Customer Reviews

A Walk To Beautiful - NOVA

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When I came across this documentary on PBS I was left quite breathless. The context of the documentary, the visual imagery, and the "texture" of the survival mode these women are in truly will inspire you to appreciate some of the simple pleasures we take for granted in life. Moreover, the staff at the Fistula Hospital were wonderful, committed, and compassionate. Mind you, I'm an American writing about this from our world, one with HMOs rushing patients through the system, where the medical establishment continues to slowly capitulate to the private interests of profit, where we have no nationalized health care.

Existentially, A Walk to Beautiful also shows how medical institutions runned by compassion-based medics create new meanings for those whose lives have been completely scripted for them by patriarchy and ageless traditions that cannot keep up with the realities and stimuli of twenty-first century poverty and destitution.

My favorite scenes? When Ayehu was cured and she walks through the forest to go home. The human spirit shone nicely through her posture, determination and grit. When I showed this documentary to my class my students (I'm a male professor), female and yes, male students, were left breathless. Almaz lecturing her husband after the surgery was wonderful, as was Wubete's new found joy with the children of Grace Village, especially her comments on Iyassu, "who pouts".

Many of my students wrote me afterward saying how this documentary changed their lives. I also wanted to add that the music in the film sounded authentically from the region (with the exception of the syncopated "Amazing Grace" at the end of the documentary). There were some hymns and melodies that were highly appropriate since they come from the beautiful voice of Ejigayehu "Gigi" Shibabaw, a world-renown Ethiopian artist. Watch this documentary. Smith and Bucher, along with their team, captured a depth of humanity in a context that was refreshing, deep, and profound. A Walk to Beautiful will alter your consciousness forever...

This is a tough review for me to write. After watching this, I am so moved that I'm not sure what to write in this review. This film is an incredibly powerful, emotional experience and it educated me about a serious health issue I never knew existed. I can't begin to express just how badly I felt for women afflicted with obstetric fistula, a type of childbirth injury that, according to the people interviewed in this film, occurs most often in poor, rural areas of developing countries in Africa, Asia and the Arab world. I watched with anticipation and genuine anxiety the trials of five women in this documentary; they all had to endure obstetric fistula for years and they became outcasts in their communities because the members of their communities were disgusted by the smells and the symptoms of fistula. Women with fistula are unable their urges to go to the bathroom. To make matters worse for these women, they honestly didn't realize there were other women like them and they thought there was nowhere to go for treatment. They often heard of a hospital merely by luck when word-of-mouth reached them in their area hundreds of miles away from the only hospital helping women with fistula. This documentary, however, highlights the very real possibility of a woman's being cured of fistula using surgical methods to correct the problem; and to see the joyful expressions on their faces and the lovely clothes they were given when they were leaving the hospital to start their new lives after they were cured was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

This documentary focuses on five Ethiopian women who have traveled from remote, rural areas to the capital city of Addis Ababa where they find relief, kindness and surgeons ready to assist them and correct the problem that has caused their lives to be a living hell for years. These women, like others in certain parts of the world, have spent the last several years of their lives being treated as lepers in their own communities because people were repulsed by the way these women smelled; they could not control their urges to go to the bathroom.

I don't want to spoil it all for you; but I will tell you one story out of the five the documentary focuses on. One young woman, Wubete, has to travel three times to the hospital from her rural village because her bladder was so severely damaged during childbirth that she is left with an unusually small bladder. In Wubete's case, physical exercises to achieve bladder control were not working well. She is so happy when she is finally able to control her bathroom urges that she wishes to stay at the hospital perhaps as an employee; the hospital doesn't hire her but they do find her a job working at an orphanage and Wubete looks happier than ever. It practically made me cry tears of joy. The other four stories are equally poignant and quite memorable; and the staff was the kindest you could ever imagine.

The DVD comes with an extra about the extent of obstetric fistula; it is brief but very well done and informative. There are a few other extras but this is the most valuable one.

Overall, A Walk to Beautiful is an important documentary that practically everyone should see once they are able to handle the mature subject matter involved here. Before I saw this movie I had never even heard of fistula. I learned an awful lot from watching this film; and I highly recommend this DVD.

I saw this film originally on T.V. May 13 on Nova. The stories of the affected women made me cry. What a horrible existence they had been left to, until they were able to get to the special hospital. I also cried for them tears of joy when they were "cured" of their injuries. This was a heartwrenching film, one every woman/mother should see. We are so lucky to live where we do and have access to such great health care. I would like to purchase this DVD when it is released because I would like many of my friends and family to see it and help with donations to this cause.

A Walk to Beautiful exposes the hardships, persecutions and suffering faced by women in nations where there is no access to experienced birth attendants. Fistulas occur when the birth is extremely difficult, the baby generally dies and the mother's birth canal goes through significant damage that results in leaking of bladder and/or fecal matter through the vaginal canal. People in the young women's communities literally throw these women to the wolves or allow them to live on the outer edges of the community in isolation. When women do hear about the option of having a fistula repaired, they travel for days to get to these amazing hospitals in order to be cured. Fistulas are also the result of girls who are barely women giving birth when their bodies are not mature. Imagine having your life "over" by 14. We can all support fistula hospitals such as HEAL Africa and give these women back their lives. Please watch this powerful video.

