The barefoot doctor

Mamitu Gashe went from a poor peasant girl whose life was saved by Dr Catherine Hamlin to a surgeon in the Aussie heroine’s fistula hospital in Ethiopia. Sue Williams tells her story.

- Sue Williams

Mamitu Gashe was only 13 when she was told by her parents that she was to marry a man she’d never met. He was 11 years older and lived close to her small village in the remote highlands of Ethiopia, and she was devastated. She didn’t want to marry a stranger, and she didn’t want to leave her parents and the only home she’d ever known. Once she started sobbing, she found it hard to stop.

But she had to obey her father. That was the way things were and how she imagined they’d always be. As a young girl living in a poor community of peasant farmers, her life had been already mapped out. She would never go to school or have a job or even own a pair of shoes; instead she would marry early, bear lots of children, and look after them and her husband for the rest of her life.

Today, looking back on her childhood, she smiles. Incredibly, these days Mamitu is celebrated as one of the top surgeons in her field in the world, travelling the globe teaching other doctors how to perform life-changing operations for young women. With so many top specialists also heading to Ethiopia to learn from her, she’s been hailed as the face of the future of medicine in Africa. And she still can’t read or write. But she does wears shoes. Most of the time.

“My life has changed completely,” Mamitu says softly. “And that’s all because I had the good fortune to meet Dr Catherine Hamlin and her husband Dr Reg. Without them, I wouldn’t have a life. They have given me so much, and enabled me to give back to other women around the world.”