In first for Gabon, Dorothee finally feels like a woman after surgery

By Gerauds Obangome
LIBREVILLE, June 20 (Reuters) - For 28 years, Gabonese
Dorothee Adjakidjie suffered embarrassment and shame from not
knowing whether she was male or female after being born with
genitals of both sexes.
When she decided this year to be a woman and undergo gender
reassignment surgery so she could seek a male partner, she faced
another problem: living in a nation with two million people but
not a single plastic surgeon.
"In our African culture there are taboos ... we say 'this
child is cursed', we will say there is witchcraft, that this
child is irrecoverable," she told Reuters.
"When you live ... without knowing if you are he or she,
when you have to constantly justify who you are, its not easy."
But last week she was given the chance she craved by a U.S.
medic.
Michael Obeng, from Beverly Hills, chose her for one of 100
free operations carried out this year in Gabon by doctors from
his medical charity R.E.S.T.O.R.E - and the first intervention
of its kind by a plastic surgeon in the central African country.
Reuters TV filmed the successful operation, which involved
removing the penis and turning a partial vagina into a
fully-formed one.
Obeng, whose charity has also performed operations in
Guatemala, Laos, Mexico, Nigeria and Ghana, said Dorothee would
not be able to bear children because she won't have a
functioning uterus or ovaries.
But she was "comfortable and in a better mindset," he said.
" ... She said she wants to be with a man, and get married and I
hope she can find love and a husband."
The United Nations estimated in 2016 that 1.7 percent of
new-born babies can, like Dorothee, be classified as intersex.
"He is being reborn," Dorothee's mother, Jeanne Adjakidjie
said after the surgery, before being teased by a daughter's
friend for briefly forgetting that Dorothee was now decidedly a
woman.
"A new baby has arrived. I am happy, very happy".

(Writing by Tim Cocks; editing by John Stonestreet)