Tom Hoyle
The Independent
February 29, 2012
What can a little-known health project in rural Ethiopia tell us about discrimination in an all-tweeting, celebrity-transfixed society? With a personal resilience, Rich McEachran explains the wider cultural implications of using disfigurement as a cultural metaphor for monstrosity or pity. For 10 years, Project Harar has been helping people with severe facial disfigurements in some of the poorest and most isolated communities in Ethiopia.
McEachran’s article has been read more than 55,000 times and has attracted over 470 comments, so it’s clear the topic has provoked a big reaction. Ethiopia has a fast-growing number of cars on its roads, but no Jeremy Clarkson to bring the issue to the forefront. What was most striking about the response was the parallel with the public experience of facial disfigurement in a country manifestly different to the UK. To borrow McEachran’s terms, both ‘disfigured’ and ‘figured’, individuals contributed to the discussion, suggesting that this is not, as one commenter on the article said, “a topic which has nothing more to it than an empty joke”.
For Project Harar, most people with a facial disfigurement are ‘patients’.They become patients because they or their parents come forward asking for surgical treatment. One commenter was only partly right to say “only people’s reactions to it and how that makes other people feel” make up the issue. Many disfigurements come with a physical impairment as well as a social cost. Being born with a cleft lip and palate is no laughing matter if you cannot breastfeed, your speech develops unintelligible to others and you lack self-esteem with parents and peers. That’s why we facilitate access to surgery for people who experience physical problems.
As for another commenter who has experience of reconstructive surgery explained, surgeons operate primarily with an immediate medical imperative, but the best do so with the aesthetic consequences in mind. The look is secondary, but it is the memory of you that others will take away.
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