Shae' log: A lifetime away from Winnie Palmer (hospital)

Dear Iren~

I just learned your name on Saturday, but I’ve been thinking about you for weeks. I keep thinking about where you are, what you are doing right now, and whom you are with? Are you happy? Are you ok? Do you have enough food? Shelter? Are you alone? Is there family around you? Are you healthy? Feel safe? Where are you Iren? We’ve looked for you but its as if you never were…

Over the last few weeks I’ve been wondering about your pregnancy. I wonder if you were excited? Were you devastated? Or were you just numb and accepted it blankly like so many women here tend to do. I know that once you became pregnant you went to live with your partner’s family but what was that like for you? Did you feel accepted? I imagine that you started up the work routine that is required of all women, pregnant or not, to sustain the life of the family. Were you just exhausted? Were you scared? Or did you just pretend as if there was no child growing inside you and kept on like all was ok? Even when it wasn’t? The day that you went into labor, did you walk alone the two miles-- down the mountain-- from the family compound to catch the public bus that would drop you near the hospital… but not exactly to it? I imagine that you walked, stone faced, and only paused to let a contraction subside but never changing your facial expression to let on the incredible pain you must have been feeling. Did you even know that you were in preterm labor? Or did your lack of medical care trick you into thinking that this was when you were supposed to be delivering a baby? Did you actually make it make to Arushatown to be with your family before delivery? I can’t get a clear answer from anyone. I wonder…

Iren, I wonder if you know the incredible burden you laid on the Ngowi family when you left your baby girl and walked away?

I wonder if you know the incredible blessing you gave the Beery family by not coming back to get her?

Iren, I’ve been wondering about your delivery. I’ve now visited two hospital maternity wards and the grimness is all the same. Were you angry to be left in antenatal laboring in a room full of other women? Were the midwives kind to you or did they yell “walk faster” as you made your way to the delivery room? Did anyone help you to the bed or were you forced to press through the contractions and hop on the bed before the baby delivered on the floor? Were you the expected silent as our 5 lb miracle girl made her way into the world? How did you keep quiet when only minutes later the midwives tugged on your cord to pull out the placenta, whether it was detached from your uterus or not? And only minutes after that, with the fluids of birth draining from your body and most likely onto the floor, how did you muster enough strength to walk yourself, your baby, and your soiled bed sheets down the hall and into post partum? How did you do it? The smell of blood and urine soaks every mattress of that room and yet you probably had to share said mattress with another woman. What were you thinking? Or had pain and exhaustion overshadowed the miracle of new life? No uterine massage. No congratulations. No pain meds. Just you, baby Happy, and the reality of east African life. I’m in awe of you and I barely know your name…

I’m told that you live close to where I am. But will I ever see you? Now that I know your name, I will always be looking, wondering, if every Iren I meet is you. And will I know its you? When I look at your baby girl she has this beautiful dark chocolate skin, round pudgy face, and a cute Chagga nose. It’s the same features I see on every member of her father’s family. But her eyes… those eyes… they just have to be from you. They are the brightest brown eyes, piercingly beautiful, and so defined—which means they can only come from someone who possesses the same.

But if I look into your eyes, what will I see? Will it be the naiveté of a young women? Will I find someone physically mature with immature emotions? Will your eyes be the passageway revealing the hollow shell of a person you once were? Or worse…will I see regret? My heart breaks for you. My heart aches for you. My head doesn’t know what to say to you…

So I guess I’ll say “thank you.” Iren, thank you for your sacrifice. I don’t know if having this child was ever in your plan. But God has put blessings upon her life. All in authority have collectively concluded that she is destined for something beyond East Africa and have given the responsibility over to me. And I’m grateful. So grateful.

Love,

Mama Happy 2

** pictures courtesy of Eileen Dolan and Rachel Glass. Thanks to the many great volunteers that came before me, were there with me, covered over my absence, and come back to visit, I have pictures of Happy from her first days at Cradle and beyond. My thanks to them for sharing their photos**