The Mayan way of giving birth

The Mayan way of giving birth

Eucevia, a Mayan woman in her late 20s, lived in an aldea or outlying village from San Juan Comalapa, my town in Guatemala where I worked as a US Peace Corps Volunteer,1965-1967. She came into Comalapa for the Tuesday market and for the weaving club meetings, always with a lovely smile and greetings in Spanish and her Mayan Kachiquel. She sometimes had a toddler in tow and a baby in her shawl, a basket balanced on her head, always a small gift which I had to accept as part of local custom. One day she came troubled into town, unable to find a doctor for her babe in arms with diarrhea. We found the usual remedy in the pharmacy and she headed back, hoping for the best.
I didn't see her for several weeks, so went on horseback to her aldea, about two hours' away. I had been to her compound with several tiled houses, one for the kitchen, the other a bedroom, another for storage, a work area in the center for animals, threshing wheat or drying maize. She was nowhere around, rather unusually. I waited a while and finally I saw Eucevia coming up from the river with a basin of washing on her head. Her usual smile was missing, I sensed something amiss. She had only her toddler daughter with her, no babe in arms. I could see straight away that the little boy had died, 'I'm coming from washing his things' she said. We sat together and were silent. What could we say? Her little girl shuffled her feet, no one felt like talking.
Eucevia invited me to eat, and we sat heating tortillas and beans, finally finding something to say. I then made a promise that when she had her next baby, I'd come to help deliver it, as I was doing research on midwifery practices, working with my friend Doňa Martita, who attended childbirths. Eucevia and I looked at one another and sealed the promise to be together for the next childbirth.
Time passed quickly and we kept making progress with our weekly meetings for the Mayan women's weaving group, growing both in numbers and the women's confidence. Eucevia kept showing up, and I noticed under her expanding belt and skirt that she was indeed pregnant. Mayan women have practical clothes, a long wrap around skirt held up by a 12 foot long woven belt that they wind around and tuck the end underneath. The belt both holds the skirt up and acts as a protection for the stomach and back, especially useful during pregnancy. Their blouse or guipil can be split at the side for easy breast feeding when the time comes. Eucevia's waist was definitely getting bigger, and she promised to remember our pact. I told Doňa Martita about the forthcoming event and she, the experienced midwife, agreed to come with me at any time day or night.
One night I heard a knock on the door at 10 pm, far past the time for visitors to Tom's and my little house on the far edge of the town. It was Eucevia's husband, 'The time has come, please come.' I rushed on my bike to Doňa Martita's, she gathered the equipment and we quickly got horses from the local stable, grateful that it was a full moon lit night. Eucevia's husband led the way, and we arrived at their compound at the top of a hill, surprised to see Eucevia greeting us. She insisted on offering us tortilla and beans, and Doňa Martita and I thought to ourselves that this was a false alarm. After she was sure that we had eaten and had enough to drink, Eucevia said, 'It's time', and asked us to come into the bedroom house, a separate building. We asked her husband to boil water and we went inside.

There was a simple wooden plank bed, covered with petates or straw mats, some blankets, a basin. The bed was quite high up, resting on saw horses. Eucevia by now was having more frequent labor pains, and her water burst. Doňa Martita and I asked her to lie on the bed, and she said, 'No, this is the way we do it.' There was a rope lasso hanging from the rafter, and Eucevia knelt on the bed. Doňa Martita and I took Eucevia's cue and realised the wisdom of her position. She half squatted with her legs apart, held on to the looped lasso with both hands and pushed. We got ourselves ready to 'catch' the baby, and sure enough, quite quickly the baby just about fell out of Eucevia, helped out by gravity rather than her having to push out while lying on her back, a method presumably invented by doctors so they could more easily see what was happening.

A baby girl literally fell from heaven into the world, and all that Doňa Martita and I had to do was to catch her, be ready there for her to arrive.
Doňa Martita and I tied off and cut the umbilical cord, cleaned the baby and gave her to Eucevia, still alert and eager to greet her new daughter. We called the father who came to rejoice with us. They invited Doňa Martita and me to spend the night, and we camped out in blankets in the same room with Eucevia and her daughter. By now it was cold, and we huddled in our blankets on the floor, Eucevia and her daughter on the bed. We kept talking late into the night, we three women, savoring the stillness, the dark, the closeness, the joy of witnessing the birth done the Mayan way. As we finally fell to sleep at about three in the morning, I yet again realized I still had so much to learn and felt fortunate that my friends were generous in teaching me. The still and silent darkness was a comfort, the lost child remembered with the new one newly brought into the world.

