Therese is about to receive an epidural and be repaired for the second time in her life. She is 14 years old.
Under the sheets, Ekafa.
Rosette, Mambuta and Nzusi sit in the courtyard of the House. Enoch does not leave his mother's breast. The time seems long at times, and the dates of intervention are uncertain.
In the rest room of St. Joseph's Hospital in Kinshasa, many beds are empty. Missions to pick up women in need of care in distant provinces are expensive, and trained surgeons are scarce.
On the operating table, Thérèse is waiting for Dr. Paulin, who is going to repair the fistulas she has suffered from since childhood. The circumstances that brought her here are unclear. Sister Bernadette remembers her first visit to the House of the Rose of Jericho six years ago, and suspects incestuous sexual abuse, kept under wraps.
In the open corridors of the Saint Joseph clinic in Kinshasa, the gas cylinders that keep the hospital running.
Nzusi is 27 years old and has 3 children, including Enoch, 2 years old, who accompanies her despite the rule forbidding little ones in the House. He is her last born, and suffers from a skin disease whose name I do not know.
Four hands stitch and repair Koka's belly. She suffered from a bladder fistula, caused by difficult births.
In front of the House of the Rose of Jericho, the neighbor takes a break with Sister Albertine who is about to leave for a visit to the Batéké plateau. The walls that surround the houses of Limete, a middle-class neighborhood of Kinshasa, stand as bulwarks against the dangers of the city.
The marshes of the Batéké plateau.
Farmers are preparing the land acquired by the Sisters of the House. Sister Bernadette has great plans for the "mothers". For all those who have been rejected and marginalized by society, she dreams of autonomy, of independence, of a large farm where women can live together, nourished by the fruits of their labor, safe from violence. A place of resilience.
At the entrance to the Sisters' land on the Batéké plateau, a woman and her baby live in this small house. She tends a plot of land and welcomes visitors when they come to check on the progress of the farm.
Mambuta braids the hair of Rosette, a young woman from the Bandundu province, east of Kinshasa. At 23, she is about to undergo her second operation. Three years ago, she gave birth to a stillborn child alone. Her husband left at the beginning of her pregnancy. The cesarean section performed at that time caused Rosette to suffer from a double fistula. She is the youngest child in the house, and also the most fragile.
Nzusi's womb looks like that of many other African women. After her two daughters and before her last son, another child named Gloire was born by cesarean section. The latter, performed in a rural health clinic, without any means or properly trained doctors, is the cause of Nzusi's so-called iatrogenic fistulas. Gloire died a few months later, and his mother came to Kinshasa to have her fistula repaired. Upon her return to the village, Nzusi and her husband conceived Enoch. At the end of the pregnancy, he was born by vaginal delivery, but this type of birth is forbidden after a repair, because the sutures are too fragile. For the past two years, Nzusi has been suffering from new fistulas and the consequences of these.
In the meanders of Saint Joseph's Hospital, a denominational health care institution in the heart of the Limete commune in Kinshasa, a chapel welcomes patients' prayers. Religion has a special place in the structure founded in 1987 by Cardinal Malula. His wish was to offer access to medicine to the poorest of the city's working-class neighborhoods.
Mama Anne was one of the first women at the Rose House of Jericho, where she resided to be repaired in 2012. She is now suffering from great precariousness. Sister Bernadette is considering offering her a mission, despite the small budget she has: to go to Central Congo to find the women and bring them back and care for them.
At the back of the house, in the open-air laundry room, the Sisters' loincloths are in dialogue with the oleander.
Sister Bernadette is in charge of the house. Untiring, Ma Bena, as she is called here, welcomes, cares for and listens to all the women passing through. She has been carrying the project of the Rose of Jericho with courage for several years and is constantly drawing new horizons for her protégés.
Power cuts are commonplace in Kinshasa. They can last for hours, even days. From then on, cooking is done in the yard, using coal.
Enoch's father cuts his hair in the courtyard of the house. He tries to take more space with his son, because soon, Nzusi will go to the hospital, and the little one will not be able to accompany him. Enoch still feeds at his mother's breast and has a close relationship with her. The separation will be a real ordeal for both the mother and the child.
In the courtyard of the House of the Rose of Jericho, the Sisters have created a garden. The vegetation is peaceful and lush, contrasting with the city that stretches behind the high concrete walls.
Christine is recovering from her surgery. Always marginalized because she was childless and handicapped by polio contracted when she was a child, she came to live in Kinshasa in 2010. A few years later, she became pregnant. The man left after a few weeks of pregnancy, and Christine underwent a caesarean section to deliver the child who did not survive. She is now cared for by her own mother, Marie.
In the anteroom of the operating room, the care material is worn out, the lack of means is glaring.
After her surgery, Ekafa is resting. Nine years ago, she gave birth to a dead child. Now 27 years old, she has traveled down the river from the equator to Kinshasa to finally repair her torn womb.
Repair
— 2019
In September 2015, I am in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for the first time. There I met the sisters of the Rose of Jericho House. Between masses and prayers, these nuns care for women who are waiting to be treated or resting after surgery in the clinic a few blocks away. They suffer from obstetric fistulas, iatrogenic or traumatic, and I discover the extent of this health drama on the African continent. Fistula is a lesion, an abnormal opening between the female pelvic organs. It appears following a difficult pregnancy or childbirth, accidental medical acts or sexual violence, and causes chronic incontinence. The consequences of this phenomenon lead to exclusion and precariousness. Sick, unable to work or to have sexual relations, women suffering from this condition are often rejected by their families, their husbands, and by the whole community. According to the World Health Organization, more than two million women live with untreated fistula in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. They are among the poorest and most vulnerable in society. Deeply affected by this reality, I return to the Rose of Jericho in June 2019 to share the lives of Nzusi, Rosette and Mambuta, awaiting care, and Bernadette and the other sisters of the congregation who welcome me like mothers. In the courtyard of the house, everything is calm. Enoch, Nzusi's son, plays with the wild cats, and the women braid their hair for hours. Behind the walls, Kinshasa is never silent. Time is punctuated by untimely power cuts and countless festive mournings that enliven the nights of the sprawling city. Day after day, I listen to and feel the pain left by stillborn children, the body that no longer holds anything and the solitude of those who reveal themselves to me. From the home to the corridors of the hospital, I photograph their intimate and universal struggle for more dignity, the resilience that drives them, and experience what binds us, as mundele* as I am, in our condition as women.
* means a white person in Lingala
It is a gesture that seemed far removed from the documentary practice that occupies me - yet, in this letter read to Nzusi in the middle of the night, delivered to the ancient theater of the Rencontres d'Arles and to its spectators, I was able to express in a different way the violence, the pain, the strength and the sorority that weaves Repair. Here is the recording. Thank you to the artistic and technical teams of the Rencontres for this wonderful opportunity to be naked. Thank you for your eyes and your listening.
Réparer has received the support of the Friends of the Albert-Kahn Museum and the Porosus endowment fund
