Tales from the Bush

This is a short list of some of the crazy things I’ve seen in my village. 

Disclaimer: I take none of these situations lightly. Not for the faint of heart.

• I’ve witnessed many deaths, infants to adults. Seeing the actual moment when the person loses consciousness and the body becomes a machine slowly shutting down is an experience hard to explain.  If spirits exist I believe that I’ve seen the when a spirit leaves the body. The point when the pain seems to be irrelevant, breathing becomes mechanical- almost pump like, and they stop responding to external stimuli. After this point the family usually realizes that their loved one is gone. I’ve seen a mom strap her unconscious twitching toddler to her back and take him home. The child was beyond treatment. The nurses seem so numbed by death. They face almost every situation with such a frank cavalierness, it’s almost frightening. I wonder if this is an inevitable state that everyone dealing with death on a regular basis enters. If so, does anyone try and fight it? Is it worth fighting? Is this numb outlook the only way to stay sane in these kinds of professions?

• I walk into the birthing room one morning to greet my midwives and see that they are with a patient. They cheerily welcome me in and I go through the list of salutations while trying not to be distracted by the massive amounts of blood and fluids all over the floor. I’ve seen countless child births and its no dry day in the sun, but this amount of fluid is not normal. One of the nurses says, ‘twins!’ I get excited and start looking around. Where are these bouncing balls of brown joy? I want to see some twinnies! I ask her where the little rugrats are and she reaches under the table and pulls out a bedpan containing even more fluid and to my dismay, premature (maybe 6 months) fetal twin boys. I look on in shock and awe. I search the moms face for pain and sadness but she seems confused and tired from the birth. Apparently the mom suffered polyhydramnios, which is a condition where the mom has too much amniotic fluid. Usually this condition does not result in any complications. In advanced cases like hers it can lead to still birth, a necessary cesarean, placenta abruption, rupture of the membranes, and in her case premature labor. They call in the grandmother to dispose of the bodies. Usually the grandmother and friends of the mom (FOM) clean the birthing room and bury the placenta in the woods. In some villages they bury it under their doorstep of their home to protect the child. The grandmother comes in and puts the twins in a bag and goes outside to dispose of them. She didn’t seem bothered at all. Just a little disappointed that they would have been twin boys. Gauging emotions in this culture is extremely difficult as an outsider. I feel that Americans wear emotions like a new pair of galoshes on a rainy day. I don’t know how I would have reacted if it was me.

• A few days after the machete situation (see following post) I’m in my house listening to This American Life on my headphones. I happen to look up and see a woman wandering around in my courtyard. I assume that she is a patient looking for the health clinic. When I open the screen door to greet her, she starts mumbling with a vacant look in her eyes. She is what the Burkinabe call a fou/foule (a crazy person). She begins to show me her trash and then she tries to bust into my house. I don’t know where she found the strength but she nearly knocks me over in her efforts. Once I regain my footing I calmly yet sternly ask her to leave. She looks at me sadly and wanders out of my yard babbling like a mad woman. About 30 minutes later I hear a commotion next door. The woman broke into my neighbor’s house and stole some of their clothes.

• In addition to all of this madness a drunken man keeps coming to my house in the middle of the night. He always asks me the same slurred question: Est-ce que je connais chez vous? That can be translated to: do I know your house/you? I think he is trying to get to know chez moi, if you know what I mean. It’s scary because he’s drunk and its nighttime when he comes around. After all of the excitement this past week I’m actually a little scared to be at my house alone. This is the first time I’ve felt this way in that last two years of my service. It’s frightening how quickly things can turn ugly. I’m lucky that I’ve been safe this far in my service. Even though Burkina is relatively a pretty safe country.