Fudia was ten when surgery let her walk without pain
Asked what she wants to do now, she says she wants to become a doctor.
Surgery in childhood does not only fix a limb. It decides which version of an adult life becomes possible.
A childhood spent sitting still
Fudia could not walk the way other children walked. In communities where school may be several kilometres away and most work is done on your feet, that shapes everything that follows.
Correction, casting and rehabilitation
Paediatric orthopaedic surgery corrected the deformity. As with most orthopaedic patients, the operation was the shortest part: weeks of casting and physiotherapy followed before she could walk properly.
What she says she wants
Children who spend time in the ship's hospital watch the crew closely. Fudia says she intends to become a doctor.
It is worth taking seriously rather than treating as a charming closing line. The surgeons and nurses working alongside Mercy Ships crews in African hospitals were once children in the same countries.
