Rashida
Yaye, a girl in the West African country of Niger, was born with one of the
most common birth defects in the world: clubfoot. About one baby in a thousand
is born with this deformity, with one or both feet pointing in the wrong
direction. In fact, Nick's mother, Jane Kristof, was born with a clubfoot. But
in the United States or Europe, a doctor places the baby's foot in a series of
corrective casts for about a month, and - presto! - the foot is healed. Because
there is such effective treatment and no lasting disfigurement, we in the West
almost never see clubfoot and are therefore unaware of how common it is. We
didn't even know until we were writing this book that Jane Kristof had had a
clubfoot. We never would have guessed it because she is an exceptionally
vigorous walker even in her eighties.
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That's
common in the West. Kristi Yamaguchi, the Olympic goldmedal-winning figure
skater who symbolized grace and beauty, was also born with a clubfoot. So was
Mia Hamm, who scored more international soccer goals than any other player in
the history of the sport. Ditto for Charles Woodson, who won the Heisman Trophy
as the best collegiate football player in America and, as a member of the Green
Bay Packers, shared in the Super Bowl XLV victory. Indeed, there are so many
professional athletes in America who started out with this condition that the
San Francisco Giants claims to be the team with the most athletes born with
clubfoot!
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When
Shoshana Kline, in Venice, California, received a mailing about clubfoot from
an American aid group called FirstStep, she was intrigued. Her mailbox was
filled with appeals to address other needs in the world, but the photos on the
leaflet caught her eye, because Kline herself had been born with a severe
clubfoot. It was family lore that her first pediatrician had told her parents
that she would never be able to walk. "My parents really freaked
out," Kline says. Although she has no memories of those early days,
"there are 20,000 pictures of me like that - all my baby pictures have me
with these disgusting casts on my feet!"
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Those
casts solved Kline's clubfoot, and in high school and college she excelled at
sports. "Not only do I have normal legs, but I was a skilled
athlete," she says. "The idea that there are people in other
countries who don't get it treated and corrected, that really means something
to me." The letter from FirstStep was written by Brian Mullaney, the
former head of an aid group called Smile Train whose work fighting cleft
palates Kline had heard of and respected, so she sent in a check for $250.
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"This
is something that affected my life, that I care about and that I want to
contribute to," she explained to us. FirstStep forwarded the money to
CURE, a Pennsylvania charity that in 2010 had opened a hospital in Niamey, the
capital of Niger, to repair clubfoot. Niger is one of the world's poorest
countries, and most children born with clubfoot there never get help. "If
you go out on the streets, you will see many children with clubfoot who are
begging," Moutari Malam Saddi, a hospital administrator, told us when we
visited the hospital in Niamey. "They never go to school, they just become
a kind of curse on the family, and little by little they accept their status.
They think they are useless and have to beg."
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That
seemed likely to be the fate of Rashida, for she was born with clubfoot on both
feet (which is not unusual) in the remote farming village of Torodi, in the far
west of Niger near the border with Burkina Faso. Torodi is a collection of
thatched-roof mud huts, a few welts, a mud-walled mosque, and surrounding
fields of millet. Not many farmers there are literate, and none of them have
electricity or plumbing. Over the years, other children in Torodi have been
born with clubfoot, and none ever received medical help. Rashida, especially as
a girl in a country with a strong preference for sons, seemed destined to
become one more disabled person - unable to walk, work, or go to school.
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"I
thought it was impossible for my daughter to be healed," her father, Yaye
Hamma, a farmer and tea seller, told us. Initially he accepted Rashida's
condition as fate. But Yaye has only three children, fewer than most villagers,
and he grew particularly fond of Rashida's bubbly and affectionate nature. His
heart broke as he imagined her being mocked or forced to become a beggar. So he
took her to a local doctor, who could do nothing himself to help but did
mention he had heard that in Niamey a new foreign hospital had just opened that
could treat clubfoot. It was a long shot, but Yaye was determined to find this
hospital and get help for Rashida, now two years old. He asked friends for help
with transportation money, but they scoffed.
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"People
told me that I was wasting my money" Yaye said. "Nobody helped."
But he loved Rashida too much to give up, so he left his other children behind
in the village with his wife and boarded a bus to Niamey. After walking about
the city for miles and making endless inquiries, he found the CURE hospital.
When he walked in, he saw dozens of children just like Rashida; others were
already mostly cured. Yaye began to dare to hope.
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The
$250 cost of the repair would have been prohibitive for the family, but
Shoshana Kline's donation covered all the expenses. Doctors placed Rashida's
feet in a plaster cast that straightened them just a bit. After a couple of
weeks, another cast straightened her feet further. After six of these
successive foot casts were employed over seven weeks, Rashida was brought in
for a simple procedure called a tendonotomy, in which an incision is made under
local anesthetic to release the Achilles tendon so that the foot will open up
more. Dr. Chris Carter, a Canadian orthopedic surgeon who has spent much of his
career as a missionary doctor in Africa, performed the brief procedure on each
of Rashida's feet as his wife, Danielle, a surgical nurse, held Rashida's hand
to comfort her. In twenty minutes, Rashida's legs were swathed in two final
casts, which would be removed in a few days-and then her treatment would be
over. Soon she was sitting in her dad's lap in the hospital courtyard as the
sun set over Niamey. Both were beaming contentedly.
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"I believe that she will heal completely," Yaye
said. "I love my daughter very, very much, and that is why I am
here."
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So
that's how a California woman, by donating $250, underwrote the transformation
of a life halfway around the world. In Torodi, Rashida was soon walking and
running normally and going to school, the first child in the area to be cured
of clubfoot. She is the pathbreaker, and other parents and children will
follow. Villagers previously doomed will grow up to become teachers, nurses,
village leaders. Kline's donation will ripple through the community. To us, it
is positively inspiring that $250 can accomplish so much. That's not a
sacrifice but an opportunity.
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Nicholas
Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn "A Path Appears" (2014)
