Your parents get a divorce when you’re five.
You have to go live with your Aunt. You go to school. You become the house servant.
You decide to run off with your sister to work as maids for room and board.
A neighbor tells you he can find better work for you out of town and sells you for $10 and keeps the money.
The buyer rapes you. And beats you. And your sister.
You are thirteen. He is sixty.
He bought you to be his second wife. He is forty seven years older than you.
His first wife whips you because she is jealous of you. You don’t know where your sister is anymore.
They don’t let you out of the house because you might run away. You are a slave.
You become pregnant.
Seven months in, you run away to your local village. Your family is gone. No one wants to help you.
You try and drown yourself in the river, but your uncle finds you and takes you back.
You can’t afford a midwife. You try to have the baby yourself.
Your pelvis is too small and the baby’s head can’t breach.
You are fourteen years old.
You are in obstructed labor. The baby is stuck inside you.
For seven days.
You’re unconscious and someone is summoned to help.
By this time the baby has been wedged against your pelvis for so long that the tissue between the baby’s head and our pelvis has lost circulation and rotted away.
You wake up to find your baby dead. You have no control over your bowels.
You have an obstetric fistula.
You can’t walk or stand. The nerve damage is too great.
The word pain is not a sufficient description.
People say you are cursed. They say you should leave. You can’t stay here.
Your uncle wants to help, but his wife fears it would sacrilegious to help someone cursed by God.
She urges him to take you outside the village and leave you to be eaten by wild animals.
He gives you food and water.
Then he takes you to a hut at the edge of the village.
They take the door off. They want the hyenas to eat you alive.
After dark, they come.
You can’t move your legs. There is a dead baby inside of you.
You wave a stick frantically at the hyenas to fend them off. You shout all night long as they circle you.
You are fourteen years old and as alone as can be in the world.
Morning comes. You must leave your village.
You are determined to live.
You heard of a Western missionary in a nearby village. You drag your legs out of the hut. You crawl in that direction, pulling your body with just your arms.
You are nearly dead when you arrive to the village a day later.
The missionary rushes you inside and saves your life.
He takes you to the to the capital city. He brings you to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital.
You find scores of other girls and women also suffering from obstetric fistula.
You are examined, bathed, given new clothes and shows how to wash yourself and your uncontrollable waste.
The acid from the urine on your legs no longer eats away at your skin.
The floors are mopped several times an hour to avoid puddle build up.
The local gynecologist, Catherine Hamlin, is a saint. She takes you under her wing.
You cannot be fully repaired. Therapy helps you walk again. You settle forcolostomy.
Catherine puts you to work in the hospital. You change linens, help patients wash, but are curious about what the doctors are doing.
The doctors realize you are a smart girl and give you more and more responsibility.
Over the years you work hard and help countless women overcome the same challenges you once faced.
You are illiterate. You are promoted to senior nurse’s aid.
Your name is Mahabouba Muhammad. You are a hero.
We are climbing Kilimanjaro so there will never be another you.
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Jennifer is a freshman engineer from Florida who has literally traveled the world. She’s been to all the continents, including a research trip to Antarctica in High School. She’s also a Mening Scholar and sang in a choir at the White House. Needless to say, Jen is a superstar …and she’s only a freshman.
Hailing from Phoenix, Arizona this soon to be super doctor has got it all. She’s a member of the 2008 Ivy League Champion Cornell Woman’s Softball team and Human Development major. She’s super good with details and meticulous as it gets. Izzy helped bring together the team when we were just starting and will make sure that all our money will be in order.
Only a freshman, Raj has already got plenty of experience dealing with money. He managed a number of his father’s Subway franchises and raised tons of cash for his high school prom. He showed great determination and drive when he wanted to be the treasurer even though he was only in his first year of university. Oh, and we decided to have a treasurer committee instead of just one person, you know, to keep everything in order.
Amy ran for treasurer, but during her speech it was evident that she would be a great fit for the fundraising chair position. She’s on the prowl for more corporate sponsors as we speak. A fellow transfer, Amy is ready to help us reach $100,000.
A native of Ethiopia, Nina has been a committed member of the Fistula Free Climb from the start. She’s been to almost every meeting and always reminds me of something that needs to get done. She took the initiative to go to a risk management session with Dr. Allen Bova last week and is preparing all the release forms to keep us (me) out of trouble should anything happen. Oh, and she also works almost 35 hours a week and goes to school full time.
It was about 9.30 on a Thursday night and my fraternity was getting ready for our first Halloween Mixer. A group of girls from a sorority were about to come over to our house and some brothers in my house were setting everything up while I was eating dinner and talking on the phone with my younger brother Dennis.
