Pittsfield — Last week, one of Dr. Pier Boutin’s patients celebrated his 16th birthday—a momentous milestone for any young person made all the more memorable for the literal and figurative path doctor and patient have forged together since meeting high in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. More than a dozen years ago, Little Mo was a three-year-old boy at a distinct disadvantage: Despite being born with untreatable club feet, he was attempting to navigate the mountainous terrain of his homeland—a skill deemed vital for survival in the remote village of Aroumd, Morocco. In hindsight, the ensuing journey has been equally sweet and serendipitous for both Boutin, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon in Great Barrington, and Mohamed, as he is now known. The effects of a chance meeting have sent reciprocal ripples through their respective lives and the lives of countless others, a profound and ongoing experience about which Boutin will speak at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 26 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Berkshire Community College.
“[My mom told my dad] if you want Mohamed’s feet to be fixed, we need to let him go to America,” recalls his sister Soumya Ait Hazem Boutin, who was just six years old when she first met the surgeon who would change the course of her entire family’s life. This remarkable chance encounter, on the heels of Boutin’s answering the call for French-speaking orthopedic surgeons in Port-au-Prince following the earthquakes that ravaged Haiti in 2010, could hardly have been predicted. After a year away from home (a period spurred by Boutin’s determination and marked by countless surgeries, both dental and orthopedic, in the United States), Mohamed returned home; while unable to speak in his native Berber, he was able to walk with ease for the first time in his short life. The journey not only inspired Boutin’s memoir, “The Little Mo Effect” (Green Fire Press, 2022), but also led to Soumya’s Journey—a nonprofit whose goal is to secure easy access to education for the girls of the Atlas Mountains and bring opportunities to develop their potential—being founded by Mohamed’s sister, who will join Boutin in Pittsfield (and via Zoom) for a joint presentation entitled “Changing Lives in Morocco: Clubbed Feet and Education for Girls.”
“Few girls were allowed to go to school beyond seventh grade,” said Soumya, who, like most girls her age, was not permitted to finish school and was instead expected to get married at age 13—to a 30-year-old man. “That’s when Pier offered me to continue my education in the United States,” she explains of another serendipitous moment for her family that came in 2017. Six years later, she and Boutin (who serves on the board) have a shared vision to build an all-girl high school for Aroumd and the surrounding villages, one that will allow young women to see the world from a different perspective—all stemming, in essence, from a trip intended to help Boutin heal herself.
“I’ve lost my compass … I feel useless,” Boutin remembers of a period—perhaps for the first time since deciding, at age nine, she would become a physician like her father—following her trip to Haiti. There, she was in charge of triage and surgery and regularly “[woke] up with flashbacks” from what she saw; upon her return, she suffered from symptoms of PTSD as a result of the traumatic experience. To make matters worse, she had given up surgery several years prior, “an excruciating decision that demolished [her],” one fueled by a desire to get out of pain in the wake of several major, consecutive broken bones and ongoing autoimmune inflammatory symptoms. The trip to Morocco was intended as a respite, one suggested by a friend who sensed Boutin’s anguish, a means of seeking to heal the doctor herself.
Looking back, penning the memoir was a powerful tool in Boutin’s re-claiming of her own self worth—one that came from a single decision: choosing to help another and, by extension, change his world. Boutin’s book is dedicated, “To Little Mo’s parents, Aicha and Rachid, without [whose] willingness to step into the unknown, none of this would have happened …” And, while, on the surface, it chronicles a young boy’s journey with physical deformity, it has mobilized far more individuals than just the title character. In fact, for the dozen years Boutin and Little Mo have been walking together, so much has changed.
“I think I’ll have to call him Mohamed,” Boutin declared in an Instagram post on Little Mo’s birthday (April 21), evidence of the epic growth for both doctor and patient—and his sister—in the years since they met.
It’s an ongoing story that proves the tremendous power that lies in taking a single step forward. In changing their lives, Boutin changed her own—and the journey appears far from over.
“Little Mo’s time with us was dwindling,” Boutin writes in her book. “[His] feet faced forward, and his mouth shone with silver-colored caps. He could eat without pain, and he would soon walk with ease … [O]nce he left, I would have to make definite changes in my life. But thanks to him, I had the strength to withstand whatever was to come …”
