I say approximately for two reasons: (1) I was not present at the time. (2) The clock on the wall of the clinic ward reads, permanently, 10:42.
The story of Mirabi (also pronounced Meleby--it's pretty much the same thing, and spellings are malleable here) begins somewhere around last July. My host parents, whose field is a few kilometers away, had been spending all their time harvesting, even sleeping in a makeshift thatch shelter in the field to protect their crops. Although I had gone a few times to help harvest, I hadn't really seen much of them for at least six weeks. When the maize and beans and groundnuts were all in, they returned to their home, and I noticed for the first time that my host mother seemed a bit more rotund than she had previously. Not long after that, she was busy crocheting, and when I asked what she was making she responded, "A baby blanket," but offered no more.
As the eldest of seven, I have vague recollections of my mother's numerous pregnancies, and I know that inquiring about one's gestational status requires delicacy and tact. In general, if someone wants you to know, she'll tell you. No word was mentioned, but fter a few more weeks, it seemed obvious to me that she was expecting, so I casually asked, "Kwashyala imyezi inga?" = "How many months remaining?" She laughed and said, "For what?"
Quickly, I backpedaled, just as I would have done in the U.S. "To go back into the fields," I said. Planting. Whether she bought it or not, I'm not sure, but the topic never came up again.
In October, I spent a week visiting a community school about 20 kilometers away. I cycled back early Saturday morning, got my house in order, and went to the Seventh Day Adventist church where my host family are members. I saw my siblings but not my host mother. Afterward, a young woman named Jane, from whom I often buy paraffin, pencils, and the like in one of the small shops that line the business area of our village, told me that my mother was in the clinic. "Yalkulwala?" I asked; "is she sick?" Jane tilted her head and raised her eyebrows suggestively. "It's time?" I ventured as a second guess. She nodded in affirmation. It's time. So I gathered up my little siblings/cousins (it's all the same) and headed to the clinic near our house.
When we arrived, I found my mother resting on one of the thin clinic mattresses. Several other women, including her grandmother and sister-in-law, where seated on the other mattress and the floor of the small room. I took a spot on the floor and chatted with the women. Soon, one of them broke out lunch--nshima, the staple food, and vegetables to eat with it. We ate communally and talked until I needed to leave for a meeting with a teacher, promising to return. In the evening, I returned and sat until dark, when I decided it'd probably be best to go home.
In the morning, my family compound was quiet. The children old enough to work were in the field; there weren't many others around. I spent a few hours digging in my garden, washing laundry by hand, and building the beginnings of a thatch fence for the garden, accompanied by the two little sisters whose mother had gone to the clinic a bit earlier. A bit after 9:00 a.m., the girls and I set off for the clinic. "Yalwala," they said, explaining that their aunt was sick. "Awe," I replied. "Tumakwata baby!" = No, we're going to have a baby. Clearly, it seemed, I had not been the only one left in the dark about the forthcoming child.
When we arrived, the clinic was calm. My mother, noticeably slimmer, was stretched out on a mattress in the delivery ward. Her grandmother was holding the new baby girl, who had silky hair and pale skin. Having lived this scene many times before as a proud big sister, I was struck by the clean but bare room. There were no monitors, no IVs. No television, no balloons, no flowers. Just a suitcase with some personal belongings, a mother, a baby, and some family members who'd come to help. We had only been sitting and admiring the baby for a few minutes when the other women in the room gathered up the belongings they had brought--dishes, blankets, and the like--and made sure the room was tidy. Then we set off together--even the exhausted mother, who'd given birth only hours before--simply walking out of the clinic and crossing through a small field and a soccer pitch that separates the clinic compound from our houses.
The day continued much as usual, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The older siblings returned from the field in no rush, hoes over their shoulders. They did not rush to meet the new baby or show any excitement; though I could see that they were excited, it was subdued. There was a strange hush of calm permeating the area.
The father, unfortunately, was not there to greet his baby, nor would he be for another two weeks. He was tending to another cycle of life; his twin sister had passed away just days before in Lusaka, the country's capital. It made me wonder: was this lack of celebration, this business-as-usual approach to this precious new child a safeguard on emotion? After all, death is not uncommon here, and the first few days of an infant's life can be a precarious time, particularly since they are not monitored and tested and coddled in a newborn ward, tended to by doctors. A colleague told me that the birth of a new baby is a time of giving thanks to God because the mother has survived the dangerous ordeal of childbirth. I saw Mirabi's entrance into the world as a parallel to my own entrance to Zambia, as she had to have been conceived right around the time my plane touched African tarmac. It will be exciting to watch her grow...even if it's a sort of subdued excitement.
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| Meleby at 18 months, in April 2013 |
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