Questioning

This is hard. I feel quiet again. Like I cannot process enough to turn these experiences into words that are condensed enough to put forward as an offering.

E.M Forster believed narrative could be ‘truer than history because it goes beyond evidence, and “each of us knows from his own experience that there is something beyond evidence”.

There are not words to speak the body. Language is inadequate, lacking the depth of perception and affect to describe textured sensations such as sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. To narrate the body through words is in some ways is to miss it entirely.

Humans frame understanding of experience in terms of narrative account. When we try to understand why things happen, we put events in temporal order, making decisions about beginnings, middles and ends or causes and effects by virtue of imposing plots on otherwise chaotic events. Yet, the stories of the bodies that birth are separate from the accounts that the women give of themselves. I believe this to be a global truth.

It is not surprising that the dominant metaphors describing birth in the late twentieth century are characterized by mechanical images in which a woman’s body is fragmented into working parts over which she has little control. As Emily Martin in The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction, phrases it “medically, birth is seen as the control of laborers (women) and their machines (their uteruses) by managers (doctors) often using other machines to help”. The canonical obstetrics text-book Williams Obstetrics encapsulates the mechanicity of the dominant medical view; it defines birth as “the complete expulsion or extraction from the mother of a fetus”. In every act of childbearing two stories are simultaneously produced, a story of what the ‘body’ does and a story of what the ‘woman’ does; the ‘body’ might dilate slowly while the ‘woman’ screams out for help. The body and the woman intersect and influence one another while still managing to maintain independent realities.

A traumatic day (for me) at the hospital- the necessary equipment just isn’t there. There is no suction. No suture kits. No sterile gauze. And I don’t think it’s that the midwives don’t care, but there is some sort of passive acceptance of the situation, so in an emergency it feels like everybody just walks away. Attempts to save babies or hemorrhaging women are half hearted and then the blame is placed on poverty and a lack of supplies. In truth, some of the supplies could be here. Sterile cotton wool and suture kits are in the hospital, there is just no consistent method of getting them from the supply room into the maternity ward. The suction device simply needs a new plastic tube in order to work…but nobody is advocating to get it fixed, even though a baby dies here once a month for lack of it working. I feel stuck in an impossible situation. Acceptance of poor conditions means nothing will change and my outsider perspective is received as hope for a handout. I can buy some cotton wool for the hospital, but it will be gone in a week. Sustainability comes with accountability. Where is the anger? I wonder. Perhaps to anger is also a privilege.

Sister Rosemary's sister was describing to me a bridge she has to cross occasionally. It has no railings and she feels close to death every time she crosses it. She is upset about it. She feels the government should put up rails to fix it. Her daughter jumped into the conversation and said yes but mommy, they cross it every day so for them it is normal. You are an outsider so the conditions anger you, but for them, it is just the way things are. Is this what is happening in the hospital? Acceptance of sub par conditions because it is just ‘the way things are’? Is this what keeps a slave a slave? A victim a victim?

The women I have engaged with in the labor ward remain stoic with their emotions. Almost apathetic. The midwives work quietly and without showing a trace of feeling, except for anger. If a woman is not pushing effectively, the midwives will begin to yell and slap her into pushing. After the birth, she will return to her normal static state. Almost like New Yorkers in a traffic jam. The anger bubbles to the surface but then disappears after the incident.

Pregnant women walk quietly, kneel down on the floor as a sign of respect for the midwives when they enter the labor ward, and then often remain stoic throughout early labor. If asked how they are they will without exception answer ‘fine’. Some look a bit sad or scared, but of course this is my interpretation and may have no reflection of the actual truth. The hall is full of women who remain calm and collected, almost detached, until they are in second stage of labor and are allowed entry into the maternity ward. The moment a woman places her plastic sheet on the metal bed, it is as if permission is given to set the apathy aside. Many women instantly and almost inevitably begin to scream and wail and fling their limbs about wildly. They roll on the bed and ask for Jesus to save them. Eyes glaze over and women pee and shit all over themselves without seeming to notice or care. It is a dramatic performance of extremes and is staged by almost every woman I have witnessed give birth at Gulu Hospital. The moment the baby is born, the melodrama ends. Women become stoic again, show no interest in seeing their babies and at most may flash a smile or a quiet thank you to the midwives. The moment of possession is over. The scene of childbirth offers permission to emote, but it is a package deal when it is over, it is over.

I want to explore apathy. It doesn’t seem like an authentic human emotion. Children aren’t born apathetic. It is learned. Is learned the right word? Perhaps it comes into existence through traumatic experience and suppression of emotion. Maybe it is passed down and transmitted from mother to child, brother to sister. What purpose does it serve?
How can childbirth be a vehicle for processing emotion and raising voices?

I do not have answers. Only more questions. Which I love. I am grateful for the opportunity to see and to emote freely and to question, question question. What a gift.