Congo

What an honor it was to meet Dr Mukwege today and to attend a SAFER and Stephen Lewis Foundation fundraiser for the Panzi Hospital yesterday.  Dr Mukwege is the world’s foremost fistula and gynecological reconstruction surgeon and thankfully he lives and works in Congo where the need is the greatest. And, lucky me, he’s also the father of my neighbor in Kitchener!  Today as I sat in her living room,  Dr Mukwege talked about the intentional destruction of women’s reproductive organs by the rapists – women are shot in the vagina, they are burned with plastic which when heated is inserted in their vagina’s and it keeps burning their organs from the inside out.  These are the women Dr Mukwege works with every day – his staff do about 10 reconstructive surgeries a day – and there are many more who need it. How does he do it?

We talked together about self-care and he said to me, “Dawn, tell me how you do self-care in your work as a therapist? Everyone tells me I need to take care of myself but how can I? Everywhere I go women need to talk to me; at church, in the market, at the hospital.  How can I say no? I must talk to them.” And since Dr Mukwege is a person of strong Christian faith, I remind him of the example of Jesus, who left the crowds to go to the mountain to  pray and be re-energized in solitude.  “I’m so grateful” I said, “That this example is recorded in the scriptures because it gives permission to all of us to rest and to be human – to walk away from the crowds when we need to.”  Dr Mukwege told me about steps he has taken to protect himself.  There was a time when he heard each woman’s story prior to surgery, but now he has other staff to do that. He found he was so overwhelmed with emotion over hearing all these stories that he couldn’t do his job as a surgeon – and that is his calling – that is the one thing he can do best in this world. And so they have set up a system where several people screen and support surgery patients prior to him operating on them…which leads to a new issue…now the only female psychologist on the team, the one who is given the most severely traumatized patients, is showing signs of burnout. We talk about options to support her. I am glad to hear Dr Mukwege is working with a team from Women’s College Hospital in Toronto to expand the team of counsellors who will work in the health districts in the area.  I’m so glad to see SAFER and the Stephen Lewis Foundation and V-Day take the lead in offering support to this desperate need. It is also important to recognize though that this hospital was founded and operates under the umbrella of the Pentecostal Church…it is a mission hospital!  It is a testimony to the fact that there have been some very positive results from the mission movement and for this I am grateful.

Submitted by Dawn Penner