A Tribute To The Women of the World

Rwanda, July 3, 1994

The boy was crying, lying on a gurney in the outdoor hallway of the operating room. His mother stood with him, holding the side of the gurney, guarding all that was on it. Her shawl- a cheap synthetic material with a gaudy yellow floral pattern- was not African. Probably from a second hand clothing market, I thought. Her eyes inspected me with the same care that I inspected her son's wound. I noticed her headscarf, dirty from weeks of wear, stained with blood. I could feel her assessment of me: "uncertain, but my son's only chance." She adjusted her shawl, pulling it tight around her, as the nurse wheeled the gurney into the operating room.

The boy was 14, his lower right leg destroyed by a landmine. What was left of his foot hung from his calf like severed wires that made a gnarled web capturing bone, bits of flesh, a piece of a shoe. The explosion had happened two or three days before. He was febrile and already infection was tracking up towards his knee. It would have to be an above knee amputation, the first amputation I would do alone.

I cut, irrigated and tied off the arteries. In the last 6 weeks, Giovanni (one of the Physician's Without Borders Surgeons) had broken all of the surgical blades doing hundreds of amputations. Now we were using a sterilized hacksaw. In thirty minutes I had sawed off his leg. Therese took the severed limb and put it in a bucket on the floor at the end of the operating table. It stood out of the bucket, like a bent flag pole, dripping blood onto the floor.

Then she pushed through the operating room doors. One door slammed against the wall, the other swung closed. His mother screamed, "Mama-we! Mama-we y'nola" and louder again "Mama-we y' Nola", as she lunged towards her son, one hand outstretched, the other clasping her yellow shawl. She held him and stroked his forehead. The light came in through the windows, making the sweat on his brow glisten, and making the yellow cheap synthetic shawl yellower still. His leg was in a bucket, and he was alive- an imperfect offering. She held him around his head as he quietly whispered, "Mama-we, Mama-we". They were beautiful to me.

(James Orbinski - An Imperfect Offering- Doubleday Canada, 2008)

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I have two sons, aged 15 and 18. I live in an affluent country. I have been blessed. My greatest concerns for my children involve such things as their limits for internet access, weekend curfews and whether or not I have prepared them enough for their university educations. I cannot imagine being this mother as she fights for the life of her son in the middle of a genocide that saw 1 million innocent Rwandans brutally massacred. I cannot even begin to imagine. One such genocide is ongoing in Darfur. There are mothers, women, just like her right now in 2009 suffering similar horrors.

The women of Rwanda, Darfur, Afghanistan,Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa... millions of women world-wide struggling to survive in their world of poverty, political conflict and disease. I have watched some of these women, cared for some of these women. I have witnessed their struggles first hand. In Sub-Saharan Africa there are 23 million people with HIV/AIDS and 70% of them are women. The disease is wiping out the female race of the continent of Africa.

I have loved these women, wept with them, cared for them and mourned with them. I have been fascinated by their courage and their persistence in the face of such great adversity. Would I have the courage to care for my children under such circumstances? What would I sacrifice to provide for them? How would it feel to know that I was dying of a preventable disease and as if that wasn't enough, in the throws of death, I'd live with the knowledge that no one was left to care for my children. This is the ultimate in grief and suffering, the only thing worse is the plight of 15 million AIDS orphans left in the wake of the pandemic.

There isn't much I wouldn't do for my children and now, there isn't much I wouldn't do for the suffering women of the world and the orphans they have left behind.

On this International Women's Day, I honour and remember them.

Dr. Anne-Marie Zajdlik MD CCFP
Founder and Director of the Masai Centre and
The Bracelet of Hope Campaign