I told her I wanted to be present when the baby was born. I spend a lot of time with my host-sister Mariella, but because of the way timid Ngäbe culture is, it´s sort of taboo to talk about being pregnant and giving birth or women's health in general, or even admitting to the number of children you have. This always seems very strange to me because there are SO MANY kids everywhere and men measure their masculinity by how many kids they have and with how many different women. But Mariella and I had built up enough trust that this request wasn't totally ridiculous to her. However, she must have forgotten all about me at 5 AM in the morning when she went into labor. So apparently by candlelight, in the middle of night, on the kitchen floor without water or soap, she gave birth to a little girl, delivered by my host-granny (who's about 100 years old, by the way).
To them it´s no big thing when a new baby is around, because there´s practically a new one every day. Its hard to walk down the street or enter a house or do a jumping jack without running into about 5 naked, smiling Ngäbe children. No one bothers to remember their names until they are of school age because there are so many of them, and instead simply call them¨che¨which is Ngäbe for either ¨small¨or ¨child¨. But I still weeped like a little wussy when they handed me the hours old little babe of Mariella in the morning with my breakfast and coffee.
My friend Ramon and I had been working for two days, fixing up the little palm roofed hut that will soon be my house....all mine. We had to replace the stairs, build a table, some holes in the porch, etc. He was really excited to cut down trees with the chainsaw we solicited from the Junta Comunal (wait, aren't I suppose to be reforesting?). On the third day, he informed me that he had some things he needed to do in the house, and so I offered to help as a way of thanking him for helping me. We cut some wood to make what looked to be a small box, and I asked what it was for curiously. A few days before, in the house next to mine, a month old baby died. The whole family hiked 10 hours out to the Cordiara (mountain) to harvest corn and plant bananas a week after this child was born, staying in a rancho and sleeping on a dirt floor next to a smoldering fogon for three weeks. And still no one understood why this baby became sick and wouldn't respond to the herbal medicine a curandero recommended to them. Some say the devil came in the night to take its soul and caused a ruckas as it left the house the day it died. So turns out, I was helping Ramon make a 2 foot long coffin.
My house still isn't finished.
To them it´s no big thing when a new baby is around, because there´s practically a new one every day. Its hard to walk down the street or enter a house or do a jumping jack without running into about 5 naked, smiling Ngäbe children. No one bothers to remember their names until they are of school age because there are so many of them, and instead simply call them¨che¨which is Ngäbe for either ¨small¨or ¨child¨. But I still weeped like a little wussy when they handed me the hours old little babe of Mariella in the morning with my breakfast and coffee.
My friend Ramon and I had been working for two days, fixing up the little palm roofed hut that will soon be my house....all mine. We had to replace the stairs, build a table, some holes in the porch, etc. He was really excited to cut down trees with the chainsaw we solicited from the Junta Comunal (wait, aren't I suppose to be reforesting?). On the third day, he informed me that he had some things he needed to do in the house, and so I offered to help as a way of thanking him for helping me. We cut some wood to make what looked to be a small box, and I asked what it was for curiously. A few days before, in the house next to mine, a month old baby died. The whole family hiked 10 hours out to the Cordiara (mountain) to harvest corn and plant bananas a week after this child was born, staying in a rancho and sleeping on a dirt floor next to a smoldering fogon for three weeks. And still no one understood why this baby became sick and wouldn't respond to the herbal medicine a curandero recommended to them. Some say the devil came in the night to take its soul and caused a ruckas as it left the house the day it died. So turns out, I was helping Ramon make a 2 foot long coffin.
My house still isn't finished.
