Roseline gave birth in a rice paddy, far from any hospital, after a labor so long that, she said, her son almost didn’t survive.
When the baby was finally born, the midwives tried to hide him from his mother. What they didn’t want her to see was a cleft lip, a condition that had never been seen or heard of in her village in Madagascar. Roseline held him, kissed him, and began to cry.
Armane, the youngest of eight siblings, grew up amid rejecting stares. Roseline said the community thought he was cursed and that people even said he wasn’t human. No local doctor could operate on him. She and her husband prayed day and night for surgery.
The answer came after his third birthday, when the hospital ship Africa Mercy docked in Toamasina. His sister Lea made a four-day journey with him to the ship, and Armane underwent surgery for free. Nurse Mollie Felder summed it up this way: “It’s a surgery that takes only an hour, but changes everything”.
After the surgery, Roseline said: “My son will always be loved”.
