It was dark, and the swamp was pumping its fetid smell over the valley, suspended in the air like a wet blanket. In it one could discern the mingled odors of mud, fish, decomposing grass, wildflowers and frogs. Mosquitoes and other biting insects had upped their sorties on this bicycle-cleaning intruder. Serenity rode home, dead to the world. The trees and bushes along the path took on ghostly forms and grotesque dimensions which rattled memories of childhood stories of witches and magic from the cobwebby rafters of his mind. His father’s house was in total darkness. The old man was never home early in the evening: he went off to see friends and to look for female company. The period when the place crawled with no less than twenty people at any one time seemed too far away to rattle into consciousness. It seemed as if a storm had come, swept everybody into the swamps, pinned their heads under the murky water and drowned them en masse, leaving behind this grandiose pod which echoed with the Fiddler’s tunes.
He was nearing home now. Through the window he could see his wife leaning over the table, scrutinizing something. A letter had arrived from the city, laden with the Uganda Postal Union logo: he had been offered a job! The sixties were going to be his peak time: first he had gotten married, then he’d had a son, and now he was going to move to the city!
The new wine had, finally, torn the old village bags. The movable parts of the house—the personal effects, the pictures, the wedding gifts, everything needed to start a new life in the city—were compressed into parcels and sullen bundles and shoved into boxes sealed with tape or strangled with string. Wooden chests appeared and, like magic, swallowed the house. Soon only the veteran bed remained, in addition to a stick or two of furniture. All this torrent of activity raged around me, and, like a drowning man, flail as I could, I could not get a grip on it. A stream of people moved in and out of the shrunken house, drinking tea or sipping beer, wishing my parents good luck.
A puke-yellow lorry appeared and swallowed everything. It dawned on me that we were leaving. The house now echoed when one called. But why was I not dressed for the journey? A little crowd had gathered, despite the wet, and they stood in the grass, away from the thick tires, out of range of flying mud kites. It was then that I was told I was staying.
Serenity climbed into the cab. Padlock turned to follow him in. I touched her, smudging her dress. She cringed and, with blinding speed, drove her palm full into my face. I fell back in the mud and, in protest, rolled once or twice. I kicked a few times and then heard the driver’s booming voice lamenting that departures were often accursed affairs. Mud had flown onto Padlock’s dress. She raised her foot, the yellowish sole flashing, as if she were going to plant it full in my face. Serenity’s voice rose, and Padlock seemed to wake from a dream. The raised foot was placed on the steel foothold, and with my father’s help she got into the cab. The flash of that sole sobered me up. I sat in the mud, and at that moment smoke blew in my face. The truck growled and groaned like a mortally wounded animal. By the time I opened my eyes it was gone, two thick wet trails the only mark of its passing.
I was mud-soaked, like a piglet after a pretty good wallow. Grandma picked me up. Rain broke out. She lifted me, mud and all, and carried me to her house. It was not the first time that she had rescued me or watched me suffer. She was the only witness to my first thrashing, when Padlock punished me for insinuating my precocious curiosities into the very adult matter of her latrine functions. It was all because of babies: I wanted to know where they came from, but she would not tell me. I knew that she knew the answer. I decided to investigate and surprise her with my knowledge. For starters, I followed her to the latrine that day.
When the door closed behind her, leaving four inches of viewing space underneath, I lay down on my stomach, chin in the creepers, and amid rumblings, gassings and strainings I saw large cylinders appear, get soaked in dust-particled light and disappear down the rectangular hole. I got access to the hairy fleshiness underneath the stomach, and a magic flash of pink reminiscent of nasal tunnels convinced me that my research was going in the right direction. A baby was being born! Although I was seized by the urge to rush in and warn her about what was going to happen, I was too overwhelmed by my curiosity to move. Dust from the grass tickled my nose, but I forced the incipient sneeze back. Now I was thinking: if the baby fell in, it would have to be fished out.… The idea of such filth made my skin creep. Why wasn’t she squatting away from the deadly rectangle? Did she want maggots all over the baby and inside its orifices? She was pushing very hard now, as if a lance of pain were going through her.
