Wubete

A strikingly beautiful, petite girl of 17, Wubete’s sorrows began during her motherless childhood. Her father married her off at age 10, but stubborn and longing to go to school, she ran back home. Her father beat her, but the cycle of running away from forced marriages and enduring beatings continued until she got pregnant by her fourth husband. She was 15 years old and too small to delivery a baby safely. Wubete’s fistula is closed surgically but by her third visit to the Fistula Hospital, her injuries have proven so severe, she still suffers from incontinence. She finds hope in a medical device that helps her lead a productive life.Today she is mother to four adopted children at Grace Village in northern Ethiopia.

Read update on Wubete's story(May 2008).

Latest about Wubete on May 2010.

Yenenesh

Left motherless and given away to two husbands by the time she was 10, Yenenesh became incontinent as a result of her first pregnancy at the age of 12. Moving to the nearest town from her village with the hope of finding a cure for her condition, she found work as a domestic aid for a family. The feisty quintessential teenager (she’s about 17), she makes her hopeful journey to the hospital. When she finds out that she does not have a fistula but leaks as a result of nerve damage, she becomes inconsolable, thinking that a full treatment is elusive. Today, Yenenesh has joined her friend Wubete up in Grace Village, in northern Ethiopia, to work as a “house mother” for AIDS and war orphans.