Newborn

14 November

        I was stoked last Wednesday to have a night in solitude, listen to the softness of Joanna Newsom stroke her six-string and perhaps attempt to write a process recording. As I eagerly propped up the flat screen on the computer, the door of our place gradually opened, and delicately entered our six foot three inch, 22 year old, soft-hearted male neighbor. With a slight smile on his face he sat down and greeted me in the local language. In a sort of unauthentic warm response, I internally thought, “Shucks, I was really looking forward to a night alone.” After chatting in brevity, Jacob quite subtly stated, “Christine is somehow not feeling well.” Christine is his fun-loving, goofy and overly pregnant older sister. For the past week, I’ve been joking around with her, speaking in broken Acholi that if she needs to have the baby in the middle of the night, wake me up and I’d drive her to the hospital. You see, at our house, the director of my internship has a mini-van type vehicle. Our place is constructed of cement while no other living facilities in the vicinity are designed in such a privileged fashion. The vehicle is clearly the only one within some kilometers.
        “What??!!” I yelled. “Is she going to have the baby now?” “You see the problem is transportation and none of us know how to drive,” peacefully declared Jacob. “Does she need me to take her? Let’s go!!” I slammed down the face of the computer, grabbed the car key and ran out the green door. The director of our organization (who runs the household) was away in Kampala for the week, and therefore left the car key with me to start the engine every other day since the car is “almost broken.” As I hurriedly jogged down the dirt path to her grass roofed, mud hut, I found Christine in what I consider deep labor pains. Her gentle and beautifully situated mother was sincerely aiding her daughter while preparing belongings to sleep on the hospital floor. The overly friendly, gracious women had a look in them that was foreign to me. Thus, I realized now was a moment to remain serious.
        Six of us piled in the stalling minivan, and since I don’t even particularly drive in the US, I was confused and opened the left door thinking it was the driver’s side. “Jesus,” I thought and I’m going to be escorting this family through these deeply cracked, crater embedded village dirt roads to the main government hospital. After nearly tipping the vehicle on the first cavern in the road, we slowly reached a wooden shop illuminated by a single candle. Christine’s mother and Jacob ran out of the car to fetch the two items required to give birth at Gulu Government Hospital. While they were out of the car, Christine’s pains intensified and through moans and the grinding of her teeth she loudly yelled in English, “Jesus Christ.” As a wave of my heated blood rushed from my toes to forehead, I fretfully and worriedly internally demanded, “Oh please don’t let this woman have a baby right now in the car.”
        The treacherous ride finally terminated as we bumped our way towards the maternity ward of the awfully rundown, cracked hospital buildings. As soon as Jacob opened Christine’s door, she immediately fell to the damp cement ramp leading to the ward, with a strikingly painful look in her wide eyes. The older looking nurse, decked out in a one piece faded blue skirt outfit which looked as if it was from the 1940s, showed further interest in the munu, then the ailing patient.
        As I dragged behind the two family members aiding Christine hobble down the main hall, I was floored at the shattered infrastructure of the government hospital. “Wow, how Lacor Hospital seems magnificent compared to this place,” I told myself. Dimly lit, dorm-style dirty hospital rooms, and scores of women sleeping on mats on the nasty floor leading up to the maternity ward immediately caught my eyes. Through the corner of my right eye, I noticed Christine’s mom pass along what appeared to be a folded up black tarp, and something else I couldn’t make out, to the nurse. I was curious, so I inquired with another member of our crew, a 19 year old male cousin to the patient. “If you don’t have those two things, you will not be allowed to have a baby here.” Through our discourse, I was informed that the required articles were a plastic tarp-like bed sheet that is laid down as the mother is giving birth. “That is for all of the blood and other things that come out with the baby,” frankly stated this chap. The other item is a razor blade, which is to cut the umbilical cord. He went on, “Without them, they will turn you away, even if you are about to have a baby.” Through further inquiry I was informed those two items are equivalent to about $1.50. “So you see Neil, government hospitals are free but the problem is if you look around you can see that they are not very organized.” With those words, the electricity cut out and we were standing in the stuffy, smelly overly crowded hallway in complete darkness. Thankfully, light returned shortly afterward.
        I wondered where the father of the child currently was, and was kindly informed, “He will not be around, as he’s distanced himself from Christine.” With those words, I felt an increasingly sharp degree of frustration towards males in general. In no specific means, is this an isolated case. Gender normative and hierarchal regimes continue to dominate this lifestyle.
        Our clan arrived at Gulu Hospital at 9:17pm, and slightly after 10pm the baby boy was born. Yesterday, I sat in the small hut where Christine, her sister, her mother, and five of their children huddle around one another while nightly sleeping on straw mats that occupy floor space. Cradling the newborn while sitting cross-legged on the floor ignited a sense of astonishment and awe. Everything associated with caring for a day old being is entirely novel to my ignorant, non-childrearing self. Thus, I inevitably compared newborn procedures in my white Western world with those of Christine and her family. I instinctively pondered what sort of lawsuits would fly if the power cut out at your average white Western maternity ward in the U.S.? How would a standard white female feel about delivering in Gulu Government Hospital while her mother lay cramped on an unmopped, filthy floor? More so, what would Christine’s experience resonate to her soul if she had the privilege of birthing at a suburban hospital in Vermont? Would she be grateful, weirded out, and remain additionally reminded of her black, subjugated status? How many white people in the U.S. have brought their day old babies home to compete for and occupy tightly crammed floor space?
        I realize these questions must be analyzed and constructed in a culturally specific contextual framework. However, the essential underpinning is that Christine and her sisters in northern Uganda are identical to our sisters in the West in that they’re all human beings. Do humans adapt to what they lack or are privileged enough to obtain? I’ll continue to hold and observe these internal thoughts as I attempt to amply hang out with this little dude in the next few months.

So much for having a Neil night and writing process recordings.