Firstly: HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to all the mothers, grandmothers and Aunts, and also to those who celebrated their mothers today (yesterday in Australia!).
Secondly: Apologies for not writing for a week or so... we have had a group of about five volunteers working with us to build a health clinic and it all became very busy! Two of them were from Australia -- a man named Ralph who lives in Melbourne, and a Kiwi called Selma who lives in Sydney. Selma and I have similar working backgrounds and are about the same age, so we really bonded. We even made some Anzac biscuits... was just like being in the trenches together... only that the battle zone was Doreen's kitchen and our weapons of massive destruction (the 'golden syrup' wasn't much like golden syrup and the whole thing turned into something resembling more of a crumble, which we named 'Ugzac' ) were wooden spoons and wonky cake tins. Am missing Selma a lot, but I think she is missing us more. She is in London and supposed to go back to Sydney in the next few weeks but I am hoping she will come back here instead! Ralph was also just gorgeous. We worked really well together and plan to continue to work together on YOFAFO projects.
Thirdly: A special thankyou to everyone who contributed in any way to my idea about the Mother's Day gift for the micro-finance program. I was overwhelmed by how many people chose to give the gift of a loan, and also by all the feedback. If anyone has any further suggestions, I would be only too happy to hear them. Next year, we will run it in a more public way, hopefully via a website called Global Giving. I gave the money to Doreen for Mother's Day and she was flabbergasted. I didn't realise she hadn't been able to sign anyone new up for a while. So it was very exciting and she said the donations can change the life of seven women! To all those who donated or received a gift... keep an eye out in your email inboxes and letter boxes over the next few months!
So, in the spirit of Mother's Day, I thought I'd share a bit of 'women's business' with you all :)
Mother's Day is not something that is really celebrated in Uganda. People might just greet each other at church or send their mothers a text message. But Erin (the other volunteer who is here at the moment) and I thought we'd treat Doreen this year. It was really special to watch, because as we made the suggestion to Valence he got right behind the idea. He insisted Doreen not be allowed to cook for the night, drove us to Jinja so we could take her to dinner, and decided he wouldn't join us so we could have some 'girl' time without him taking over the conversation with YOFAFO business. As we spent the day appreciating Doreen, it was so lovely to see Valence do the same... telling her how amazing she is and how much he loves her. They really have the most loving and supportive relationship - something which seems to be very scarce...
Apparently many men have more than one wife. Doreen said the men sometimes have a few wives in secret, and it all comes out at his burial, when all of his children turn up. Erin said she knew of one man who had 100 siblings -- same father, different mothers! Other men are quite open with their wives about it and have three - all living in different rooms. Others just have one main wife, and then bring others home. They will call wife number one and say "Tonight, we are two. Cook the dinner for us, and make the bed and then tonight you will sleep on the couch". So she will make his dinner and then move to the couch for the night, while he sleeps with another woman in their bed. We have assured Doreen that if Valence ever did anything like this, there will be people from all over the world who will come and lynch him! The same rules about cheating don't seem to apply to women though. I went for a swim with Doreen's brother Dickson on the weekend - just as friends - and Doreen said I had better be careful. I asked her what she meant, and she said I needed to be wary of what his girlfriend might think of us spending time together. She said since women are so desperate to pin a good man down and marry them, a girl to come and pour acid on another girl if she becomes jealous!! She was making a joke to some extent, but I promised to look out for a crazy-eyed girl stampeding towards me with acid. Thankfully for my safety, I am apparently not very attractive to Ugandan men because my bum isn't big enough. In Uganda, it is a compliment if someone tells you you are looking 'fat'. Instead of being stick thin, the mannequins here have ridiculously oversized hips. And in some parts of the country, they lock women up for two weeks before their weddings and feed them lots of food so they can look nice and fat on their wedding day! After hearing these stories, imagine me trying to explain to Ugandans about how many young girls in Australia have eating disorders? It certainly makes you think about how the ideals about beauty are so subjective and are really just about what we have drummed into us from external sources.
Dinner was a good chance to ask Doreen about her pregnancies with Jo and Beth. Sometimes it is easy to forget to ask the most simple questions, just because we think we already know the answer to them. I guess the wonderful thing about being in another country is that even asking someone's name can produce a fascinating story. Which is what happened tonight.
According to Doreen, Jo decided he wanted to come out legs first and with his umbilical cord around his neck. She said she was so lucky she was in town and had gone to the hospital in time, because if she was in one of the villages (80 per cent of people live in rural villages), she and Jo would have died. Many women just help each other give birth at home, because there is no transport into town. Doreen said one of her Aunts has delivered two of her own babies. She just sat on the floor and pushed, and then pulled it out of her own body! For Doreen, things were a little easier because she was very familiar with the staff at the hospital because her father works there as a radiographer. But she still had to prepare. When you are going to give birth in hospital in Uganda, you must pack a few things to take with you. Doreen made it sound like she was going on a family picnic as she described how she would pack six plastic sheets to give birth on, a dozen surgical gloves to help pull the baby out with, painkillers to numb the agony, razor blades to cut the umbilical cord and syringes for anything they might want to inject in you. It is likely the hospital won't have any of these things, and they won't deliver your baby unless you have them with you. If you don't have them with you, they will buy them for you from someone who sells them at a very expensive price at the hospital. And then they will give you the bill, and they won't sign your discharge papers until you pay the bill. As there are guards with rifles at the gates to the hospital, it's very difficult to leave without the signed discharge papers.
