By
Obododimma Oha
I am
blogging about my birth, when, as a celebrant, I should be popping champagne
or enjoying fresh palm-wine, teaching aviators how large mouths can sieve the sap of the tree better in this galaxy! But, pardon me! I will make your own drink
available electronically. I am sure that experts on the technology of
electronic communication are currently working on how entities can have food
and drink sent to them and actually consumed, not a mere mimicry!
That explanation
given, I would like tell (or "re-tell") how
I was born. “Re-tell” is a better lexical choice, for I am only telling what my
mother told me about my birth. Mind you, I was not aware when I was born: I
only dropped and cried! Cried my little heart out. So, it is a mere report of
a report, twice or more removed from the actual experience. So, I am re-telling
my mother’s story of my birth. Perhaps I should add a little bit of the story
of the pregnancy, in case you want to connect my birth to the pregnancy. Perhaps
the handling of the pregnancy by my mother is
naturally related to my birth in a way!
Yes, the
pregnancy. You already know who did it; if you don’t, you are a mumu
or you are only pretending, just pretending. Well, that person cared much for
the baby in the womb and properly registered the pregnant one for ante-natal
care. But my mother hated the drugs she was given like the dog hates cow dung!
She refused to take them and threw them away secretly. What she was taking
instead was kaikai or dry gin. The hot
thing was good for her and for her baby, she reasoned. The hot thing or
liquid fire kept her going and she was as strong as a mule! Trust local women;
she was strong and would carry her pregnancy to the farm, to market, to
church... just anywhere. This is where how and where I arrived comes in neatly.
She had
attended a funeral of a kinswoman and participated fully like other women.
Then, her labour started. She just went home – about three kilometers away ---
and decided to handle the birth herself even before the local birth attendant
arrived. She cut a plantain leaf and spread it on the ground behind the house.
It was on that plantain leaf that I dropped and cried and cried. So, a funeral,
an exit, was my birthday! Even before the local birth attendant arrived with
her sharp instruments, she had removed the navel cord by herself and even tried
to wash me!
The birth
attendant, Mgbafọ, was amazed and had just a little to do in the clean-up part. My
mother had done most by herself. Who says that local African women are not
warriors, in fact, special forces!
What even
made it very symbolic and amazing was that she had just attended a funeral, an
exit from this life-world. Then, this birth, this entry. Could it be that I met
the spirit of the one leaving on my way but did not know or did not exchange
pleasantries? Maybe if that had happened, the exiting soul could have told me
her experiences, how what she was leaving was like. Maybe with that, I would
have been better prepared! It is not good to leave everything to this idea of what
you see you take. Life is not just a matter of chance and coincidence!
Well, the gin
angle is not over yet, neither is my mother’s ante-natal habits ready to leave.
In fact, those habits were transferred to me. Fire water and natural food had
remained my medicine. In fact, just like my mother in her pregnancy, I
sometimes refuse to take those industrial poisons one is given at the
dispensary or I end up not taking them fully. I will only get better if I discontinue them and hold on to
something close to nature and food. I know that fire water, alias a chara mmụọ
(that which does not make way for spirits) is not approved of by medical
practitioners, based on their Western training. But they are also patients of life. A chara mmụọ is medicine for
those of who, sometimes, have to wrestle with angels on the way. Sometimes, one as a
terrible spirit too has to refuse to make way for another passing spirit. ọ bụ
ụjọ? Is it a constraint of fear? Spirits that have met spirits on the way can
tell it better!
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