Sequel: In 1994 I went back to visit Eucevia and her family, surprising them by driving to their aldea with some of the original weavers from the first Mayan women weavers’ group in Guatemala we started in 1965-67. Lucia and Reina, two of the weavers, walked with me up the hill to Eucevia's compound. There was a double surprise: Eucevia’s family was of course surprised to see me there with the women from Comalapa. The second surprise was that it was the birthday of the daughter Katarina born 27 years ago, and she was there to celebrate with her family. So it was exactly on her birthday that I showed up unannounced. Another amazing thing is that Katarina worked in rural community development with Oxfam, a UK charity, and she was teaching nutrition, mother and child care as well as enterprise development in remote areas, the work that I had been doing as a Peace Corps volunteer when I met her mother. We had come full circle.

April 1994: Katarina’s 27^th birthday (Eucevia, Phyllis, youngest daughter, Katarina, girl from Comalapa, Eucevia’s husband in hammock, ill with arthritis)

http://phyllis-santamaria.blogspot.com

Voices from Inner City Youth

Photos: Stephen Lawrence (13 September 1974 – 22 April 1993)
Oscar Wilde's statue behind St Martin-in-the-Fields Church
Tom, Dan Baltzer, Doreen Lawrence, Casey

St Martin-in-the-Fields church overlooks Trafalgar Square in the heart of London and has a mission of inclusion and being out in the community. Its massive £36 million rebuilding project nears completion after 18 months' excavations, pounding, creating and dust, dust, dust. Last night I was excited to walk through the newly completed courtyard, the roof of the new parts of the building two floors below, visit the statue of Oscar Wilde behind the church, then enter the new spaces through a glass entrance in the courtyard. I love the caption on the Oscar Wilde statue: 'We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars'. Last night's Education Programme's event, 'Voices from Inner City Youth' brought us people looking at the stars: Tom and Casey from Kids Company and Doreen Lawrence of the Stephen Lawrence Trust.

We first heard from Dan Baltzer of Kids Company about its family environment to 12,000 of London's children who would otherwise be left to their own devices. Tom, now a staff member, told us how Kids Company 'helped me to slow everything down' when he had got into petty crime, had lost his purpose. Kids Company offers a 'direct line to someone to explain where you are, how you could be, work your own way'. He now works with other young people, realising that 'only a young person can help other young people'. A somewhat shy young black man in his early 20s, trendily dressed, he soon warmed up as his enthusiasm for Kids Company shone through, his vision of the stars brightening the more he spoke. 'Every generation puts something into the pot. I'm coming to talk to lots of meetings'. His ended with these words: 'We have a flame inside us, unless we control it, we burn everything around us.' We felt his wonderful steady warmth, applauded him warmly in return, then were introduced to Casey, the next star gazer.

Dressed in jeans, a beige coat and topped with a striped knitted hat, 18 year old Casey stepped up to bat. I saw Casey as someone who was going to keep her eye on the ball and hit a home run. She started, 'I'm a bit shy this minute although I'm not a shy person.' Then she told her story. 'I was an 11 year old runaway. I'm not blaming my mother. She had her illness. I turned to people on the streets because they became my family.' She heard about Camilla, founder of Kids Company, and thought to herself, 'I've got to meet this woman in a turban, no way!' Camilla sat her down, talked to her, kept calling Casey when she didn't turn up. When she did, she'd go to the club, abusing staff, refusing to listen. Camilla had support workers calling Casey every day.

I had tantrums, pushed people away because I wasn't used to people looking after me. Camilla supported me the whole way. I can tell you now that crime does not pay, it's gonna come back on you. I came out of prison, [three times] I can't explain it, Camilla was more than my family. If I wasn't in Kids Company for seven years, I'd be in prison or dead. You have to meet Camilla, she's taken on what society has refused to do. At 11 I was on the street. She never blamed me. They want to keep pushing everyone to their potential. It made me know there's people out there who care for you.

I fell in love with Casey, this hard hitting young woman, already through thousands of lives in her 18 years, coming back with love. 'I don't blame adults. Kids come in to us wearing clothes too small, not being fed.' She was one of those kids, had come through the other side, looking at the stars, ready to start college in January to get skills so she could be an entrepreneur. We burned our hands with applause, Casey took her seat and we were introduced to Doreen Lawrence.

