In a remote village at the summit of a red-dirt hill, the dust is a living thing. It settles on everything—the palm trees, the peeling blue-and-white clinic walls, and the cracked plastic chairs on the porch. But it cannot dull Justina’s brilliance.
She sits in a carnation-pink dress with a baby cocooned against her, a kaleidoscope of beauty in a parched world. Beside her sits Cecelia, her young daughter’s hand gripped tightly in her own.
They are beaming. They are mothers. But for a decade, they were outcasts.
The Thief in the Water
For years, both women suffered through a sickness they couldn’t name: Female Genital Schistosomiasis (FGS). It is a thief that hides in the very water where they scrub clothes and bathe their children.
Because FGS is not yet part of the local health system, there were no doctors to name it. Without a diagnosis, there was only a curse.
Justina endured years of miscarriages. Her husband, blinded by a decade of grief, accused her of purposely aborting their children.
Cecelia was branded as unfaithful. Her husband eventually walked out, claiming he could not be bound to a woman who could not conceive. They weren’t just fighting a parasite; they were fighting for their dignity, their marriages, and their right to belong.
Two Pills Changed Everything
The true grit of the tragedy is how small the cure is. While these women spent ten years being blamed and discarded, the solution was smaller than a fingernail: two pills.
Through a research pilot, these women finally found an open door. They weren’t met with a list of accusations; they were met with a clinical fact. They swallowed the medicine, and the cycle broke. Within months, Cecelia was pregnant. Shortly after, Justina followed.
Today, their husbands have returned. Their homes are loud with the sounds of children. The little girls on that porch will grow up in a different Liberia—one where a water-borne parasite is not mistaken for a moral failure.
“Help me too”
I am celebrating the young “miracles” on that porch, but the dust hasn’t settled yet. We are nowhere near the “last mile.” For every woman beaming in the sun, thousands more are still in the shadows, misdiagnosed and blamed for the symptoms they face.
The urgency of this work became a physical weight on my last day. As I climbed back into the truck, a young woman clung to my arm, her voice urgent. Gesturing to her belly over and over, she pleaded: “Please help me have a baby. Please…help me too.”
I can still feel the pressure of her fingers on my skin. I can still see the worry etched into her brow. She wasn’t asking for a handout; she was asking for a promise—a guarantee that the medicine would endure the long, rocky journey into the hands of someone who understands her pain.
For her, the clock is ticking. Every year without a diagnosis is another year of stolen dignity. We are working to ensure that when she finally walks through a clinic door, she isn’t met with a shrug, but with a cure.
Learn more about the work we are doing to address FGS in Liberia, in partnership with the Liberian Ministry of Health and Unlimit Health.
