Chapter Nineteen
A few weeks later, I was startled out of a deep sleep sometime during the middle of the night. Several fists pounded simultaneously on the door of our house, several people called out my name, again and again. Apparently someone was trying to get my attention.
I opened the door and the small crowd that waited outside immediately told me that an elderly lady from the compound had died. They needed me to take her body to Axum, a nearby town, for burial. I didn’t see that I had a choice, so we placed her body on a cot and carefully put it into the canvas-covered back of the Land Rover. The entire crowd of people piled in after her except for her very-pregnant daughter and husband. They sat up front with me.
I need to mention here that bandits roamed this countryside every night, creating havoc wherever they went. Because of this, at sunset each and every day, the police block off the roads and stop all traffic from entering, trying to avert any catastrophe before it happens. So before we could even begin our journey to Axum, we had to convince the police to open the blockade for us. I kept thinking about the truck driver I’d recently met who had stopped by our compound to get help fixing the hole in his truck’s radiator. The bandits had shot the hole while they were trying to get him to stop his truck.
Once the road was cleared, we began our long, jarring ride on the narrow mountain road, the mourners wailing and howling and crying out into the night. So there we were, loaded overcapacity with one dead body, moaning mourners, and an overdue pregnant woman, looking for bandits at every turn of the dark mountain road.
It was close to dawn when we arrived in Axum. I had to make several stops as, one by one, everyone got off the truck, each with a duty to perform before the funeral could take place. One contacted grave diggers, one notified the priest, and others got busy spreading out across the town, giving notice of the pending funeral.
But by noon it was all over and the funeral crowd gathered around an enormous feast, lovingly prepared by the local women. All except me. I did not want to die eating their food so I drove home alone, hungry and tired.
Later that afternoon, as I was trying to nap, the deceased woman’s son-in-law came, once again, knocking on my door. As I opened it, he looked at me with a stern expression and reprimanded me for opening the door to my house in the middle of the night. He reminded me how dangerous it could be and said I should never do it again. “It is so dangerous,” he warned, “that you should always send your wife first to see who it is and what they want. Remember that.”
A few weeks later, just before daybreak, I was, again, startled out of a deep sleep to hear a knock on the door. By now, I realized that anything at all could be waiting for me outside that door. I opened it anyway. Without sending Jan first. A long line of people were approaching the house, with two of the men carrying long poles on their shoulders. Attached to these poles, situated midway between the two men, was a chair. Riding in that chair was a very pregnant woman. Apparently, they had traveled many miles to get here and were not going to be turned away.
According to local custom, a woman in childbirth cannot seek help until the sun has set three times. So here it was, the fourth day and they were asking me to take them to the doctor in Axum. We helped the woman, screaming with birth pains, into the back of the Land Rover. Then I made the mistake of telling them that only three people could go along and asked them who that would be. Since they all wanted to go, there were some loud arguments as the three lucky participants were finally selected. Then everybody settled down and we started off.
After only driving about three blocks, they, all at once, hollered “Stop! She has delivered.” I slammed on the brakes, hard, got out, and ran to the back of the truck. There was the newborn baby, covered in blood and mucous, lying on the freezing, dusty, metal floor of the truck. Everybody was fussing over the mother, taking care of her needs. The baby, sobbing with its first breaths, was completely ignored.
My heart was pounding as I tried to decide what to do next. If I, too, ignored and baby and left her unattended, there was no doubt in my mind that she would die. If I picked her up and she died anyway, I would probably be in big trouble. I managed to get someone’s attention, convinced her to pick the baby up and cover her with a cloth for warmth and comfort. Now, remember that the mother had been in labor for three full days. As soon as I had come into the picture, she immediately gave birth. In their eyes, that made me some sort of hero.
Boy babies in Ethiopia are baptized forty days after birth, girl babies wait for sixty days. Since I was the new hero, Jan and I were invited to be guests of honor at the baptism, scheduled to take place in two months, when they would have a celebration and huge feast. We didn’t know what we were going to do because there was no way we would be able to eat their food. Lucky for us, the baptism date fell during the time we had already gone back home to North Dakota.
When I wasn’t tending to pregnant mothers or repairing wells, I did all I could to fix up the house we lived in, trying to make it easier for the director once he returned. I had gotten hold of some paint and decided to paint the bathroom. Shortly after I had finished, Jan went in to use the toilet. Seconds after the door closed, I heard a loud scream. My first thought was that I had used the wrong color. Then it dawned on me I had painted the toilet seat and forgotten to tell her about it.