Her son Stephen Lawrence was killed in 1993, a quiet studious young man, who asked his mother when she had cautioned him about being on the streets, 'I'm not doing anything, why should this happen to me?' The most terrible did happen to Stephen, his life cut short before realising his dream of being an architect. His mother has led the campaign to get justice for her son's death, tirelessly campaigning to change attitudes, combat racism in the police. She has talked to young people who say they don't expect to live beyond the age of 25. 'Things have improved in the last ten years with the 2003 enquiry for 'Stop and Search' resulting in the monitoring of written records. The Race Relations Act has brought police into the act. There's now double jeopardy' and added quietly that it hasn't helped in the case against Stephen's murderers, still walking the streets today.

Doreen Lawrence will not rest in her campaign against racism and violence while creating a legacy of excellence for young people in her son's name. Her recipes include changing the mindsets of young people through education, making known positive role models other than pop and football stars, sensitising the media about the negative portrayal of blacks. 'What's this about headlines, 'Black on Black crime'? A crime is a crime. Stop that'.

She urged more reporting of 'good news' that doesn't get out there enough: Achievement Awards for black children hosted by Diane Abbot at the House of Commons recently, the 'Power List' of 100 black people of influence, the Reed Report on positive role models for young black men that includes lawyers, doctors. 'Why isn't this more known about?'

Doreen has used Stephen's death to help others through the Stephen Lawrence charitable trust, educating 70 architects from the black community in the last ten years. There's the Stephen Lawrence Prize for an outstanding building, part of the Royal Institute of British Architects' Sterling Prize, and she encouraged us to visit the bridge at Kew Gardens, sculpture and function combined to open up a new area there, bearing a plaque with the prize in Stephen's name.
She spoke proudly about the Stephen Lawrence Centre, taking eight years to reach fruition, it encourages people to look at their environment through community learning and social research. I quote Doreen's vision of the Stephen Lawrence Centre from its brochure:

The name Stephen Lawrence means different things to different people. Personally, I hope the Stephen Lawrence Centre will become a magnet for aspiring young people who want to break the cycle of negative stereotyping, giving them the vision to shape their own futures by setting themselves clear goals, gaining new skills and staying positive and determined.

Doreen joined the panel of Tom and Casey to answer our questions, the first about knife crime. Casey said the main problem is that angry young people get 'hyped up by the media, making it bigger'. Then young people start carrying knives, 'protecting themselves'. Tom added, 'Because of the way the media is promoting the issues, young people are creating gangs. The young people are ignorant. They need to be prevented from carrying weapons.' Casey added: 'the community needs to be searching for different ways of dealing with problems, learning how to address anger.' Doreen repeated her recipe: 'The media needs a balance, showing young people what they can do'. When Doreen asked how this knife and gun culture started in the last ten years, Casey responded from her experience of being on the streets, an angry kid: 'Kids need a support structure. They are not evil, no one's born a certain way.'

When asked about the police, Casey came up with some hopeful words: 'The police all around London are addressing issues. The crime rate is going down where Kids Company operates. There were mixed views about churches offering something: Casey said they have the time, space and people to offer help. Tom was less enthusiastic: 'I grew up in a church, then grew away. The church is stuck behind walls. Church is important, faith more so. Church needs to take a stand because young people, we don't see church.'

We had a summing up from Maire MacCormack from Scotland's Commissioner for Children and Young People, giving us grim statistics: 71% of media reports are negative, especially on young black boys; 3.1 million children are living in poverty in the UK, the UK bottom of the table on UNICEF's ranking of 21 industrialised countries on the well being of their children. We were reeling from the numbers until Maire ended on a hopeful note and brought us back to Tom, Casey and Doreen, members of the black community taking action to change the world. Casey's refrain, 'You've got to meet Camilla' ringing in my ears, I realised I had already met her in Casey, the 18 year old young woman speaking of love after seven years at Kids Company, the best 'word of mouth' in the world. When Doreen handed me the Stephen Lawrence Trust brochure I felt her courage to make the world a better place in the eyes of her son in his blue and white striped shirt. Remembering my visit to Oscar Wilde's statue behind St Martin's before the talk, I felt I was in the company of people looking at the stars--Tom, Doreen and Casey--and who were pointing to other stars, Stephen and Camilla.



Resources

• Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust: www.stephenlawrence.org.uk
  
• Kids Company: www.kidsco.org.uk
• St-Martin-in-the-Field: www.smitf.org

Remaining events in the Autumn Education series

• Tuesday 28 October, 7 pm, Church: Voice from South Africa, Tongues of Fire Youth Theatre
• Tuesday 4 November, 7 pm, Church: Voice for Creation, Brother Samuel
• Tuesday 11 November, 7 pm, St Martin's Hall: Voices of those Seeking Asylum, Helen Bamber and Juliet Stevenson