In which a child is born. Or in some cases, several.
During my first site visit to Seronga, I witnessed the birth of my first African child. It was an intense experience, watching that little soul fight his way into existence. I nearly passed out and the time was recorded by my watch. It was crazy. Little did I know.
Last week, as I was observing a child teething on some rocks she found while playing near the open sewage drain while her mother looked on bemusedly I heard some soft grunting coming from the “delivery room”. I walked in on a mother in hard labor, and as I turned to try to find something, anything, to wipe the sweat from her brow I heard the sharp first gasps of a child. She lifted up the blanket and the child lay in a pool on the bed between her legs. I tried to tell the mother in extremely broken Setswana that I would get someone (else, I guess I meant, possibly someone qualified to actually do something….) and yelled across the yard for the nurse, who casually muttered that he told her he would check her at 2:00 and these women never want to have a man help them deliver…
The time of birth was again by my watch. As I was the only witness to the birth who was luckily wearing one.
This week we were traveling around the delta to the mobile stops and health posts, areas so remote they made Seronga look like New York City. I think if you have a health emergency in one of these places it might be best to just take yourself out back in some cases, because they generally have one young and hardworking nurse and extremely limited supplies. I literally gave the nurse the pen I was using as he had nothing to write in the patients charts with.
We arrived in Gudikwa after traveling for two hours down bumpy winding paths that were the only roads that went to these places, and hadn’t been graded since the rainy season (or so the driver told me). I haven’t traveled on trails like this since I was a very small child when my dad would take me hunting and we would drive down two ruts in the forest. And occasionally those hunting trails were in better shape than these roads.
On the way out I rode in the back of the “ambulance” really just a truck with a topper. I was bouncing up and down in a manner such that I was nearly green with carsickness as I stumbled out and nearly kissed the ground upon our arrival. Shortly after our arrival at the health post, a woman arrived accompanied by a handful of elderly women who can really most accurately be described as “shriveled”. They were speaking Sasarwa (the “click” language) and the nurse from the health post informed me that these were the “midwives”. One of the group would occasionally look over at me and return my smile with a gummy or gap toothed grin. They were literally clucking around like a bunch of worried mother hens- the nurse informed me that this woman “had been pregnant for 10 months and no child had been born.” Even I have to admit, having seen an African woman give birth and immediately afterward look like she had just gone for a run after a big meal (they are very thin and usually don’t really show) this woman was as big as a house. She went into the “exam room” and the mother hens tried to follow her, but Nurse “Nightengale,” the dour faced (but generally caring and compassionate if often serious and strict) nurse from my clinic was having none of it. She allowed one woman, who was allegedly the mother of the pregnant woman and appeared to be older than dust to go in the room. They weren’t in there more than ten minutes when the door opened and a band of what appeared to be rope was tossed out onto the ground and the door was slammed shut again. One of the hens furtively scrambled over to retrieve the discarded object which the nurse informed me was intestines when I stage whispered (in English, I don’t know why I bothered) my inquiry as to its identification and purpose. Traditional medicine. I didn’t bother to ask where on the woman’s body it had been.
A few hours later we loaded up the ambulance to go back. The woman still hadn’t given birth. So we took her with us, back down the bumpy road-path to Seronga. We had to stop the truck several times along the way for the Nurse Nightengale to check how far the woman was dilated and several more times for the driver to do a few minor electrical surgeries to the truck. We arrived at the clinic and the orderly pushed the woman into the delivery room (first one on the new bed!!!) and we were there not more than ten minutes (I think it was probably 7, but my watch wasn’t the magic one this time) when she delivered. Then not more than five minutes later she delivered again, the second boy was breach, almost as if he were being pulled by foot by the first one (reminded me of a bible story the Rev told me once about twins and breach and birthrights that I unfortunately can’t remember all the details to.) I had no idea twins could come that fast!
Birth is indeed a miracle, and the one detail I have absorbed, quite fully, as a result of all this amazing birthing experience, is that I no longer have any desire to be a doula. I guess it’s something else to cross off the list. I’m pretty sure I’ll get more than my share of experience here over the next two years…
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