Codes | Categories | Themes |
---|---|---|
Waking up from sleep… urine has spread to all the bed up to the top, to the extent of wetting the hair. | Too much urine: Occupied with avoiding wet outer clothes | Living a physically changed and challenging life |
I wash daily like a ‘Nakawere’ (woman with a new-born) | ||
I use many pieces of cloth as pads. | ||
Wounds do not allow me to walk properly. I walk like a lame woman | Burnt by strong urine or pad: living with genital sores and rashes | |
The pads burn my private parts and I am full of wounds due to padding myself all day long. | ||
Urine that comes when you have not drunk has a very bad smell | Urine too smelly to bear | |
Use herbs for wounds and smell but did not work | ||
Friends changed, they are not like how they used to be. | Socially Rejected | Living in social deprivation and isolation |
My siblings shunned me and could not even enter my bedroom | ||
They don’t want to get close to me thinking that I am dirty. This makes those of us with the fistula condition feel very bad | ||
Ashamed of visiting friends | ||
I quietly suffered | Socially Isolated | |
I cannot attend to visitors due to smell | ||
When others are beginning to be happy, the urine starts dribbling | ||
Other people do not want to come near me, they say I smell bad | ||
Neighbours feel bad when I feed their children, I therefore, keep away | ||
My father used to verbally abuse me (… die like a dog, you deserved the problem, you are a disgrace to family). | ||
I also don’t go to their places because I feel like a burden | ||
Whoever gets to know of your condition, he/she can’t accept you to work | ||
She is like a child, she urinates wherever she goes | Perceived stigma (from friends and relatives) | Living Psychologically stigmatized and Depressed |
You even fear to hang it (padding cloth) for drying | ||
Fistula feared contagious, wherever I sit nobody else would sit there. | ||
I saw my mother getting irritated by my padding cloth | ||
They mock me, spit at me, laugh at me, and do not talk to me. | ||
They even stopped their children to come closer to me. | ||
They stop their children from coming to my place and also playing from there in order to stop me from giving them edibles | ||
People around do hate me. | Enacted stigma (from self) | |
Everybody makes my life difficult. | ||
I hated myself and reached an extent of wanting to kill myself | Depressed | |
Fear wetting self in front of other people. Feel misery and have no peace | ||
I am widened, feel pain in the vagina, and different from other women | Changed body | A marital and sexual life no longer joyful |
He left me and got married to another woman | Abandoned by husband | |
I lost my marriage | ||
He (husband) told me that he can’t stay with me | ||
Too much cleaning to have sex | Sex no longer normal | |
I am never in mood for sex. | ||
So this reduces my appetite for sex | ||
He does not enjoy my company (sexual intimacy) | Sexually denied and rights violated | |
Living under one roof but different bed/room | ||
Not producing again | ||
He forced me to have sex, actually he raped me |