The single biggest factor contributing to this is the fact that I’m at Cornell. Maybe it’d be the same if I was any other universtiy, but I doubt it. The wide range of student interests and just the sheer amount of motivated, passionate people at this school, current students and alumni alike, has made starting the Fistula Free Climb a lot easier and whole lot more fun. I got to campus with an idea and a small team of people and just through the process of spreading the word, be it through social media, direct emails or word of mouth, people have been joining the cause. There’s just so much talent and hope at a university that with the right direction and motivation, the people here can do wonders. For example, at the beginning of each year Cornell hosts Clubfest, which is a chance for all the clubs on campus, and there’s a lot of ‘em, to promote themselves and bring in more members who share thier interest in judo, writing, Nigeria, you name it. What better place to make contacts? After waking up on Sunday morning, going home, showering and getting dressed, I arrived, notebook in hand, ready to network like crazy. And network I did. I must have stopped at every single booth and talked to what felt like every single person who would listen to me about the Fistula Free Climb. I hadn’t eaten anything that day so stopped by and grabbed a bunch of free food from whatever club was offering. And it worked. People’s faces just light up when I told them about the trip. I don’t remember how many contacts I made that day, but it was well worth it. Clubfest made me realize how much else was out there other than the Varsity Swim Team and that afternoon I decided to stop competitively swimming for good. After twelve years, I felt that it was time to move on and pursue other passions. So close to the end of the four hour event, I was speaking to a girl at “Nourish International” when the coolest thing happened. I was in the middle of telling her about obstetric fistulas and the work that OperationOf.org does, when a guy who had just come be the table interrupted. “You should talk to the guy who is climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.” He said. “He’s raising money for the same cause.” Because I was so tired by this point, it took me a moment to realize what just happened. And then it hit me. He was talking about me. I laughed. “I’m that guy, you mean the Fistula Free Climb? How’d you hear about it” I asked. “Facebook.” The power of social media in action, thank you Mr. Zuckerburg. I told him how cool I thought this episode was and we started to chat about how he could help me plan the trip since he’d had some experience with that kind of thing in the past. It’s been like this ever since I got to Cornell. One person leads to another, who leads to another, who leads to yet another. And so down the rabbit hole I go, searching for that next lead, that next break through that bring the Fistula Free Climb into reality and our team one step closer to Uhuru Peak. Today is September, 22, 2009. We are 112 days until we start climbing. However, I feel like I’m well on my way on another climb, one that I hope will not stop anytime soon.
It’s been one of my favorite quotes since I read it in elementary school and has inspired me to push myself further and further in swimming and academia since. Today I feel as though I’ve pushed past a new boundary, into the beginning of a new chapter in my life. In order to properly share where I’m coming from, I’ll start at the beginning. Even though it may be long, it’s my heart and soul right now, so please bear with me. Having been born in the developing world and moving to Canada as an immigrant from a young age, I’ve always had a feeling of empathy to those less fortunate. Like a thorn in the back of my mind, always speaking up each time I pass a homeless person or see someone new to the group, this feeling has stayed with me throughout my life and it has become increasingly more difficult to ignore. I grew up always striving to achieve the next level. Be it an A on the test, a national swimming standard, or a scholarship to an elite university. Thankfully, I’ve been lucky enough to squeeze into Cornell, where this feeling of care for those less fortunate has begun to flourish. But I’d only got there because of swimming. When I was eight years old, I started swimming with one goal in mind: compete in the 2008 summer Olympics. I remember reading a quote from Pavel Brue, my idol back then having moved to Vancouver during the Canucks ‘94 cup run, that his father told him, “If you’re going to do something, do it to be the best.” I took that attitude and worked towards my goals. I had some modest success. Made a few provincial teams, got to travel throughout North America, and even represented Canada at the Youth Olympics here in Sydney. But after my first year of varsity while swimming for UBC, I had the option to transfer to Cornell, representing a choice between School and Swimming. Knowing that the Olympics were a long shot and that I had always wanted to go to business school, I decided to apply to Cornell see what would happen. By an act of God, (really there is NO other way for me to have gotten in, just ask my high school friends) I got in. At Cornell things began to change. I was no longer a swimmer first and everything else second. I was a student, then a swimmer. In addition, I did not get along with the Cornell team as well as I had with the guys at UBC who were the most fun group of guys I’d known, always laughing and making jokes, compared to the guys only environment in which your reputation rested on how drunk you got the weekend before and how many girls you hooked up with. I began looking for new groups to fit into and found a number of clubs that supported international development and entrepreneurship, but unfortunately my time spend