The first time I met Mrs X - Oliver's mother

We had barely gotten the few things we brought to open the new birth center unpacked.    We arranged the birth room and prenatal room.   We knew where emergency kits were and had set up a birth bed and table but we were not yet officially opened.

We arrived Sunday afternoon and by Monday had a full day of prenatal care and machete wounds.   Machete wounds are neat and straight, if you get to them right away.  If you allow them to sit untreated they become an infected mass of puss and scaring.   I had not known this but came to see this but I was new there and this was the day of my first machete wound.  I poured betadine over the wound again and again and put triple antibiotic cream on it. It was too late for stitches and besides I was use to stitching vaginas; not machete wounds.  Later I would put in a few stitches.   Later when I saw how infected they could get and how the children starved if no one went to the farm.   Later when I could no longer see the lines between a birth outcome and the man's ability to farm.

But on that day, looking up from the machete wound, I saw a woman with her husband making her way towards us.  She could barely walk.

The new birth center in Cabestore at dawn with mist still clinging to the mountains

I finished the pouring of the water and tried to get the translator ( a different translator) to help me.   He was restless and did not hold still.  He was from the city and it soon became clear he did not have such a favorable opinion of the  "peasant" community.   It was not what a young, urban, English speaker aspired to.   But he knew the line was not so clearly drawn and the fear of dropping over the edge into such poverty was a day to day struggle of wit and will.

I got that she had diarrhea and it was bad. I rooted through a blue bag where I knew I had packed re-hydration salts.   We used them all the time but this was the first.  I found a bottle and clean water and had her drink some.  She threw up over and over again.  She was lying on the ground in front of the new pink birth center and was having fluids pour out of her.   I gave her anxious husband more packs of de-hydration fluids and told them to go to the hospital.  I said this through a translator who was not paying attention.   Later I would remember this.  Me trying to make sure they knew to go the the hospital, showing them the re-hydration mix and bottle.   The translator walking away and me hauling him back again.

"Are you sure she is going to the hospital? "

"Yes, yes."

But I am never sure.  In the weeks that follow he translates so many things without paying attention and so I am never sure.   It feels too cruel to ask, "Are you sure you told her to go the hospital?"  I ran upstairs and got her a diarrhea pill just to hold her till she got to LasCahabas.

We arrived Sunday and it was only Monday.

Later I would learn to walk upstairs and get 100 gouds and put the sick person on the moto - no going home- no nothing - just go now!

I never saw her again.   The next thing I knew we were walking up the path to her funeral and wondering what to do with the baby.

I had put together some emergency kits to prevent maternal and newborn deaths but there I was with a mother newly dead and a baby with slim chances of survival.

I walked that path many times and as I walked I asked, "Why did she die?"   She had gotten prenatal care at the mobile clinic.  She had not died in childbirth but she had died of an undiagnosed cause and the baby might die too.   In this way, I began to collect clues and conduct an investigation.

In the belief system of many people, a person can put a curse on you.  The translator says the person can send an actual virus or bacteria so it looks like an illness but it was sent by someone.   "Buy who? I ask.

"Sometimes you never know."   He does not have much patience for my questions.   It is just how it is.  He plays music all night long. Between his music and the dogs, it is hard to sleep.   The music keeps the bad spirits away.   I wonder out loud.  Maybe the bad spirit is things people worry about or a past argument or a loss of a good friend or fear.

"More than just that."    he does army calisthenics each morning with the midwives.   The young women at the water pump laugh so hard they can barely stand.  I take it all in - the baby without a mother, the calisthenics and the water pump.

Mothers waiting for the Revolution

I wonder if mothers and babies need to wait for the revolution- or if creating a society where pregnant women and their young are cared for is the revolution?

The people I met in the mountains there in Southern Mindanao, are now my Facebook Friends and I watch them from time to time slip into view.  Sometimes they send me a message or greeting.  Sometimes they are involved in a political protest or an evacuation and other times there are photos of fun times with friends and family.  They fall in love and go to beautiful places amongst the outrage of injustice.

The people who connected me with them, have not yet met with me.   Times are set but never kept and the weeks slip by.    At first the people are so close to me, I can feel them all around.  I am desperate to do the simple things I promised.  I did not want to just go and then come back and forget them.  I pick very simple, very easy to accomplish tasks.   I make a pack of pictures to show people.   At first, I thrust the photos in visitors line of vision, and they look with some curiosity but I can tell it does not seem particularly real to them.   I quietly grieve the loss of these new friends.   I want to sing and be with them.

I had wanted to help them get Vitamin Angels.  It is so simple.  A short application but I need an organization.   My children say, "If you need an organization to help mothers and children in the Philippines, you should start your own."

I say, "But it already exists.  We just have to fill in the space on the application.  I'll do all the work."

But they never give me the information.   I call, email, text but it never happens.

They say there are more important issues than maternal and child health.   They say, "How can they worry about maternal and newborn health when they might be killed?"

I reply, "More are dying in childbirth and in the first five years of life.  "   No one ever answers.

I have a pile of things to send with the next visitor from Portland but they go without theses things and eventually I put them aside.

I look up the political situation.   The people are being manipulated by many foreign and local forces.   People in Europe fund "health care and schools" but it is all in the name of a revolutionary force.  They call the shots from afar, creating training camps and centers that are the face of the revolution.
They try to keep the communist revolution alive.   After this, they will tend to mothers who bleed to death or babies who die on political marches from the mountains.   Later.

I do not know enough about the political situation but I know that when mothers are safe to have babies when the choose and marry who they choose and are pretty sure their babies will live and grow up to get an education and will have food; that this will be revolutionary.

You can not simultaneously have forced child marriage,  a disregard for women's health and a revolution dedicated to equality and social justice.   Handing out prenatal vitamins and training health workers in basic life saving techniques, is not a Che moment.  It is too ordinary.  

But it is my revolution.  The one I have struggled and fought for all these years.   Tell me how you treat a woman who is pregnant . Tell me how you will treat her children and I will tell you the state of equity and social justice in your community or country or in the world.

The saying goes,  There is no way to peace.  Peace is the way.  There is no way to revolution.  Revolutions the way.

I only visited one small part of a vast network of islands.   Islands that were gathered  up and made into one country without understanding or consent.   My friends in the those communities wake up and have coffee over a fire and sweep the yard and begin their day, even as I drink tea and sweep and begin my day.

I wave the revolutionary flag of prenatal care and safe transport for all women.  I pack the weapons of clean birth kits and respect for women's reproductive health.   There are midwives in the revolution - women and men who support them, marching for this basic building block of social justice.  People who know that safe birth can not wait for political victories.  It is now.  One birth at a time.