But the most amazing thing about Mamitu is not what she endured, but what she has become.
Mamitu's story begins when she was an illiterate 15-year-old in a remote Ethiopian village unreachable by road and with no doctor nearby.
Mamitu was exceptionally lucky in that she was brought to a hospital here in Addis Ababa that offered free surgery by a saintly husband and wife pair of gynecologists from Australia, Reginald and Catherine Hamlin.
For her part, Mamitu is offended by the prospect, which suggests she is not already adequate to any situation, and which furthermore seems to threaten a change in the nature of her being.
And apparently Mamitu does receive the telepathic powers of Niama, as immediately after, she is able to communicate with Tiamata using the Gírkù that she is about to give to Sa'am.
She informs Mamitu that they will arrive within hours; that there will be no protection for Sa'am and Mamitu; and that the Kaditu have been plunged into crisis over this; they will not intervene and specifically will not offer any support to the Amautum.
Just about the worst thing that can happen to a teenage girl in this world is to develop an obstetric fistula that leaves her trickling bodily wastes, stinking and shunned by everyone around her.
Mamitu was routinely performing the entire fistula repair herself.
Mamitu tired of being an illiterate master surgeon, and so she began night school.
Mamitu was originally an Akkadian oath goddess but became a goddess of fate and ultimately descended into the Great Below to become a judge in the Netherworld with the Anunnaki.
In some traditions, she was considered to be the consort of Nergal.
Mamitu had no known temples, shrines or sanctuaries.
woman named Mamitu, a onetime victim of an obstetrical injury known as vesico-vaginal fistula whose condition was surgically corrected at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia.
After Mamitu was cured, she stayed on at the hospital as an informal apprentice.
Now a successful middle aged woman, Mamitu is also completing her primary school education in night school.
In this fascinating interactive feature by Nicholas D. Kristof, an Ethiopian surgeon named Mamitu demonstrates that you don't need a doctorate--or in this case even an elementary graduation--to accomplish remarkable things and serve others.
Here's what the NYTimes didn't tell you: Mamitu's mentors, Doctors Reginald and Catherine Hamlin, were Christians who left Australia as newlyweds in 1959 to help start a midwife clinic in Ethiopia.
Girls with fistulas often stink and many times are divorced and thrown out of their villages.
Mamitu Gashe, 53, who has now become a surgeon treating the injury, told how she was just 16 when she suffered from the devastating pregnancy disability.
Dr Hamlin treated Mamitu who came to the clinic when she was just a teenager.
Over the next three and a half decades she trained her first as a nurse and then a surgeon.
He had succeeded in extracting the genetic information from cells of several progenitors -- from himself and Gina'abul cells possessed by Mamitu, programming and fusing it to create a group of seven clones.
He added equally the genetic material from the Nungal prototype that was derived from the same base from which Abzu-Abba had created the original utum.
Revealed to be Sa'am's genetic half sister, as her DNA is partly from Mamitu and partly Abgal (see Genealogy).
To show Ethiopia’s role and contribution in paleoanthropological research in the world, the National Museum of Ethiopia organized a temporary exhibition where some early discoveries, hominid fossils and artifacts found in different parts of the country are displayed for the very first time.
Capital interviewed W/t Mamitu Yilma, Manager of the National Museum of Ethiopia, about the research and status of the museum.
Capital: You recently launched an exhibition on Paleoanthropological research.
What a sense of relief to see that you whose first language is English, is as confused.
Posted by: Mamitu Geremew at January 20, 2006 05:07 PM So if Meles wants, he can just reallocate 80 million of his own money away from health, education and water - and Walla!
On the net the British come out looking like they actually did something with out doing anything?!
