{"id":5865,"date":"2022-09-27T21:18:45","date_gmt":"2022-09-27T21:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/it-put-my-life-in-great-jeopardy-the-tanzanian-tackling-a-taboo\/"},"modified":"2022-09-27T21:18:46","modified_gmt":"2022-09-27T21:18:46","slug":"it-put-my-life-in-great-jeopardy-the-tanzanian-tackling-a-taboo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/it-put-my-life-in-great-jeopardy-the-tanzanian-tackling-a-taboo\/","title":{"rendered":"“It put my life in great jeopardy” – the Tanzanian tackling a taboo"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Moshi became Tanzania’s youngest Olympian when she competed for the 2008 Beijing Games aged 16<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“For us here in Tanzania, it would have been the end of the world.” <\/span><\/p>\n

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The father of Tanzania’s first Olympic swimmer is talking to his daughter, confessing in truth, as he tries to explain why he hid a condition that killed at least five of his relatives from her.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A condition that – having been left unchecked – sparked a dramatic rush to hospital late last year, whereupon nearly 4 kilograms of fibroids were removed from Magdalena Moshi’s body following emergency surgery.<\/span><\/p>\n

Weeks of pain duly followed the years and decades of discomfort she had suffered since her early teens, suffering a condition that undeniably hindered her swimming career.<\/span><\/p>\n

So why had Alex, her father, never said anything about the family history of fibroids?<\/span><\/p>\n

“People can be stereotyped as being infertile,” he candidly admitted, before adding. “It is another of those African walls which we have to create awareness about to be able to remove it.”<\/span><\/p>\n

In response, Magdalena is making it her mission to end the culture-induced silence around reproductive health issues in her east African nation.<\/span><\/p>\n

For it was only while recovering from her surgery, in Australia where she has gone to study, that she learned that the condition, which can be hereditary, has long run in her family. <\/span><\/p>\n

Despite being regularly taken to hospitals in the Tanzanian city of Dar-es-Salaam with reproductive health issues during puberty, fibroids’ stigma meant the possibility Magdalena might have them was kept from her. <\/span><\/p>\n

“I don’t think there is a part of me that will ever forgive the culture for doing that,” the 32-year-old told BBC Sport Africa from her current home in Adelaide, Australia. <\/span><\/p>\n

‘The idea is to get you married off’ <\/h3>\n