived with the pain, indignity and shame of faecal and urinary incontinence from obstetric fistula as a result of an obstructed birth without timely access to suitable medical care.
She lost her child as well, suffering a traumatic vaginal removal of the stillborn baby with medical tools.
She always used to say, "God doesn’t exist. If God existed I wouldn’t suffer like this.” Fernanda ran out of money to buy diapers for herself. She used sarongs and rags but they weren't absorbent enough, and would disintegrate over time from constant washing.
One day she even tried to hang herself to death, from a tree in her backyard. She was saved by her husband, who came out just as she knocked away the chair she was standing on. He cut down the cord and made her promise not to do that again. He has stayed faithfully by her side all these years.
How can someone who has been so desperate, show so much joy and hope now?
Despite living in Luanda, the capital city of Angola, Fernanda spent over a decade believing that there was no cure for her suffering. Then, in 2021, a church leader took her to a maternity hospital in Luanda, where her problem was diagnosed as obstetric fistula. She was told there was a cure, and a date was set for her surgery.
And yet. She had no money. The surgery was free, but she had no way to travel to the hospital for the surgery on the set date. It took a year for her to raise the money just to travel within the same province to the hospital for surgery. In 2022 she was operated on for the first time by Dr Paolo Parimbelli, with Fistula Foundation funding. Then she was operated on again. And finally, she is with us in Cuito after undergoing her third repair surgery.
Fernanda has not given up hope. She carries the weight of her suffering, the discrimination she has endured, but she has not given up hope.
Here in this photo she is singing with the Reintegration team from Votoka. She is learning to sew and making a skirt to wear with pride. She shared her story with our trauma counsellors, who were deeply moved and touched by her pain and by her strength.
Hope is possibility.
Hope is faith that things can get better.
Hope is love.
The love she received from her husband and from her church sustained her, even when she felt that God had abandoned her. The love from the donors who support repair operations and reintegration programs have made it possible for her to feel joy again.
Fernanda is a warrior, a fighter, and a supremely courageous human being. We thank her for sharing her story with us and with the world.
We would also like to thank Hope for Our Sisters and Fistula Foundation, our donors, who have made the development of our reintegration program possible. The sharing of this story is inspired by Hope for Our Sisters and the work they do and support.
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