Village Life, Pt 2

30 km (roughly 15 miles) to the nearest town doesn’t sound that far but then again, most of us don’t rely on a donkey or camel as our only means of transportation. They say that some days a lorry (big open truck that carries stuff) comes through town and will pick them up if it has room but it doesn't come back through town so they're stuck in town until they can manage to get back home.

In this village there is no one with any medical background and no where to get any medicine. When you or your child is sick your only option is to hope you can get into town to see a doctor before it’s too late. What do you do with your other 6 children while you take this one to town? How do you get to town? How do you get back from town? How do you find your husband to ask him for permission and an escort into town when you have no idea where he is and haven't seen him for days? All difficulties that the women in this village face on a frighteningly regular basis.

When the women are pregnant, they take turns helping each other deliver. They say that some of the women are better at midwifing than others but none have received any training so if something goes wrong then it goes wrong and no one can really do anything about it.

One of the hardest parts of spending time with these women is seeing how seemingly unaffected they are by death. If you ask them how many children they have they automatically answer with how many they've birthed, followed by how many are living. The numbers are usually very different. For instance, one woman had birthed 8 but only 4 were living. I guess that goes along with the numbers. According to the UN, 8 children under the age of 5 die every minute from diseases for which vaccines are available and 155 of every 1000 children born in Africa die before the age of 5. I guess out here children die, it's just a fact of life. But it's different when you know the children that make up those statistics and it's still a fact that I struggle with.