Field visit – Jahun #Part III
Visit in the MSF project in Jahun and in the hospital for maternity and obstetrics.
They call it ‘Jahun paradise’ and I never
got why and how this started until my recent last visit. Jahun is a city in the
southern Nigeria where MSF runs a maternity, neonatal and an obstetric fistula
unit at the Ministry of Health General Hospital. Yes, I know… I also didn’t
understand when I arrived what are all these and why MSF needs to intervene.
It’s not an emergency! Well… let’s see.
#Story 3
After the VVF discharge ceremony, I am
visiting a patient’s house in a village near to Jahun with a journalist. The
car is turning right from the main paved street to dirt roads. A small village
with huts and walls made of mud bricks.
While the MSF car is crossing the pathways
of the village in order to reach the house, the kids are frightened, and they
are running to hide. The same will happen when I will get out of the car
particularly with the babies. Probably, they’ve never seen a ‘white’ person and
probably, for them, I am either an alien or a ghost…
Patient’s husband is welcoming us in his
house. There are two rooms, one for the goats and the chickens and another one
for the family. The yard is a crossing for the other inhabitants of the
village. The toilet is behind the wall. It’s a hole in the ground.
While the patient speaks to the journalist
all the people and especially the kids are surrounding us. Suddenly, tears are
coming from the patient’s eyes. I don’t know what she is talking about, but I
suspect that she is talking about her experience.
When she realised that she was injured and
suffered from fistula, she was afraid that her husband and her family would
reject her. She had heard several similar cases, where women had been living
isolated for the rest of their lives.’ said the local Nigerian journo.
‘I see, that’s why she is crying… but this
now belongs to the past…’, I said in order to overcome the awkward moment.
‘No, she doesn’t cry for that…’, he said
Then what…
She is crying because she doesn’t know how
to thank MSF for the support. Without them (the staff) her life would be
absolutely different…’.
In the end, her husband offered me a
guinea-fowl as a gift to thank MSF.
A live guinea-fowl… that a couple of hours
later, Mercy, the cook in the house, took care of it and now is in the fridge
of the base-house of Jahun.
Now, it’s me that I am trying to hold my
tears. It’s me that I am proud to be a small, very tiny part of that
organisation. It’s me that I bear great respect for all the staff who stays for
months away from their comfort zone, very far from any kind of normal and
social life to support these women. That woman that today wore her best
traditional clothes and honoured herself in the ceremony with her mother.
#TrueFact: At the end of the day, the gynecologist
told me that during her 4week mission, the number of the deliveries she did is
equal to the number of deliveries she does in the US… for the whole year.
#TrueStory: The driver told me that his
father has 31 children with 3 wives. He wants only 3 kids. Now, they are
discussing with his first wife and his future second wife the new arrangement
and who is gonna do what…
#the conclusion: Indeed, Jahun project is a paradise. It’s the paradise for all these women that found a better quality of medical support and a new way for a new life. And for this paradise, MSF Jahun team gives all the efforts to maintain this paradise.
Continue reading Jahun #Part II