The other reviews do an excellent job of summing up this film, so I won't go into too much detail. It is heartbreaking to watch these women (girls, really) have to go through the physical and psychological torment that is accompanied by their obstetric fistulas and the subsequent shunning by their families, friends, and communities that occurs. Especially heartwrenching is seeing young Wubete, tears running down her face, as she describes how her father kept sending her off to be married--all before she is even a teenager--and how she would "run away" each time, then suffering the anguish of a stillbirth after a long, drawn out labor that ultimately leads to the fistula problem. She describes how she cannot return to her village in the physical state that she is in, because nobody will accept her. After several failed fistula surgeries, Wubete finally finds some peace, and with it you can sense that her life is just now beginning.

I watched A Walk To Beautiful 3 times in one day, and then I had my family sit down and watch it with me. I highly recommend this film. It will alter the way you see the world and your place within it.

You are a poor girl in the Ethiopian countryside. Your body is stunted and slight from too much physical labor done at too young an age. At nine years old, your father marries you off to a man four times as old as you.

You are only 4 1/2 feet tall.

At age fourteen, you go into labor with your first child. Hours turn into days, then into a week. The baby is ramming against your tiny lower pelvis, trapping your flesh between its head and your bones. Cut off from its blood supply, that tissue begins to die. Days later, an obstructed birth has killed your child, and you have entered the hell that is an untreated obstetric fistula--a birth injury that leaves you unable to control your bladder, bowels, or both.

Your husband rejects you. Your parents don't want to see your face. Welcome to the death-in-life that is your existence. You've joined a sisterhood of hundereds of thousands in Ethiopia alone, and yet you think you are a sorority of one.

In a wealthy country, the operation that corrects a fistula is routine (a dear friend of mine had it done in an hour under a spinal block). In Africa and the Muslim world, you are hopelessly cut off from a gentle hand and help. Shame is your only friend. This documentary tells the quiet, humble stories of several such afflicted women--really, little girls---who find help at a special hospital in Addis Ababa.

We just don't have a CLUE how hard life is for women in most of the world. This small, quiet film gives us just a glimpse, but what a glimpse it is. "You don't have to be a woman to understand a woman's problems" says the surgeon who does thirty operations a week. And you don't have to be poor to imagine the implications for a society that shames girls after forcing them to work and marry far too young. This documentary will make you furious at the blind stupidity of it all, and it will also lift your heart up clear to the sky, all in only an hour. But for an accident of birth, these women's stories could be ours. For the sake of these sweet children of God, watch this documentary.

It was with great pleasure that I watched "Walk to Beautiful", but not without tears of joy and sympathy. The film captured the wonderful staff caring for the constant stream of patients with fistula injury, many of whom have been suffering for years mentally, emotionally, socially and physically.
The 5 case studies presented in the film all showed such dignity and perserverance, it was easy to travel with them on their journey and hope for their recovery.
As an Australian I was very proud that the work started 50 years ago by Drs Reg and Catherine Hamlin from Sydney is still very much going strong and growing! More satellite hospitals now exist in more remote parts of the country and doctors from all over Africa are being trained in the surgical techniques needed. The co-founder Catherine Hamlin's vision to PREVENT the injury from occuring by training midwives to work in villages is a wonderful way to celebrate 50 years of compassionate service.

This is a must see. I cried and cried. These poor women are suffering. These doctors are angels, very well done

Great documentary setting out the terrible health issues especially fistual problems for rural women, and others in Africa. Another recommended resource is "the hospital by the River" story of the doctors who set up the hospital in Ethiopia and have continued to help these poor women restructure their lives.

This is a wonderful inspiring story of a private hospital in Ethiopia dedicated to serving and healing mostly poor, rural and young women who have gotten an obstetric fistula during long unaided childbirths. A fistula is a small hole made between the birth canal and bladder, sometimes also between the rectum and birth canal because of the continuous rubbing of the unborn child's head over multiple days against her pelvic bones. It is almost unheard of here or in other developed countries because we have access to medical help if labor continues too long, but it is a life wrecking experience for about 3% of women in rural areas of undeveloped countries. Their bodies heal from the labor, but the little hole stays open and from then on they have a constant leak of urine. It is just as heartbreaking as the woman with the issue of blood. They become complete outcasts from their communities. It is very tragic.

The Women's Fistula Hospital, a bright, clean, welcoming place of healing for these women is the fruit of Reginald and Catherine Hamlin. Two Australian gynocoligists who came to do benevolent service in Ethiopia for a few years in the late 1950's and were taken in by the tragedy that this group of women faced. They learned about how to make repairs and have truly become pioneers in the field, helping multiplied thousands of women and their families every year. Dr. Reg Hamlin died in Ethiopia and if Dr. Catherine Hamlin is still living, I am sure she is still at the hospital.

The Hamlins were very precious people, very devoted and constant, who established this hospital that gives free care to those who are literally the least able to repay them. They stayed in Ethiopia through much political turmoil and unrest. God gave them the grace to stay out of politics and they were able to build this free clinic in the midst of a hostile government with private support from groups in Australia, England and the United States.

I felt so inspired by this DVD to learn more about this place and the people they help that I bought Catherine Hamlin's book, THE HOSPITAL BY THE RIVER, wich I recommend to anyone who wants to read an incredible story about two people devoted to doing work to help people in the spirit of Christ. The Hamlins journey and work in Ethiopa was absolutely a reflection of their commitment to serving the Lord Jesus Christ in their lifes' work.

Gives me a feeling of great hope and thankfulness to know that good work like this is taking place in the world.