A Little Speck of Light...

Today I went to visit my Dr.  

I am trying to be a good patient and go to regular prenatal appointments. Have I shared on there that I am 16 weeks pregnant with baby #2?

I didn’t have great medical options with Little t and just did what I could to keep tabs on how I was doing.  Now that we are in a bigger town/city, our access to doctors is better and I decided to take advantage of that this time around. 

A teammate of ours was pregnant last year and had rave reviews about a local doctor here in town. A.P. and I decided to give her a try.  Originally we went to get confirmation of my pregnancy before we broke the news to our families.  But that was a little over a month ago and I really liked her so I decided to go back. 

Dr. Anisa speaks excellent English and is very very kind.  I had to turn down about ten offers for tea today and I also had to pay her double because last time I didn’t have the cash to pay (I only had a big bill). It took a lot of insisting for her to take the money today…because she is glad to treat me because I am a guest, etc. 

The check-up consisted of chatting and an ultrasound…because that is how things work here.  The baby was sucking its thumb and twice turned to look right into the camera as it waved – perfect 5 finger outline right in the camera.  It was very very fun to see.  Dr. Anisa claimed it was the cutest baby in the world.  She is obviously a very smart woman!   

While the baby made me giddy…our chat left me fascinated and sad.  

I thought it would be interesting to share a little about the observations from a local professional concerning her country and the state of things in this place. 

The biggest thing that was shared by Dr. Anisa was a concern for the future of her country and its people.  She said time and time again, “how can we expect to develop and move forward when no one will take responsibility for their own actions, no one will think about the future, no one will seek to better their lives for the long term – even if that means a little risk today or not seeing immediate good results?” 

She was the main ob/gyn at the hospital here in M-ville and in the last 4 years has had her eyes opened to hard hard truths about very real issues in this place.  Intermarriage, a rise in STD rates (mainly as a result of men bringing them back after working abroad), malnutrition, etc. has made this a hotbed for birth defects and anomalies in pregnancy.  She talked about being totally overwhelmed by what she saw in the hospital.  She described her feeble attempts to make improvements and a difference (with very limited help or resources).

We talked about the issues regarding male/female relationships here and the challenges that it poses for life in so many ways. It is not uncommon at all for a girl to be totally clueless as to what will happen on the wedding night.  There is usually very little normal, comfortable interaction between members of the opposite sex, so suddenly being intimate is a lot to swallow.  Added on top of that is the fact that the bride and groom hardly, if at all, know each other. There are several stories here of girls passing out or going into some sort of shock on that night or following nights.  Think about it. A girl, sometimes a young as 10 or 11, not accustomed at all to interacting with the opposite gender suddenly finds herself very vulnerable and intimate with no prior warning or knowledge. That is a lot to take in.  Even for older girls/women, there is an unspoken rule that you don’t talk about the wedding night with the potential bride…you just don’t.   There are just a lot of hard issues surrounding newly married intimate relationships in this place.  And Dr. Anisa has had to wrestle with many of them. 

Last week in one day she had both a 13 year old and a 15 year old come into her private clinic for consultation.  The 13 year old was 6 months pregnant.  Dr. Anisa said she couldn’t believe her eyes. She wondered why this young girl was being brought to an ob/gyn, only to realize that she was about to become a mother.  Shortly after that, a 15 year old arrived.  She had been married for 4 years and had been unable to get pregnant in that time. She was in tears as she explained that she was desperate to have a baby because her husband and his family were threatening divorce if she didn’t.  As Dr. Anisa was talking to her, she asked about her cycles, if they were regular etc. The girl stated that she hadn’t gotten her period yet.  Dr Anisa explained that she wouldn’t be able to get pregnant until her body was ready i.e. her cycle started.  The girl adamantly insisted that they were having intercourse, so she HAD to be able to get pregnant… 

Dr. Anisa shook her head as she recalled the story.  She exclaimed that it is hard for her to see a way forward for a people who continue to marry their children off to their cousins, suffer from crippling poverty, deal with a 90+% illiteracy rate, and do it all with a war raging in their midst. 

Currently Dr. Anisa has stepped back from her direct involvement at the hospital in order to find other avenues of meeting needs.  She said that she had to make a decision of how to best use her ability and time.  Currently, she is the head of the midwifery college here in M-ville and also the head of the Maternal and Infant Health division of the hospital.  She hopes that by training others, she can spread her knowledge wider and help meet the needs of a wider range of women.  She has a scholarship at a college in Australia to get her master’s degree in Public Health.  She hopes to go in the late summer to begin her program. 

Personally, I am very grateful to have the care of Dr. Anisa during this pregnancy. But more importantly, I am thankful for the glimpse of hope she is.  So many days it is easy to just see the issues and wonder how the mountain of impossibilities will ever begin to be tackled.  But people like Dr. Anisa are a vital part in seeing stability and development make a difference in this place.  The place isn’t totally hopeless with people like her quietly and slowly plodding along, one woman, one baby at a time.  

Little tiny lights in the midst of a sea of impossibility help keep us afloat.