Women in Somalia are forced into early marriage and suffer all its negative consequences

By Dr. Opiyo Oloya

Meet Fatumah Sheik Ibrahim, 28 and Fatumah Sheik Hassan, 31, two lucky Somali women who, like 140 others, have hit the big jackpot. It is not a pot of gold they have won, but a new lease on life, a return from the land of the living dead where women with a common medical condition known as fistula are rejected by family and society.

A fistula develops when a woman who is ether too young to have a baby or is stunted, attempts normal delivery. Because the pelvic bone is not wide enough to let the baby through, it is subjected to the most horrific trauma that harms both baby and would-be mother.

The baby often dies in the process, and is pulled out of its mother’s womb in bits and pieces. The mother, meanwhile, develops uncontrollable leaking of urine and or faeces, which makes her a social pariah because of the foul smell. They are abandoned by society, the husband divorces them and they are left on their own as social outcasts. In Mogadishu alone, it is estimated that several thousands of women suffer from vescico-vaginal fistula — the leaking of urine through the vagina.

Thousands more suffer from the recto-vaginal fistula (RVF) which leads to involuntary release of faeces. All of them are shunned by a society that values a woman only for her reproductive abilities.

This is what makes Fatumah Ibrahim’s and Fatumah Hassan’s stories so sweet and heart-warming, and the AMISOM doctors who cured them, heroes all over Somalia.

Fatumah Ibrahim comes from the Bay region of Somalia, almost 250km away from Mogadishu. Born in a family of five siblings, she got married at about 17 years old, maybe younger, but she is not sure. She had her first child, now almost 12, immediately after her marriage, and went on to have four others. Her youngest child is four years old.

Her problem began when she noticed that she was having irregular periods which worried her husband because he wanted to have more children. “God willing, he wanted to have six, maybe seven children, but my period was coming and going,” Ibrahim narrates shyly through the interpreter. For a while, her husband was contended to let the matter go, but when his youngest wife appeared to have stopped having babies, he felt as if his manhood had failed. He ordered her to seek help from an aunt who was reputed to know what to do in such cases.

What happened next was a horrific case of torture and abuse that is right out of medieval horror stories. Tied up to a bed and held tightly, the aunt and other women used red-hot metal and sticks to burn her privates, believing this will induce the menstrual period to resume regular flow. Ibrahim does not remember much of it because she passed out.

It was not long after that urine started running out uncontrollably, and for Ibrahim, this became a big shame. She was now looked on and treated as a child because she could not control her bladder. Women shunned her, and her husband kept his distance. She was forced to start looking for a hospital that could cure her, remove her shame and restore her basic humanity. And, as luck would have it, she chanced on a woman who had a story too good to believe. The acquaintance told Ibrahim that she had been to Mogadishu for treatment of a problem similar to hers, and had met wonderful “daktari Amisol” (AMISOM doctors) who made her a woman again.

Ibrahim decided to collect enough money to travel to Mogadishu to look for the miracle doctors. Her husband did not object because he too could not live with the shame of a wife who wetted herself constantly. On arrival in Mogadishu, Ibrahim went straight to AMISOM’s Outpatient Department (OPD), where she was met by kind doctors who referred her for surgery to Col. Dr. Kiyengo. She was operated shortly thereafter, and was told by her family to stay put until she is better.

The same feeling of elation is shared by Fatumah’s new found friend, Fatumah Sheik Hassan, who also came to AMISOM all the way from Baidoa because her community no longer wanted her after she began passing faeces continually. Hassan’s problem began with the birth of her first child, now 14 years old. The birth was difficult because the baby would not come out, and had to be coaxed out by the midwives. The baby lived, but Hassan began to have problems controlling her rectum. With each birth, the problem grew until it became intolerable to those around her. Nobody wanted to talk about it because of the shame associated with it, and Hassan became like a leper in her village, avoided by neighbours and laughed at by children.

As luck would have it, Hassan’s sister came to Mogadishu for a visit and heard rumours from other Somali women about the miracle “daktari Amisol” who could cure women. Although the sister could not believe it at first, she met a woman who claimed she had been cured. She rushed back to Baidoah to tell Hassan who wanted to leave the very next day for Mogadishu, except she did not have money for transport. She had to cool her heels for a month to raise funds which she did by selling four goats for about $100.

On July 20, 2010, Hassan was “liberated” by the AMISOM doctors who operated on her, and fixed the problem she had lived with for almost two decades. According to Commandant Dr. Evariste Nintunga, a surgeon with the Burundi contingent who operates alongside Col. Dr. Kiyengo on women with fistula, Hassan will not suffer any side effects. “She should have a normal life when she returns to her village,” he says.

Meanwhile, for Ibrahim and Hassan, like the 20 women currently recuperating in AMISOM Level 2 Field Hospital, and over 100 others who have been similarly cured by daktari Amisol, life could not be sweeter. Both will soon leave to return home to spread the news.