Moses Isegawa - Abyssinian Chronicles

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 skillfully, 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.