Anthropology Magazine
Despite relatively modest rates of surgical success, women often do find that hospitals become sites of transformation—places to refashion their bodies, if not surgically then through careful self-management. By sharing techniques with one another, women learn how to dress, bathe, walk, sit, and cover themselves in order to conceal their incontinence. When women finally return home, they can often “pass” if the surgery was not successful. But concealment comes at a high price to women’s psychosocial health, since those who are most successful in concealing their conditions are often seen by their kin and communities as having rejected vital tenets of relational reciprocity.

Spaces of Waiting: Obstetric Fistula in Niger

Wayfinding