.beautiful.

yes yes yes!

.reproductive health is a human right.

Maureen gave me a tour of the labor and delivery ward today. This is the most expansive ward in my district given that it’s the main hospital.  We passed thru two swinging doors and there were the 4 beds in the main room, half sheets hung for reasons unknown but none of which pertained to privacy. Only 3 of the beds were being used by women in early stages of labor. I asked what happens when more than 4 women are laboring and she showed me two separate rooms (actually private yet dark, damp, and depressing) mostly used for women with complicated or prolonged labor. They can hold a total of 8 women at one time. After they reach 8 then they made floor beds, Maureen says that this happens often. At the end of each bed was a cardboard box (it looked like a box of triscuits) that was the sharps container. On the floor was a bucket labeled “placenta” I asked Maureen if there were any cultural practices with the placentas and she opened up the bucket to see, yes a fresh placenta. They take them out to the placenta burning pit twice a day (not the cultural practice I had anticipated). We then we on to see the women who were being watched after complicated labors, this room was open and held 24 beds. All but 2 beds were filled. There was one woman who had been there for 48 hours, for some reason she really impacted me. She sat there naked from the waist up with only a chitenji wrapped around her, sitting on the bed with a blank hallow stare feeding her baby, her large swollen breasts looked painful. I wonder if she had any choice over her body.

There has been a lot of discussion, debate, and general commotion about women’s rights in the states. It saddens me that this needs to be a discussion, it saddens me that my body has become a political issue, it saddens me that it has turned into a women’s issue. It makes me reflect about one of my favorite buttons, it said “Be nice to vaginas you came from one” I like it because it’s funny, suggestive, and universal. Reproductive health isn’t a woman’s right, it’s a human right. We are only limiting our understanding of ourselves and our potential of health by wrapping up this conversation with labels. What do your statistics mean to the unplanned children, the mothers afraid of their own bodies, the families without a choice? When health becomes only an option for the rich there lies only one outcome, poverty (I mean this is a broad aspect).

Maybe that’s what those haunting hallow eyes of the Amayi were showing me, we have become so detached from our own bodies and thoughts that we start to control something, others, the voiceless, the impoverished, the meek, the sick, the young, the old, us.

This moment was a wake-up call for me to reconnect with myself, my body, my mind, my passion, and my world. It’s a call back to reality, to feel it.

.to you, amayi.

I was sitting in the back of the minibus on my way from Machinga (where I live) to Liwonde (the next big town where most things are) a normal 15-20min trip that I take almost every other day. But as we were stopping in a small village 3 Amayis got on the bus, petit serious women with short hair, imported T shirts advertising foreign brands and local events in English, wrapped in their chitenjis (2 yards of fabric). From their eyes they will never see the fight that they were born to fight that was speaking so loudly to me on that bus ride. I looked at them and really saw their true bravery and solidarity.

I wondered which one would be pregnant next, who would have pregnancy complications, which one won’t have a skilled attendant at their birth, which one has almost died in childbirth, which one is trapped inside of herself dealing with the fact that sex is demanded of her without consent and without choice of the lives to come from it.

moments marinating in my mind,

love pouring out of me,

connecting to the detached. 

Life is precious, and it’s becoming more and more precious everyday I’m here. There is so much I’m adsorbing and its sweet quiet moments like these that sneak into my days that allow me to realize all that I’ve seen.

Malawi hasn’t tugged at my heart like Ecuador or Mexico, where I love it all. There is too much struggle here to fall in love with this life. There is no romance in another death. But my heart has been so filled with admiration for all the immensely powerful Amayis. The Amayi that carries hundreds of pounds of pumpkins in plastic sacks hours on a minibus to sell at market for her family, for the Amayi that hikes 3 hours straight up hill to cut down firewood only to carry the 8ft long logs that I imagine weight 100lbs or more balancing on her head down that same hill to then cook the meal for her large, unplanned family (the fertility rate of Malawi is 7 children/woman!). When I see and an Amayi I will always stop and bow to greet her out of reverence to her thirst for life that I will never tastes. To her powerful feminine power I hope to foster inside of myself. She answers my trivial frustrations, life is worth is all.

The minibus stops again, another Amayi squeezes in and sits next to me with her baby girl slung over her shoulder. I look over at her and those little dark round doe eyes look up at me and she gives me a little smile.  My heart swells in an indescribable way and her Amayi laughs with me, a moment never tasted as sweet .

 Every woman deserves a choice, a voice, an education, and an empowering birth. Maybe Malawi in all the confusion and waiting and unattractive rawness of life is really just the preparation for my birth, the birth of a more vulnerable, humble, and empathetic self.