Thank you for taking the time to have a look at this.
Setting off on 13 December, Joe and I are going to spend five
weeks trying to drive an old £500 VW Polo from England to Cameroon (try google
maps) as Team 'Junglist Movement' (...apologies) on The Africa Rally.
Our route will be over 9,000 miles long, taking us through at least 10
countries and hopefully more if we don’t break down too much. It will be
ridiculously hot, covered in deserts and some of the wildest jungles in the
world. On top of this our crappy car is completely unsuitable and will
undoubtedly die the whole time due to the sand and African heat. Do check out the rally website here: http://africarally.theadventurists.com
I'm hoping to use this page to encourage you to sponsor me with whatever you can with 100% of funds raised going to the
Hamlin Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa. This small hospital transforms the
lives of thousands of women who suffer from horrific injuries incurred from
obstructed labour. It is difficult to put in words how horrible the affects of
a fistula are, but in simple terms the women are left incontinent, barren and
with a horrific smell, and as a result are often abandoned by their families and
outcast from society for the rest of their lives.
Gynecologists Catherine and Reg Hamlin have dedicated their lives to women suffering the catastrophic effects of obstructed labour- a problem easily dealt with in the developed world by assisted delivery or caesarean section, but disastrous without medical intervention. The awful injuries that such labour produces are called fistulae, and until the Hamlins began their work in Ethiopia, fistula sufferers were neglected and forgotten- a vast group of women facing a lifetime of incapacity and degradation. These women have experienced a difficult, or perhaps an obstructed labour, maybe for days, leading to a stillborn child, which causes a vaginal fistula (a hole) in the bladder, rectum or in the worst cases, in both, leaving them incontinent in one or two respects.
Despite the operation to repair the fistula being very simple, this has become a human problem on a large scale because of the lack of medical/antenatal care and trained doctors. Left untreated, it is lifelong and the women are treated as outcasts of society because of the offensive smell.
To date, Cathering and Reg have successfully operated
on over 20,000 women at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, the hospital they
opened in 1975. Every other day, on average, 7 women walk out of the hospital
in Addis Ababa cured.
No doubt my writing skills have not done the charity any justice, so please feel free to watch the video on this page and have a look at their website: http://www.fistulatrust.org/index.html.
But I hope I have given you some idea of the profound impact it has in transforming the lives of so many vulnerable women through such a cheap, straightforward operation.
We promise to have our own website up and running as soon as we can to keep a man-diary and upload photos en route.
xx
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