I closed my eyes to avoid seeing a human being drowned in muck. So this was the reason why she was so secretive about the birth of babies!
“You are going to learn never to spy on people again,” I heard her saying. I was half-flying, half-walking. We broke up a fight between two hens over a long earthworm. I felt like that worm: the game was over for me. I tried to explain, but the cutting edge of Padlock’s anger, aided by a guava switch, could only slash, whack and thrash. Why wasn’t anyone coming to my rescue when I was screaming like a piglet being castrated?
Suddenly Grandma was there. At the edge of the battlefield, her head thrown back, arms across her chest, waiting to be noticed. I wanted those arms around Padlock’s neck, but on the chest they remained. Is that the best you can do? she seemed to be asking Padlock. I threw the question back in Grandma’s face.
Sensing a change in the air, Padlock stopped, momentarily embarrassed at being caught off guard. Snotty tears falling, I escaped and hid behind Grandma. A threat or two followed, and though the glass in Padlock’s eyes shone bleakly, I knew I was safe. Swollen but safe.
Now, soaked and runny with mud, I felt safe again. I was happy with the new deal. The millstone of Padlock’s temper and the bushfire of her anger were off my back. I wallowed in the mud not because I had been left behind, for children were left with their grandparents all the time, but because I had not been informed of my freedom earlier on.
I started life where most people ended it: in the baby business. Suddenly, as a midwife’s mascot-cum-assistant, I was catapulted into adult circles and felt comfortable high up there with dads and mums, heavily involved in the facilitation of the coming of their babies, privy to adult secrets, seeing adults in instances of vulnerability my age-mates would never dream of. Suddenly, I was being treated like a little prince by superstitious women who attributed their safe deliveries and the coming of long-awaited sons to my mascotry, and I had a vague claim to the life of many babies born in the village and a few surrounding villages. Suddenly, it occurred to me that I had powers of life and death, because I could give a pregnant woman herbs which might cause a miscarriage or prevent one or help the fetus to grow. All that power was as overwhelming as it was unbearable.
In my new capacity, I attended consultations—that is, pregnant women came to talk to Grandma about their gestation. They described how they felt, how long and how much they vomited and how much it stank. They gave lurid descriptions of their fevers, backaches, frequent urination, pile attacks, constipation, swollen ankles and heartburn. They discussed their appetites, fears and hopes and wanted to know up to what month before delivery they could continue to have sex. In order to deal with the last item, I would be sent off on errands, but anticipating it, I often stood behind the door and listened. Sometimes Grandma would ask the women to show her their bellies. I craved to touch those tight-skinned balloons, but I knew that I would never be granted the opportunity. Grandma stroked them, kneaded them, felt them, and advised the women accordingly. If a case needed closer examination, she would take the woman behind the house, and I would hear them whispering or laughing or arguing. They would return with the woman fastening her belt or pulling down the hem of her skirt.
For the herbal medicines she gave the women, Grandma combed the forest, the garden, the bush and the swamps and came up with leaves, bark and roots. I accompanied her with a bag or a basket, and I watched as she worked. She plucked the leaves skill
fully, removing the old ones and sparing the sprouting tender ones, careful to preserve the plant. She rarely pulled out whole plants, except when she was going to use the roots, the stem and the leaves. For the bark, she used a knife or a small hoe and removed the outer layer, which would quickly grow back. She always covered the roots with soil and tied banana leaves on stems she had deprived of thick layers of bark. I often grew impatient, urging her to let the trees take care of themselves, but she would not budge and insisted that those trees were our asset, and that it was our duty to preserve them.
Our village, Mpande Hill, and the swamp always made me think of an octopus, the hill representing the head, the swamp the long tortuous tentacles snaking round our village. And my observation of the swamp, and the way we approached it, made me believe it was a living thing, a large snake we warily attacked from the sides. The water, sometimes crystal clear, sometimes black, green or brown, was always cold and full of life: dragonflies, tadpoles, little fishes, leeches, frog spawn in long slimy strands and plants with matted roots that resembled long hair being pulled. As we walked in the shallows we were wary of the sharp-bladed bulrushes and of poisonous plants. This was the least popular part of the expedition, resulting in lacerated skin, wet clothes, insect bites and all sorts of discomfort because some of the plants we needed were in clusters surrounded by relatively deep water and hostile objects.
