more fistula

i didn't have anymore luck on the job front today, but something even more exciting occurred...

you see, my dissertation at oxford was about obstetric fistula in niger. (click on the words to find out more if you don't know what it is, and forgive me if you've heard all this before) the point of my research was to critique NGO policy programs designed to eradicate and repair fistula in Africa, which i felt gave an undue emphasis to cultural practices and thus ignored physiological realities about the injury - in short, western organizations were perpetuating colonial medical rhetoric that "africans are sick because they have an inferior culture that we need to fix." instead of tackling biology of fistula, they attack cultural problems like early marriage which have only a slight correlation to the injury. the real problem is lack of emergency obstetric care for all women from age 15 to 50. i wanted to make this clear in my dissertation by providing the demographic information of over 400 fistula patients in medical files on fieldwork in niamey, niger.

so.... today. i met with a woman at USAID who happens to work on fistula. i told her about my dissertation and she nearly jumped out of her seat with excitement - she said this is exactly the research that is needed, that i MUST PUBLISH IMMEDIATELY, and that fistula programs are trying to move away from this early-marriage-narrative and look at the actual reality of fistula patients. however, large-scale demographic studies have simply not been conducted, and so the hard data isn't available. until now! until i copied down all those medical files into a handy excel-spreadsheet and gave the data to back up the biological truth about fistula, and in so doing actually help change fistula policy.

i sent her my dissertation immediately after the meeting, to which she replied that my work will be a "GREAT contribution to this field," and asked if she could forward it on to all her colleagues in the fistula world. i.e. all the policy makers i was aiming my dissertation at. i.e. my research was worth something and will actually be read and used by people who work on these issues.

i.e. AMAZING.

sorry if this is a self-indulgent post, but i figured i'd put up some success story from my time in DC after my downer post yesterday :) plus i am more and more ecstatic thinking about the implications of this... that things may actually happen because of research i did with the handy help of ali :)

hope everyone else out there had a beautiful day this certain september tuesday...