All in a Day

All in a Day’s Work

By Janet Fournier

It seems, after working hard all day, that there is always someone waiting at the house to have a tooth pulled or a wound cleansed and bandaged. After one of those days, I crawled into bed dog-tired. At 11:10 PM I heard voices outside. I got up to see what was happening. Baraza, my Bible worker, met me at the door to tell me someone needed a ride to the hospital.

“They are near the village elementary school,” he said.

“Ok,” I said, “I’ll be right out.”

I manoeuvered the Mitsubishi through the village roads (foot paths, actually) and stopped where we could go no further. Bag of gloves in hand, I led Baraza down a narrow path. Finally, on a little patch of grass, we found a 17 year-old girl. A lady supported her back and between her legs was her grandmother, holding a baby. They were desperate. The placenta was not fully delivered, the girl’s uterus was partially out, and they didn’t know what to do. (As far as I can tell, they had been on the trail for as long as two and one half hours.) Soon after I arrived, a man came by making his way from the bar to his home. I asked if anyone had a new razor blade. He had bought two that day and one was still in his pocket. So I tightened the knot around the umbilical cord, freed the baby, and gave instructions to wrap it up warm.

The placenta followed nicely and I managed to push the uterus back in. Someone helped the girl into the pickup, and we were off to the hospital. Well, not before we stopped to get food, a cooking pot and a wrap for the baby. (The hospital doesn’t supply these things.)

At the hospital we faced another obstacle—they wouldn’t answer the door. We rang the door bell over and over again. Finally, a security guard came to tell us he had called inside and they were coming. (I guess they have no emergencies in this hospital. It seemed like forever before they let us in.) After pushing the stretcher to the delivery room, the baby was put under a warmer and seemed to do well. The mother also did fine after some very rough prodding and poking and stitching. The baby even tried to suck, but the girl was not in the mood for mothering.

Two days later, I went to the girl’s house to see how things were going. Both mother and baby were home and doing well.

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This is life for young people in the villages. The girl’s grandmother had wanted her to take our sewing course, but she claims she was tricked into letting her granddaughter become a house girl in Dar Es Salaam. Not long after, she came home pregnant. Sad, but all too common. Hence, the burden God has given me for these youth.