Among the herbs we collected were some which had to be taken raw, or crushed into a pulp and rubbed on the belly, on the back and into joints. Others we simply immersed in bathwater, roots, spawn, soil particles and all. The rest were dried in the sun and packed in plastic bags for future use. The most important herb was the one which helped to widen pelvic bones, thereby facilitating dilation and delivery. Women had to drink it and bathe in it twice or thrice a day throughout pregnancy. Grandma warned them sternly about the consequences of negligence, which included, among other things, the suffocation or deformity of babies and sometimes the death of both mother and baby.
In addition to administering herbal measures, Grandma advised the women to eat nutritious foods: meat, fish, eggs, soybeans, greens and more. In those days, most women were just learning to eat chicken, eggs and scaleless fish, which up to then had been eaten exclusively by men and despised and denigrated by women. A self-respecting, well-bred woman would deign to cook them but would not bring them anywhere near her well-bred mouth.
Tiida was the first woman in the area to take up her aunt’s call for change. The conservatives said she broke chicken legs and slurped egg slime like a man, and that her babies would be born with feathers all over them and little wings instead of arms. She laughed at them, and at the greedy men who still denied their wives and daughters these delicacies. Everyone waited for feathered babies to be pulled out of Tiida, but she bred only healthy offspring. Now the women were largely convinced, with only a residual minority of die-hard skeptics. Aunt Nakatu was among the latter group: she somehow never got over the taboo. She tried chicken a few times, but complained about its smell.
Prenatal care was the glamour part of the baby business. Trouble broke loose with delivery. Babies, those little monsters, chose to come at odd times: deep in the night, very early in the morning or in the rainy season or at Christmas. And some enjoyed making everyone tense: the pangs would begin, the water would break, but then they would refuse to emerge for hours or even days. It was often under those inopportune circumstances that Grandma and I discovered that the advice and the exhortations had either been followed not at all or only partially or badly.
Many women neglected the daily herbal baths and imbibings which helped pelvic dilation. This exercise was called breaking bones. “How often did you break?” Grandma, suspecting the worst, would ask. Horrifying answers would come, dripping from flaky, fear-twisted lips. Hearing the same woman scream and express the fear that she was going to die would make one say, under one’s breath, that she deserved every ounce of pain she got, though for us that was no consolation at all, because the baby still had to come out.
I was not allowed to witness the actual moment of birth. I always left when the woman lay down on her back, a pillow under her head, legs up under the sheet, perspiration dotting her face, fear popping under her eyelids, panic just a breath away, with Grandma combatting waves of hysteria. At such moments Grandma was like a goddess, a priestess, an oracle whose every gesture, every sigh, every twitch spoke volumes. At the flick of her finger, I would leave the arena, an acrid smell in my nose, the picture of the woman’s face deeply etched in my mind, the sound of her voice buzzing in my ears, a vague evaluation of her chances coursing through my head.
At the beginning of my stint, I used to be afraid that the woman was going to die. I would quake and quiver, with sharp pains kicking up storms in my breast. Each woman cried differently, and with some it felt as if their blood would be on your hands, and on the hands of your children’s children, if they died. The men, gloomy and silent, were not reassuring either. They seemed to be studying every fluctuation, every nuance in the woman’s vociferations, as though waiting to pounce on you the moment they were sure that she had drawn her last breath. Half my mind would be busy with the woman, visualizing her anguish and her efforts, and half would be working out the safest escape route, but sometimes it went on for so long that I dozed off and slept, the woman’s screams fading away like wisps of smoke in the evening sky, until I would be jogged back into wakefulness.
