WILLIAMSBURG — It’s not every year one gets to hike to the top of the world’s tallest free-standing mountain, and raise money for a good cause at the same time.
But that’s just what Dr. Val Nicoletti, of Williamsburg, is doing right now as she ascends up Mount Kilimanjaro — the tallest peak in Africa at 19,341 feet above sea level. The mountain is considered one of the Seven Summits, or the highest mountain on each of the seven continents.
And how do you prepare for such a journey at 59 years old? “Slowly,” and with a purpose, Nicoletti said.
The doctor’s training began in the hilltowns of western Massachusetts, where she advanced from standard hikes two days a week to treks made more challenging by throwing old medical textbooks in her backpack.
Over the course of these hikes, which eventually ramped up to five days a week, her husband would stealthily add more weight to her pack by slipping rocks inside as they went along. In the past couple weeks she made a trip to Mt. Washington in New Hampshire — a 13-mile hike with an elevation of 4,500 feet, or one-fourth the height of Kilimanjaro.
Nicoletti’s mission behind her ambitious adventure is to raise $90,000 to build a wing of a hospital in Eldoret Kenya, at the Gynocare Women’s and Fistula Hospital, which was founded in 2009 by the Dr. Hillary Mabeya, an OB-GYN surgeon.
Gynocare provides free fistula surgeries and comprehensive care to restore the dignity and health of women affected by obstetric fistula, which is an is an abnormal opening between the birth canal and the bladder or rectum.
Fistula impacts some 3.5 million women worldwide, predominantly in under-resourced areas of the globe — places like Kenya, which borders Tanzania where Kilimanjaro is located. The injury rarely occurs in developed countries where women are at most in delivery for a matter of hours rather than for days.
Nicoletti says that women who suffer from fistula in under-resourced countries often become lepers in their communities. In Kenya, for instance, fistula are understood to be a curse, said Nicoletti. Women are isolated from family and friends because of the way they smell and are blamed, as people view it as a result of personal failure rather than a medical condition.
“They smell. They’re shunned by their families. They’re ostracized,” said Nicoletti. “Their husbands leave them. They’re thought of as cursed and blamed for their position as if it is a personal failure rather than a condition.”
Many of those suffering are also teens since child marriage is legal in Kenya.
“Some women have been quoted as saying I wish I had died in childbirth rather than live with this,” she added.
And even if they aren’t sad to be alive, many of those suffering become lethargic and homebound.
“There’s a lot of people that have these and they just sit in their house and they don’t know what to do,” said Nicoletti, which is why she is joining 15 other women from around the globe to hike up Africa’s tallest peak. Of the 15, 10 of the hikers have had fistulas.
Those 10 women are making the journey with ostomy bags, which are a surgical opening in the wall of the stomach that lets waste out of the body into a bag, and is often the solution after having a fistula.
In total, the women will be hiking for eight days. The first six will be spent on the ascent, and on Oct. 10 the group will take two days making their way down.
“I see how they’re training hard and we’ll be fine,” said Nicoletti.
Two sister charities, Chameleon Buddies and Beyond Fistula, are supporting the effort.
Chameleon Buddies is based in the United Kingdom and was founded by Gill Castle in 2022 with the goal of supporting women post-ostomy surgeries.
Castle herself has an ostomy bag and is no stranger to insane feats while living with the bag. In 2022 she got herself a page in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the fastest person with an ostomy bag to swim across the English Channel.
Castle’s mission is to “show others that life after trauma can be full of adventure, purpose and joy.”
A college friend of Nicoletti’s, OB/GYN surgeon Deb Matiyahu, founded Beyond Fistula after she began working with women in 2012, and realized that even after surgeries, the women face stigma.
Donations can be made at BeyondFistula.org.
Among supporters, “The official chocolate sponsor,” of the trip, said Nicoletti, is Tangle Chocolate in Williamsburg.
Owner Suzanne Forman contributed chocolates hand made in her shop for the women.
“I’m not a physician, my skillset is making chocolate, so I can contribute a little bit that way,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”
