Life and Death

It happens here, neither with much fanfare, death and birth.
On Christmas day, a 20'something year old man died from organ failure, because of his hard and destructive life style. He died on the day he was born, years before. His mother was there when he was born and she was there when he died, and almost no one else. The funeral was in Morto, and was reported that almost no one attended that either. She is one of the clinic staff named Josephine.

Just about the time of the burial of this young man, his aunt gave birth to her 8th child. Joyce gave birth with her mother with her to help. But no one else was there. Later one of her older children came to the compound to tell why his mother had not come for work that day and to ask for soap and a basin and blankets and pain medicine for his mother. He also didn't know what sex the child was, that's not important right now, they are waiting to see how things go.

In this culture they don't plan ahead for the birth of a child, they don't buy things until after the child is a few days old. Why?? Because many times they don't live very long and then you would have wasted all that money on things that you don't need right now. And to store it for the next birth would mean that you must risk a neighbor asking you for it and you would be obilagated to give it, and you would be out alot of money. So after the birth then you get what you can from your neighbors and then you buy the rest.

Here you don't announce that you are pregnant, you don't even tell your husband for many months and then you can use that information against the other wife. Husbands don't spend time with the pregnant one after they are around 5 months, so wives hold back that information so they can keep the husband away from the other wife for as long as possible. Most village wives are left to the care of their mothers until delivery. If you don't have a living mother then it is the mother-in-law who helps in the delivery. Around here most of the births are still at home in the dirt and filth and old practices of cutting and bleeding and other horrors. They will beat a first time mother is they think that the mother is doing something to keep from delivering the baby. They will with hold food and water and beat themwith a stick until she goes into labor, many times from the trauma, and then she will have problems delivering, why??? Because she has been beaten, given nothing to eat of drink for a few days and is probably only 13-14 years old!!!!!!! No wonder the survival rate is so low!!!!!!