I would go outside and be whipped by the smell of cow dung or pig shit or goat urine, depending on what animals were kept by the family. On rainy days the pigsties, oozing liquid shit, stank to high heaven, worse than the sodden kraals and the waterlogged cow pens. This stink and the runny shit I often stepped into didn’t endear animals to me in general.
It was in everyone’s interest for the delivery to go well. If all failed and the woman, with baby head peeping or leg popping, had to be rushed to the hospital, the resultant cloud of tension and anxiety messed up everyone’s peace of mind. There was only one car in the village, owned by a scion of Stefano, but it was more often than not out of order. It would often stop dead on the road, and he’d ask us to help push it.
The chronic unreliability of this machine meant that somebody would have to find a van to take the woman to the hospital, because in that condition she was in no position to sit on a bicycle. The most annoying aspect of it all, however, was that most of these cases had had prior warnings from doctors not to risk delivering at home. They always had reasons for not complying.
The transformation adults underwent with the onslaught of pain both fascinated and frightened me. Women who normally worked like horses, digging, fetching water, carrying mountains of firewood, washing hills of clothes and the like, would suddenly be reduced to whimpering wrecks, head turning this way and that, arms beating weakly, legs gone rubbery, self-control in tatters. They reminded me of a dog under attack from thousands of bees or a teetering paper canoe in a stormy swamp.
It was equally fascinating to see the same women after the baby had arrived. They seemed to have sweated out all the pain, all the anguish, all the nightmares, and were open to joy, relief and satisfaction. I would see them laughing, smiling, beaming, shedding tears of joy, as though what had occurred before had been a joke, a mere bit of playacting.
The cause of all the prior commotion would lie there glistening like a baby monkey soaked in grease or a piglet immersed in crude oil, all wrinkles and purple membrane, the ugly umbilical cord popping with each exhalation. Our ordeal would be over. Dissolving into the air would be all the lost sleep, all the past anxiety, all the fizzled tension, all the sacrificial blood of cocks beheaded, cocks strangled or cocks buried alive at witch doctors’ shrines.
My first delivery was the hardest and the most memorable. The messenger woke us up just after midnight. It had rained, and a cold wind was blowing, rustling the iron sheets of the roof and making tree branches wail. Contemplating the discomfort outside made the bed feel war
mer and sleep seem sweeter. Hearing the unwelcome caller made me wish the wind would carry him away and bury him in a ditch till day broke, but there was no stopping such individuals; they acted with the urgency of boiling milk on the rise.
Grandma called me several times, and I feigned sleep, like the children in Uncle Kawayida’s story who overheard their parents fucking. She shook me and I woke up with a start. She laughed and I laughed too, but that was where the levity ended. I had seen the woman in question twice; she was short and thin, her belly like a sack of potatoes strapped onto her frail body. Why hadn’t she gone to the hospital? I wished death on her, and then I revoked my wish because, whichever way it turned out, we still had to put in an appearance.
The messenger, a big adolescent boy with thick calves, had come on a bicycle, but Grandma would not sit on it despite his great expertise (he regularly carried coffee sacks up the implacable Mpande Hill to the mill, and participated in the suicidal downhill races in which one could brake only with one’s bare heels). I sat on the carrier for part of the way, but the bumps were so bad that I decided to walk. We arrived caked in mud. I had damaged a toenail on a rock, but there was no time for self-pity because of the turmoil at our destination.
The boy’s father, big, dark, tall, was trembling and his teeth were chattering as he bit back his tears. The woman was wailing, thinly, as if she were using the very last of her energy. This was more frightening than the more energetic, full-voiced screaming I heard on latter missions. This was the cry of a woman with a dead baby inside her, heavy like a sack of stones. It was the cry of a dog dying after being beaten by a horde of boys for stealing eggs or for biting somebody. She was calling for a priest, of all people! I peeped inside the room, saw the popping eyes, smelled the long labor and something else I could not name, and I drew back. It took Grandma two hours to deliver the baby. It should have been a large, thick-waisted parcel, but on the contrary, it was as small as a fist. We spent the rest of the night with the family. The puny baby woke us up in the morning with such a screech that Grandma glowed with pride.
Abyssinian Chronicles Page 9