Reality
Coming off of a wonderful safari time in both Queen Elizabeth National Park and Lake Mburo National Park with follow up time in Kampala that was both restful and productive, we are feeling good. (more to follow on those!)
Literally minutes after our arrival into our home village, reality hits. While we are still in our vehicle in front of another mission home, helping with a problem refrigerator needed to store cold Kampala food, two women from the Akolimpe family come running up. Annit’s baby is coming, parts have already come, and other parts won’t come out . . . .
Pat, whose car is empty, carries Annit to the health center. We can only imagine her pain in the bumpy journey. There she delivers, or “produces” as they say here, a little girl. A stillborn baby girl. Cord prolapse, a not unheard of birth complication which requires immediate medical intervention to save the life of the baby. Her intervention was clearly less than immediate and perhaps even in the health center, insufficiently medically advanced.
Only one hour later, after Daniel and others have helped us unload our vehicle, after we have rubbed many soft and wonderful children’s heads and shouted many greetings, and been caught up on lots of news, we see Pat’s vehicle returning home. The Akolimpes are the family who lives right beside us, a clan group with about 5 separate families and 25-30 children. I am holding Oliva in my arms, Annit’s two year old daughter, her firstborn. All the children shout and they run off. I know Annit will not be ready to see Oliva, to hear her questions. I think of her milk, her body already beginning the process of production, with no baby to drink it.
I ask Daniel what is appropriate here in such a situation, can I go there tonight? He says yes. I run up as Pat prepares to leave and ask her also. It is okay to go tonight? Then grab a “torch” or flashlight, and follow the children to Barungie and Annit’s house.
It is dusk now, and inside the tiny mud-walled room, a single tiny kerosene lantern burns brightly. Women of the clan make room for me on the floor of the hut, on Annit’s own thin mattress, “osita me” – you sit. I sit, and murmur “buke buke” which means sorry, sorry, but don’t know much else to say. Words make no sense right now anyway, as Annit moans softly and moves against the after-pains that grip her. She seems to hurt a lot. Next to her lies a small still bundle, her baby. How amazed and grateful I am to be so close to this precious one whose soul has already left us for a better place. Never have I lived so closely with death. Never have I shared so immediately a family’s pain.
I am surprised to see that no one but me is crying. But I weep, quietly and unstoppably, holding Oliva in my arms. Her eyes are big and wide and her body full of tension. How can she know or understand what is happening. Her father nowhere to be found still, her mother in such pain, and this visitor, cold and still on the mat in her place beside her mother. I wonder what damage is now happening in her little heart that may never be repaired.
Visitors keep stopping by briefly. The women discuss quickly and sharply amongst themselves, the events of the birth and death. I don’t understand most of what they say, but sometimes I get the gist. I suppose this is how they process, though to me it seems insufferable with Annitt still there, still in pain. Pat has sent a soda and ibuprofen and I marvel at this strong woman who must endure these conditions with almost no support after such a trying labor, delivery and such a sad outcome. I insist that she should be given the soda. Apparently she was in labor for quite a while but did not tell anyone.
As we sit quietly inside the tiny hut, perhaps 4′ by 8′, our bodies pushed up against each other, Oliva sleeping now in my arms, we hear a sound at the door. Barungie the father and husband, has finally been located. No cell phones here, no pagers, just bota-bota (motorcycle taxi) for emergency searches, only word of mouth and the passing of news person to person to bring a father for his wife’s hour of need.
Now I feel like an intruder, as we all push back from Annitt to give room for the father. He cries loudly and deeply. He wraps himself around his child. He is oblivious to all of us. I don’t know if he wishes me to see him this way but there is no way to leave. I am now pushed into the side storage area of the hut, alongside a family of rats and some basins and a hoe. Still holding Oliva. Leaving would be VERY difficult.
Now they take the baby and wash it, with warm water, not too hot. How can you treat this still small thing as anything less than alive, though clearly she is not. Her tiny face, arms, feet and hands so perfectly formed. Her mass of dark hair still wet from birth. I keep watching for a rise and fall from her chest, perhaps they have been mistaken. This baby cannot really be dead.
Eventually I find my way out, as Annit rises to go to the bathroom. No bed pans here, no catheters, no hospital bed to be easily gotten out of, no nurses to help. Only clan and one’s own strength, summoned for unbearable need. How I aches for Annit, for all these women, who suffer so. The death of a baby is a common bond here. They do not cry because they know this pain and it is a familiar one.
I go home and gather an ice cold pitcher of water and mix with lemonade mix sent from our church, a little sugar to sustain her. I put roasted nuts into a tupperware. I take our new Christmas kitangi cloth, somehow I know, this cloth was never meant for us. It must be to wrap this baby in so that she may rest in something fit for the princess, the daughter of the King that she is. I carry these small things over to the family and hand them in. Once again, gifts must poorly suffice for greater comfort and a real meeting of need. I have prayed with them already in the darkness of the hut. Now I say “otigala na yesu”, stay with Jesus, and walk slowly away.
This is reality, this is life. I have shifted for a short time, to glory in the wilds of Uganda, to see Jesus in amazing sunrises and sunsets, to hear him in the roar of lions sleeping around our tents. That too is reality. The glory of creation as He made it and the brokenness of creation that we now find ourselves in. The depths of joy and the depths of suffering. This is our life. We can do nothing but embrace it while allowing Him to embrace us. The Mabwise have learned this first embracing pretty well and now they are teaching it to me. Somehow, leaving that hut, I was less afraid than I’ve ever been of the death of someone close to me. Death is. Horrible, tragic, and completely painful. But fully reality. Just as our suffering IS, and our deep joy IS.
As I told a young man shortly before we left, hoping that coming from me, he could still hear it . .
“This is your life. It’s the only one you have. You can think of many ways it could or should be different. But it’s not different. God has created you for this life, He knows your pain and your suffering. He knows your need. He knows the way through. If you are only searching for a way out, how will God hold you through it? Be the man God created you to be. Throw everything that you are on Him and trust Him with your life and your path through life. Whether it be what you hope or not, it is all that you have to live, live it well. We all suffer, we all struggle. I know many here who struggle and suffer more than you and some less than you. We all have only one good option. To throw all that we are on Jesus and walk in His strength through everything that comes.”
Small words for big pain. I have nothing more to offer than Jesus. Anything but Him is completely insufficient anyway. And truly He is all that we need.
