Washington, DC — Of the many tragedies that occur daily in Ethiopia, perhaps the most foreign to those living in industrialized nations is the medical condition, obstetric fistula, which afflicts women who undergo prolonged labor without proper medical care.
A Walk To Beautiful follows five of the estimated 100,000 Ethiopian women who suffer from an obstetric fistula, as they journey from their respective villages to the Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa, through surgery to their eventual recovery.
The five women, varying in age from 17 to 38 all share the same sorrowful story: after giving birth to a stillborn child, a hole develops between the rectum or bladder and the vagina and they leak either urine or feces from their vagina (or sometimes both).
Some of the saddest moments of the film portray how women suffering the condition are shunned by their communities. The unfortunate women, because urine leaks down their legs, lead solitary lives. They cannot gossip with other women and are forced to live by themselves. In one scene, the camera pans over a group of chicks following their mother hen as a young girl says she would rather have her arm cut off than live a life ostracized by her family and village.
Filmed in high definition, A Walk to Beautiful juxtaposes the ugliness of obstetric fistula with the beauty of the Ethiopian countryside. Although the documentary is troubling at times, it is not without comic relief. When a woman returns to her village after successful surgery to find her house is dirty, she first adopts the role of nagging wife but quickly reminds herself that men are no good at such things.
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And perhaps this is the most important yet least salient feature of the film; these women are otherwise ordinary people who just happened to be struck with a tragic medical condition. Thankfully, the film treats them not as victims of a medical condition deserving of pity, but women who deserve treatment (and desperately so).
The film ends by emphasizing not the horror or the overwhelming nature of the problem but that the effort to save even one woman from the condition is worth it, an effort that can be, and must be made.
Although it remains to be seen whether or not A Walk to Beautiful will be shown in theaters across America, a version of the documentary will be aired on American television on PBS's NOVA in the spring of 2008. Plans are also under way to air it on African television channels, translated into a number of different languages.
A Walk To Beautiful (2007)
Engle Entertainment
Mary Olive Smith (director)
85min Amharic, English with English Subtitles
http://www.walktobeautiful.com/
Walker Ristau is an intern with allAfrica.com. He has a BA from the University of Iowa, in Iowa City and his education has included Asian (Chinese) and African studies.
