 Forty-year-old Aminata lived in seclusion with three children and a leaky bladder. Her husband had left her to fend for herself and moved to another village. She had lost her fifth child during labour and developed a condition called Vesico-vaginal fistula - a hole between her bladder and vagina that causes a constant leak of urine. One day a woman dropped by Aminatas village and found her crying. When they spoke, the woman learned of her condition, and told Aminata that she had also once been wet but had received a life-changing surgery onboard a Mercy Ship in Sierra Leone. Aminata visited the ship for screening and was selected to undergo a free onboard surgery. After her operation, she sat in the hospital ward, dry for the first time in seven years. Aminata said her life had already changed. At first, she said, “I didn’t see myself as a human being since people didn’t want to be around me. Now, I see healing and its like life has returned again.” |
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 Krubo is from Lofa County, a remote area in northern Liberia. Sixteen years old, nine months pregnant, and alone in the bush, Krubo went into labor for three days. When she finally gave birth, the baby was dead, and she’d developed a fistula. And everything changed. Krubo had to stop going to school. She was devastated. “My friends did not used to come around me a lot. I just used to sit and cry, cry, cry,” Krubo says. “I just wanted to kill myself because every day I washing clothes. I tired of washing clothes.” Several months ago, Krubo’s aunt, who works for an international NGO, heard about Mercy Ships. She brought her niece to a screening day on a Mercy Ship, and Krubo was scheduled to receive a free surgery. Krubo has now had another baby since her successful operation. She says, “I tell God thank you, today I’m sitting here, and I’m not wet. I tell God thank you.” |
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 Kumba is 20 years old. Three years ago, she carried a baby to full term, but a complicated labor caused the child to die. If that alone weren’t enough, Kumba was also left with a fistula. In April of 2006, she came to the Mercy Ship to receive free life-changing surgery. Two weeks later she was released, dry for the first time since she was 17 years old. As Kumba left the hospital ship to go home, she was photographed for the identification card that gives her the privilege to have c-sections in the future. She smiles, although she seems a bit nervous to accept that so much good is happening to her…it’s an entirely different life than it was just two weeks ago. |
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 At 19 years of age, Mamie was pregnant for the third time. Her other two children had died from fever. After two days of labor, Mamies hopes for a healthy child were dashed the child inside her had stopped moving. She was taken to a hospital where doctors performed a Caesarean section to remove the stillborn baby. When Mamie awoke from surgery she was drenched in her own urine. She had developed Vesico-vaginal fistula, the condition that leaves sufferers permanently incontinent. Mamie lived with the condition for four years before she heard about Mercy Ships. She received a successful onboard operation. She also formed a close relationship with another VVF patient on the ward and the nurses. To one nurse she said, “You’re my friend. You’re not my nurse. You’re my friend.” |
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 When Memuna developed Vesico-vaginal fistula — a condition that rendered her incontinent — after delivering a stillborn baby, her husband left her. VVF afflicts millions of women in Africa. At 26 years of age, Memuna came to a Mercy Ship looking for help after living with VVF for four years. Because Mercy Ships had already filled all available slots for this surgery, crew members gave generously to pay for a successful operation at a local hospital for Memuna. |
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 Thirty-eight-year-old Mabinty lived in a small village in the world’s poorest nation. When she went into childbirth with her third child, she had problems. Mabinty spent eight days in childbirth before giving birth to a dead son. Afterwards, Mabinty experienced an intense, internal burning pain. After five days, when her catheter tube fell out, she was leaking urine and couldn’t control it. Doctors told her they could do nothing for her. As her condition worsened, her husband insisted she leave his house. Several years went by. Then one day a cousin sent word that a Mercy Ship docked in Freetown offered exactly the kind of surgery she needed free of charge! After a five-hour journey to Freetown, Mabinty received a precious appointment card for her operation. A few weeks later, Mabinty danced out of the ship’s ward and down the gangway, wearing the new outfit presented from the crew to each fistula patient as a symbol of the new life these women now face. |
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 Tokpah, a 64-year-old woman, speaks only Kpelle, one of the most common languages in Liberia. During Liberia’s civil war, a group of fighters captured and brutalized Tokpah. Their inhumane treatment caused the fistula that would plague Tokpah for more than four years. After the way, Tokpah went back home, and she was sequestered in one room of the house. “She was constantly leaking, so for a lot of reasons, because of the smell of the room, nobody came there.” Everyone but her children turned their backs on her. No one associated with her, except to call Tokpah names. Then her son heard about Mercy Ships. When she was scheduled to receive surgery, she clapped her hands together and smiled. After her successful onboard operation, Tokpah was preparing to go home. She’d like to tell her story to the press. When asked about all the people who mistreated her, Tokpah answered with grace, “I would embrace them because God healed her.” |
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 At 45 years of age, Yealie was angry, bitter and hopeless. She had already lived longer than the average life expectancy of women in Sierra Leone. It’s just that the past 20 years she lived with urine constantly dripping down her legs. Yealie had a hole in her bladder from complications of obstructed labor during her third pregnancy. But a Mercy Ships doctor in Sierra Leone repaired her fistula. A few days after surgery, when she realized she really was healed, she knelt at the feet of the doctor, wrapped her arms around his legs and expressed over and over in her tribal language, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” No longer bitter and angry, Yealie put on a new dress as a symbol of her new life and danced in sheer bliss. By the end of her stay, she had become like a mother on the ward to all the other obstetric fistula patients. |
