Cameroonian conjoined twins Pheinbom and Shevoboh and their parents came to the Kingdom in March 2007 at the invitation of King Abdullah,Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. The two girls joined at the chest, abdomen and pelvis were successfully separated in a 16-hour operation at Riyadh's National Guard Health Affairs Medical City by a surgical team led by Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeah, Minister of Health. The successful surgery not only changed the life of the twins but also brought about important changes in their village, Babanki Tungo in northwest Cameroon. Three years on from the surgery, serious physical challenges remain for the two young girls, BBC news reports. After the separation, the girls were left with one leg each, and they are now waiting to return to Riyadh to be fitted with artificial limbs and begin the arduous task of learning how to walk. At the moment, they can only crawl. Even so, the twins are playful, talkative and mischievous – typical four-year-old girls, in fact. But when they were born, they were anything but typical. “It was very difficult when the babies were still joined together,” the girls' mother Emerencia Nyumale remembers. “People used to see me carrying them and run away and I felt so guilty and alone,” she says. “Thank God all that has ended now since their separation.” The girls' story has had another important consequence for the people of Babanki Tungo, as the village has seen several conversions to Islam following the twins' separation, the BBC said. The Saudi government is funding an Islamic center in the village consisting of a mosque, nursery, primary school and health center. This has led some village elders to predict that the largely Christian Babanki Tungo will be slowly Islamized. The twins' parents have taken the lead and have converted to Islam. The girl's father, Ngong James Akumbu, now calls himself “Abdallah”, Emerencia goes by “Aisha”, and five of their children attend the Islamic primary school. The sight of the twins crawling around the village no longer attracts mistrustful looks, as once it did. “I always tell every parent to be patient,” muses the girls' father. Indeed, the twins have seen a remarkable change in their fortunes. From outcasts at birth, they now have their own, separate lives and have played an important part in changing the lives of the people around them. After all that, learning to walk may prove to be easy. __