Doreen had to have a caesarian with Jo. But she was much more organised the second time around. Valence missed the birth of Beth - but not through any fault of his own. When Doreen was in hospital in labour with Jo, Valence brought family with him to "calm his nerves". And not just a couple of close siblings. He literally almost brought the whole family to witness watching Doreen in labour - including children! She was determined not to let this happen again. So, when she started to feel contractions coming on, she waited until Valence was asleep to start packing her plastic sheets and razor blades. She boiled a big thermos of tea, packed some sugar and was ready to go. When she thought it was getting close enough, she woke Valence up and told him she thought there was a bit of a problem and he should probably take her to hospital. When he questioned why she was taking all of the birthing things she told him that since her due date was so close she thought she had better pack them just in case. She explained they would probably just keep her in the hospital until she had the baby. They were arguing all the way to the maternity ward as he couldn't understand why she was taking the things. She told him that she had to pack them or they might not let her in to the hospital, or might make her pay for the expensive ones. When they arrived at the maternity ward she had a win, because they wanted to see her pregnancy pack. She told Valence to go back to work and that she'd keep him posted on what the doctor said. He agreed to go away, but called her two hours later. Doreen was well on her way into labour by this stage, but held it together and told him nothing was happening. She text him 30 minutes later to say she had given birth to Beth. Doreen said she is still embarrassed to go to the ward because she knows all the nurses and staff there and she knows she was abusing them so much. They were all laughing at her as they weren't used to her being so aggressive. She was trying to convince them all she needed to go into theatre (she didn't want to push Beth out) but they said she would have to push. She told them all it would be their fault if Beth died! She was screaming that she didn't know how to push, and then they told her how. In Doreen's words: "If that nurse hadn't been there ready, Beth would have flown over her feet. I gave one big push, and 'WHOOP', she just went flying out. She landed on the bed with a 'BUMP!', and I said 'Has her head been mashed in?!'. She just flew out of there so fast, and my belly went 'BOOP!' down like this. It was big, and then it was gone. I really think if that nurse wasn't ready Beth would have hit the wall and her head would have landed on the floor."
In conclusion. If I ever have babies....I'm coming home!
What is probably more astounding, is that people in the villages - who comprise most of the voters - don't seem to have to issues with this kind of health system. Dickson said if a woman in one of the villages died giving childbirth because the ambulance didn't get there for a few hours, people would not be angry with the government and the state of health care. They would not blame a health minister. They would just say: "Oh, if only it hadn't rained, maybe that ambulance might have been able to make it through that jungle." Similarly, if they can no longer afford soap and don't have any for a couple of weeks, they don't complain about wages and a lack of earning potential. They just think: "Oh well, we will have to go without the soap for now". On one hand, this is reflective of a nation of positive thinkers and gratefulness. On the other hand, it is symptomatic of a nation which is uninformed about their human rights.
Continuing with the theme of women, Mother's Day was preceded on Friday night by a dramatic poetry performance called 'Cut Off My Tongue'. The title of the performance is also the title of a book of poetry from Kenyan poet Sitawa Namwalie, who writes about land, tribe, identity and relationships. Although her writing puts a deeply passionate, unpretentious, candid and witty poetic voice to Kenyan history and politics, her themes and stories are universally relevant. Sitawa studied botany and zoology at university, represented Kenya in tennis and hockey and worked in development for many years before embarking on further study and then finding a voice as a poet. It was amazing to meet her and some other female African writers while I was there -- they were so welcoming and invited me to come along to their writer's club. The club is hosted by FEMRITE, which is an indigenous NGO founded in 1995 to promote women writing in Uganda, as their was a general absence of female writers and therefore female perspectives in literary and cultural heritage.
Here is one of her poems.
SKY LEAKING ELEPHANTS
It rained last night.
No, not like that,
The meek pissing of a man grown old: drip, drip...
This was a tropical storm,
Sky leaking elephants,
Angry torrents of urgency,
From nowhere a dramatic surprising deluge.
It rained last night.
No, it's not what you're thinking...
A placid hushing monotone,
The preaching of a pious monk.
Tropical rain crashed down,
Drops the size of ripe mangoes
Rocked sense right into my head, bang, bang!
It rained last night.
It hasn't rained in a while
Not like this, a tropical torrent
Soaking parched, thirsting ground right through
Emptying floods of gushing water
That threatened to free me
From my moorings, wah, wah!
It rained and rained
And rained last night,
Just on time.
A tropical tempest releasing life, whoosh, whoosh!
Knocking tendrils of grass awake.
Hastily they started to grow
Glistening upwards
Like small green snakes
Lots more to tell about too many things... but won't overload you for now :)
Much love,
Amy xox
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