Fatuma got pregnant when she was about 14 years old, in Standard VI at school. Her parents made her leave their house, she was forced out of school, and she got married.

Fatuma received antenatal care at the dispensary in her village, and one month before her due date, she returned to stay with her mother. Fatuma went into labor in the morning while working in the garden at home, so she sent a boy to fetch her mother from the farm. However, the farm was far from home, and her mother did not arrive until sunset. Over the whole day, her labor pains came and went every few minutes.

The pain became so severe by evening that Fatuma was unable to drink even water. She just lay on the mattress unable to move. Her mother called a traditional midwife to assist. The midwife told Fatuma to push, which she did until she was too tired to push any more. After sunset on her second day of labor, they took Fatuma to the hospital using a traditional bed tied between two bicycles. They only reached there the next morning.

At the hospital, they were first asked to pay the fee for a caesarean section. Fatuma’s husband paid and she had the operation, but the baby had already died. Even so, Fatuma said she felt lucky, because if her husband had not had the money for the operation she probably would have died. But following her discharge from the hospital, Fatuma was very sick and was leaking urine constantly due to a fistula.

Her husband tolerated Fatuma’s problem for just a few days before he started abusing her. He asked if they had many toilets because the whole house smelled like urine all the time. He told her a house cannot be a house if toilets are everywhere, and said he wanted to marry a clean woman. Fatuma felt that she was abnormal and that no man would want her. She said that she continually wet the bed and her husband. She added that not even babies wet themselves all the time.

Nevertheless, Fatuma was strong. She stayed with her husband and worked hard on the farm. She said that she even harvested more than her husband. Rather than divorce her outright and be judged negatively for neglecting her, he abused her so that she would decide to leave herself.

Fortunately, Fatuma heard about fistula repair from her aunt, who had also had a fistula. Fatuma informed her husband, and they agreed to sell some crops to get money for the surgery. Since Fatuma could not walk far, her husband went to the market to sell the crops. When he came back, he told her that he wanted to use the money for a business to raise even more money.

He went away for six months, but returned with nothing, saying that the business had not gone well. Over that time, Fatuma had planted fields which were now ready for harvest. So they harvested together and stored the grain in sacks in the house.

But one day, when Fatuma went to fetch water, her husband took all the grain, except for one sack of maize, and left her. She cried a lot and moved to her parents’ house, believing that her leaking had caused her husband to abandon her.

Still, she remained strong and determined. Her father gave her a piece of his land, and she began working the fields again. After one year, she sold the harvest for enough money to pay for the fare to the hospital and the repair of the fistula.