Pregnant in Abuja’s backyard

And did she what she thought was best. “I walked by myself,” Yusuf remembers. That was to get out of the house. And then she got on a bike and rode pillion on a bouncy road in the night to Mpape hospital.Two years later, she washes out tapioca for sale as she recalls that night.“Of […]

And did she what she thought was best. “I walked by myself,” Yusuf remembers. That was to get out of the house. And then she got on a bike and rode pillion on a bouncy road in the night to Mpape hospital.
Two years later, she washes out tapioca for sale as she recalls that night.
“Of course I was alone,” she says. “If you are in labour, there is nothing that will stop you.”
The journey was hazardous, but her second baby was born at the hospital, like her first, because she was determined.
It is not an option for many women having babies in her community, home to thousands of residents in its existence for the past 50 years.
In those 50 years, it has never had a health centre. The nearest is in Mpape or another in Maitama, where many run to in emergency, if they can afford the transport. Another closer one is a lone private clinic, which a couple of nurses running shifts all day.
“Katampe has been around for a long time, with promise of a dispensary [at least] but it has never come,” says Adamu Biga, head of the community.
“We have light, we have water, but hospital is one thing still bothering us.”
The Bwari council authorities which administers Katampe has talked of land already earmarked land for a health centre even before last year when the plight of the community’s women first got media attention but the centre is still a promise.
Among his duties as head, he helps secure transport to transport nighttime emergencies to hospital in Mpape or Maitama, says resident Sunday Aneke.
Newly married, Aneke and his wife are expecting their first child in five months, but she is yet to decide where she will attend antenatal clinic.
She can’t do that close to home “unless at Wuse or Maitma,” says Aneke. “That’s where she can go.”
But he also worries how they will get there if labour begins at an inconvenient time of day.
“We don’t have a car, unless if we go to our chief, then he can volunteer,” hopes Aneke.
For each woman fighting bad roads and transport to get to hospital, two more in Katampe choose or is compelled to stay home in resignation.
At 39, Sarah Tanko has five children and is pregnant with her sixth. Only one child was born in a hospital.
“I always deliver at home, and I have never had problems before,” she says. “It is God.”
Her rule is to get through labour once it begins, and when it is over, she has a wailing baby in her arms and “no need to go to hospital again,” Tanko says.
Hadiza Sani was alone through her last two childbirths, and is pregnant with her third baby.
“Honestly, I like to go to hospital but my husband insists I should deliver at home,” she confides.
She sought help from a traditional birth attendant for her second baby, but she is used to giving birth at home, because it is required of her.
Esther Ogundudu battled for the life of her child against childhood diarrhoea and lost.
Her child had catarrh, and she gave him vitamin C, along with Flagyl syrup and oral rehydration salt, she remembers.
“I took him to chemist and they told me what to do. I took him to hospital, then to a chemist again, and another hospital, then they told me to take him to headquarter [general hospital],” she said. “As I reached headquarter, he died.”
The mother of four is pregnant against and is sticking to a plan: she will travel to Ondo State, where her mother can be with her through labour and childbirth, and then return to Katampe with her baby.
Eight months pregnant, young Safiya is not bothered about antenatal; she will give birth at home. Or get help from a birth attendant at most.
Jacinta Omego is one of two birth attendants resident in Katampe. Between running a shop and her home, she makes time for the hundreds of women she has assisted through childbirth.
Armed with her supply of ergometrin to handle bleeding, there’s only so much she can do in the 10 years since she trained in Nsukka.
“When they come, I greet them. If it is labour, I tell them to go and bring their things, then we pray because it is God who does everything,” Omego says.
Among her clients are women who attend antenatal clinic in town but come knocking at her door in the middle of the night when labour starts.
Omego says she can do better with advanced training in child delivery along with equipment and a supply of vaccines to help immunise children in Katampe.
That’s because even if Katampe has a hospital, some women will still opt to give birth at home. But at least the promise will be closer home for women like Yusuf, and the bike ride while in labour in the middle of the night will be shorter.