STORIES

When M’Mah was born, her mother had a simple wish for her daughter’s life.  “I want her to be like a diamond — to shine bright,” she said. Unfortunately for most of M’Mah’s life, the light inside her was overshadowed by the neurofibroma growing on her face.  When she...

It all started with a toothache. Salematu was 24 when she first noticed the pain in her mouth. As a first-year nursing student, she knew she should go to the dentist, but she was struggling. She had just lost her husband unexpectedly, leaving her with two young...

Samory never imagined that neglecting a toothache would result in a facial tumor that threatened to take away his dreams and his life. Four years after the toothache began, the once healthy 25-year-old was a shell of who he once was, as his tumor grew and his...

For a barely four-foot-tall woman named Claire, social rejection was a daily reality. The focus of this negative attention was an enormous goiter hanging conspicuously from her neck like a sack of oranges. In the chaos of the street market in Pointe Noire, Congo,...

Jean Bosco is a farmer. Just north of Congo’s capital city of Brazzaville, fields bear the mark of his honest labor – hectares of cassava, gardens of blooming eggplant and tomato, and lime and mango trees providing welcoming shade from the African sun. Jean and his...