As the women heal in the recovery room, I start to see more and more smiles – elation even – and the energy swirls up like a sweet summer ocean wave and starts to take over the room.  The recovery rooms are overflowing, and we have to move patients into the auditorium.  Here, the women chatter happily and start to move around as their bodies heal.

I think back on the Fistula Hospital in Barhirdar, and wish that Gimbie had the same program where women who were recovering received books and other education.  But nothing really matters more on this day other than watching the transformation of spirit.

As I make my way downstairs, I see Jisse, the Oregon doctors’ first patient, as she is walking toward the front door.  Her son is there to help her during her long walk home.  Both of them can hardly contain their joy, and she throws her hands into the air, yelling words that do not need to be translated: she is very much thankful for her improved condition!

Janice, one of the coordinators of our team, is there to hand out dresses that she collected before she left the US.  The women are ecstatic when they see that they each will get a new dress to take home with them.

I think about how little it takes to make someone happy here in Ethiopia.  A pencil.  The sharing of a bit of food.  A wave of a hand.  A used t-shirt.  Clean water.

And health.

As the operating room becomes more and more efficient, patients start to be moved rapidly through their procedures and faces blur.  Stories are very similar: many children to care for, abandonment by their husbands, little food, unsanitary conditions, a desperate pleading to help them become more physically functional.  One by one they come through and I feel myself becoming less shocked by it all.  Even the stench of dead bodily tissue is not as bothersome as when I first arrived.  But what is concerning me at this point is how we take for granted each day back home.  I hear the surgeons talk about the petty complaints from their stateside patients, and I cant shake the sickness I feel in my gut.

Is it really fair that we have so much, and they have so little here?

We discuss our plans to return.  It is the only way we can face the possibility of leaving so soon.

After several days have passed, I notice a woman who has been patiently waiting since we arrived.  Tarike is 30 years old, and has walked very far to get here.  Her 9 year old daughter, Dinkiyo, waits with her, a tiny replica of herself.  She has three other children and makes a living selling firewood.  Business has been down, as her rectal fistula prevents her from working in the fields.  Her first husband died of some undiagnosed medical condition, and her second husband abandoned her a few years ago when her fistula appeared after hard laboring during childbirth.  She lives with her mother, and together they eek out their existence.  They live on very little food and water, in highly unsanitary conditions, but this does not seem to deter her from being a loving mother to Dinkiyo.

I see that she has been selected as a candidate for surgery today, and I watch closely as Dinkiyo tends to her mother, fear shadowing her face often.  Many times, when someone enters into a hospital in Ethiopia, they are subjected to procedures without anesthesia, their health falters, they die.  Dinkiyo never leaves her mother’s side.  I try to find an interpreter to talk with her, but they are all busy in surgeries.  Instead of talking, I give her four pencils, one for herself and three others to take home to her siblings.  She beams, and shows her mother the brightly colored erasers on the end.  She is beside herself with happiness from such a small item.  I wish I had a pad of paper to give her.

Soon it is time to bring Tarike in for surgery.  She gasps, and reaches out to her daughter.  The nurses give her little time to say goodbye, and I hear her voice get louder with words I can’t understand as she is led away toward the operating room.  I follow, and try to find a nurse who speaks English.  What is she saying? I ask repeatedly.  No one, understandably, is listening to me.  They have much more worry on their minds, as word circulates that a mother has delivered a baby in the room next door and is threatening to kill the baby, because she has no means to take care of it and has been disassociated by her family due to her early pregnancy.  I still persist a bit, and finally someone asks Tarike what she needs.  “My daughter.  Please take care of my daughter.  She is alone outside.”  I drop most of my equipment on the nearest chair and go outside to find Dinkiyo.   She is sitting quietly on the stairs alone.  I extend my hand and without asking if it was permitted, I bring her into the recovery room away from the crowds.  Brynn sits down beside her, and Dinkiyo’s face lightens up as she shows Brynn her new pencils and begins to count them in English, “one, two, three, four”. She giggles as she continues counting, her confidence growing as she sees that Brynn is impressed  by her knowledge of how to count in English.

We wake to the sounds of declaring roosters, distant priests chanting and wildly chirping birds.  It is dark, and the air has a quiet balmy breeze that reminds us that our hot restless sleep under the mosquito nets might be overshadowed by the morning’s peace.  We go out on the veranda and look East as sun rises over the hills.  Our quiet solitude is broken by the hurried bustle of voices as our cooks arrive to start the day’s meals.  They enter with gusto, arms full of supplies, with confident vigor as they start to move about the kitchen.

They soon are working alongside each other, with one obvious commander.  Cooking for ferenjis (white people) takes special care so we don’t get parasites, and they do this with a glint of humor in their eyes.  Frail white people we are. I instantly feel like a wimp, as I compare my life with theirs.  They are loving and gracious, and any time one of us would enter the kitchen, it was like we ourselves were a parasite to them.  All eyes turned to see what we needed, and anything we asked for was granted. They know the doctors are here to help their people, and they want us to have as much energy as possible as we start our day.

And, they know what our hearts will encounter within the halls of Gimbie Hospital.

Day One in the operating room is chaotic.  The doctors scurry madly to assess the equipment on hand and to supplement it with the equipment they were able to get through customs.  We knew that gauze was re-washed and suture was scarce and that electricity sometimes failed.  As they discuss position on the first case, a sense of urgency prevails.  They want to complete as many surgeries as possible and this is no time to waste time and energy.  Within minutes, they are ready.  Jisse Fufa, age 45, is led into the room.  She has had her prolapse for two years, and had just walked two hours to get to Gimbie.

There is little time or the language to sooth her fears, so I assume the role of looking deeply within her eyes and smiling, sharing the task of holding her hand and stroking her face with the nurse anesthetist.