HER miracle came decades later.
In all those years, she never lost hope.
Now 67, Gogo Esther Maxaba is a true example of resilience.
Married off at a very young age and never attended school, she fled her first marriage, but couldn’t stay at her father’s place.
She got married again, though still young.
That’s when her challenge began.
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She had complications during labour, losing her son in the process.
Then began her sad journey with obstetric fistula.
“I started leaking urine soon after losing my first child,” she recalled.
“The challenge was persistent, but I could not let it determine my fate.”
She tried having children three more times, with the second and third pregnancies having the same fate as the first one.
She only managed to have a successful birth on the fourth attempt.
“The child survived and is my only living offspring, but the urine leaks didn’t stop.
“I sought help from just about anywhere. Being illiterate, I didn’t know a lot about the condition and thought it was a curse.
“My siblings were there for me through it all and never stopped helping me to look for a permanent solution.”
From her account, she has lived with the challenge for nearly five decades.
“My daughter is in her early 20s but not yet a mother.
“She is playing with time. I was married when I was quite young, before I even turned 16.”
Born in a family that didn’t value educating girls, she was taught to serve in a marriage and as soon as she was considered “ripe”, she was married off.
Though illiterate, she was quick to point out that her challenge could have been a result of getting pregnant at a young age.
Early child birth is regarded as one of the causative factors of obstetric fistula.
According to Peter Mukasa, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) technical specialist for sexual reproductive health and rights, a lot of young women get affected by the condition as they would have gotten pregnant earlier than normal.
“There are three things we need to do to end fistula. One of them is ensuring that these girls are kept in schools,” he said.
“I’m very sure that if you go up to university, you rarely get a fistula. Ensuring that we keep girls in school up to university is one of the primary interventions.
“Secondary interventions are that we need to ensure that we have proper monitoring of labour.
“If a woman comes into a facility, there should be proper monitoring of labour, so that she doesn’t get obstructed because the primary cause is basically obstruction of that baby in the pelvis.
“If we prevent that, then we are likely to go out with some of this.”
Mukasa said fistula is one of the worst birth injuries which occur to women.
“Let’s treat those who already have the fistula and that’s what we are doing to support the government of Zimbabwe, to ensure that we are trying to clear this backlog.
“That’s why we want to have treatment, repair camps in Gweru, in Chinhoyi, in UBH [United Bulawayo Hospitals], name all the hospitals where we can be able to do this camp, so that we can clear this backlog,” he said.
For Gogo Maxaba, holding on to the hope of deliverance from the “curse” was not very easy despite the care and support of her siblings and her husband who is now late.
They say delay is not denial and also, biblically, The Lord’s response takes time, but eventually, it will come.
Such was Gogo’s fate as, at 67, she finally got what she had hoped for, prayed and sought after nearly five decades.
She was lucky to be one of the inaugural recipients of an obstetric fistula repair camp at Gweru General Hospital.
As faithful and hopeful as she was in trying to find a solution through the decades, she came all the way from Chipinge to Gweru to receive her “miracle”.
Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”
Gogo Maxaba’s expected end finally came.
She was successfully repaired on Wednesday under the joint program led by the Health and Child Care ministry with financial contributions from the European Union, the governments of Ireland and the United Kingdom, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and technical support from UNFPA, Unicef and the World Health Organization. She was successfully repaired on Wednesday at the fistula camp at Gweru provincial hospital. The fistula repair camp is part of maternal health interventions being implemented by Health and Child Care Ministry and UNFPA under the Health Resilience Fund programme which is supported by the Governments of Britain and Ireland as well as the European Union.
“I am very grateful for the opportunity. It’s indeed a miracle to be able to sit without having to worry about spoiling where I am sitting. I am relieved,” she said enthusiastically during a visit to the fistula repair camp at Gweru General Hospital.
Speaking of the inaugural camp to journalists, Midlands provincial medical director Mary Muchekedza said: “The first ever fistula camp that we are having is a good thing for Midlands province because I’m sure because of the vastness of the province, we had many women ending up in what we call the cycle of the general fistulas.
“It would capacitate the Midlands province in that for the first time in the history of Midlands, we are having women not having to be referred either to Bulawayo or to an area where the urologists and gynaecologists come and get that repaired.
“Many of our women actually ended up not accessing this service because you can imagine trying to come from Gokwe and going to Bulawayo to get that done on your own pocket and then having to come back.”
A single fistula repair surgery costs between US$800 and US$3 000, depending on the institution.
However, the Gweru camp is for free and 85 women have attended.