working with them was limited by the 20 hours spent in the pool, not to mention my school work. Fast forward to February Junior year. I had applied to become a StartingBloc Fellow the Christmas before and was accepted into the Boston 2009 institute to be held at Tufts and MIT. I had just gotten back from training camp in Puerto Rico where I spent 10 days training with the team, in addition to other not to be mentioned activities. Returning to snowy Ithaca was a moral killer and I’d grow sick and tired of seeing the same 20 guys for the last month. The trip to Boston an intellectual, moral and social breath of fresh air. I drove up with a group of Cornellians and was immediately in a different state of mind. Social Entrepreneurs from all over the world had flown in for this weekend. I sat in an auditorium full of Indians, Americans, Canadians, Brits, Chileans, and other countries I can’t even remember. Everyone was so well rounded and enthusiastic. Like Cornell, I couldn’t believe that I belonged among these people, but as the weekend went on I felt more and more at home. They were all so positive. Coming out of that weekend, I felt like I was part of something special and encourage anyone who is interested in building his or her network and making an impact to apply. I almost quit swimming on the spot. It had always been a source of new opportunities for me, new places to travel, new people to meet, new goals to chase down. Now, I saw swimming as a burden, the same people, the same small pool; my just heart wasn’t in it. I decided to swim through until championships and with the help of the LZR got all best times. At the same time, I was organizing a trip to Antigua, Guatemala to help build a house. It was another experience that showed me that there was more to life than school and swimming and that what I did could really make an impact in others lives. The feeling of accomplishment I got that week was unparalleled, and the fact that I had, in part, made that happens was a great confidence boost. This is was my thinking at the end of the school year. I was looking forward to going back to Australia and seeing what happened here. It was great at the start, (see: Thank You Apple) but as the summer went on, I had started to feel as though I was in more and more of a rut. As my last two posts outlined, doing PowerPoint’s and Excel sheets has not been fulfilling to say the least, but thankfully I work with some of the coolest people I’ve met. (Had to say that in case one of them reads this haha, but seriously, you guys rock, who else gives you a lift to go clubbing in Bondi and picks you up the next morning?). This combined with the winter darkness and the fact that the two girls I knew here both fled the country wasn’t helping. I started to look around for things to do. I joined FutureShifters, where I met Claire, the CEO of Lucca Leadership Australia, whom I’ve now met in person and am doing part time marketing development for. I started going to Shabbat dinner, where I had my Bar Mitzvah and met some great people. And then today, I changed my life. This summer I found out that I’d been accepted to Cornell Tradition, a service scholarship that awards you some cash towards your tuition as well as $3,500 to be used for volunteering abroad. I’d been thinking of using that money to go to Kenya to visit Mbaka Oromo Primary School, the school BOLD helped raise money to install solar panels into, and maybe climb Mt. Kilimanjaro while I was in the neighborhood. This would mean not swimming next year, which was a step I was unsure I wanted to take, so I’d just been thinking about this for now and was going to make up my mind when I got back to campus. This all changed when I saw this. I was on the Cornell World Changers network when I saw this link. In a flash it clicked. If he can do it, why can’t I? For those of you who didn’t click on the link, it’s story about how Seth Cochran, Cornell ‘00, raised $40,000 for cleft palate surgeries by climbing up Mt. Kilimanjaro. Here’s the full story. The epiphany whirled through me. The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. Quickly, I looked Seth up on the CU database, found his email and sent him my plan. He replied in five minutes from Berlin. Seth was really excited to hear from me. He suggested that I climb to raise money for OperationOF, the new charity he has set up. OperationOf empowers women with Obstetric Fistula, a medical condition women in which a fistula (or hole) develops between the rectum and vagina or between the bladder and vagina during labor, causing continuous leakage of urine and stool henceforth. This leads to the young women and girls being excommunicated from their villages and forced to beg in order to survive. It can be prevented. OperationOF pays for their surgeries and counseling, then offer entrepreneurial based training and a microloan for support. Two to three million women live with OF today. I agreed to support OperationOF largely because Seth had started it, and I felt that because he had inspired me to begin this journey, it was only fitting. However, the more I read about this, the more I believe in it as well. Imagine being unable to control when you go to the bathroom, loosing everyone you love and being forced to beg to survive. The thought of the smell alone makes me sick. So here I am. 179 days from the approximate start of my climb on January 10th. My goal, our goal, is to raise $25,ooo towards OperationOF. As outlandish as this is, I feel as though it’s what I’m meant to do. The events last 6 months, two years, twenty years, have all led to this path and I feel confident and capable, nervous and excited. Right now, I’m reading Richard Branson’s Autobiography, Loosing My Virginity. In the prologue he talks about why his philosophy on business and on life. It reads: ‘Screw it. Let’s do it.’ Wish me luck.