Ben on the Africa Mercy: Me again..

Ben's blog posts are like buses, you wait ages for one then 3 come along at the same time.

As we work towards te end of our outreach here in Benin I want to share a few stories written by our communications department on patients that have been helped aboard here. Hopefully this will give you an insight into things we, too easily, start to view as normal onboard. It is even good for us to remember that each patient, each story in a miracle.. (more stories to follow)

Veronique’s Sadness Is Gone

Twenty years ago, Veronique went into labor with her first child. Her labor lasted for five days. Finally, she was taken to a doctor who performed a cesarean section. By this time the baby had died, and Veronique had sustained a childbirth injury called vesico-vaginal fistula, in which the trauma of childbirth leaves the woman incontinent.

Like many woman suffering from obstetric fistula, Veronique was abandoned by her husband. She went back to live with her family and has never remarried or had children. She farms to support herself, growing maize and cassava and bringing it to the market to sell. For twenty years, she carried the burden of losing her child and husband and the shame of constantly leaking urine.

Veronique says that people in her village were not cruel to her, and her family allowed her to remain with them. But the problem was still heavy and made her sorrowful.

“My clothes would be wet, and I was cold,” Veronique says. “And though people gave me small things to help me, I could not afford to go to the hospital for a surgery. If I asked others, they would say, ‘No, it is too much.’”

Veronique traveled over ten hours from her village in Togo to the Mercy Ship in Cotonou. She received a free surgery onboard the Africa Mercy and stayed in the hospital with many other women in the same condition. All on their way to hope and healing, the women were a community – supporting each other, laughing and talking together, and knowing they weren’t alone.

“I thank everyone, I thank all the nurses and doctors and everyone on the Mercy Ship,” Veronique says. “I carry this sadness no longer.”