Mahabouba smelled foul, and villagers thought she had been cursed by God. They put her in a hut at the edge of the village and took off the door — so the hyenas would get her that night.

When the hyenas came, Mahabouba used a stick to fend them off. The next morning she set off crawling to get to an American missionary who lived more than 30 miles away. The missionary took her to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, where she met Steven Arrowsmith, an American urologist from Grand Rapids, Mich.