An Unlikely Gift

Chapter 1:

The Strength of Stigma

“My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.”

Psalm 139:15

Kenya, 1978

Even the earth contracted in labored lines of thirst. Just a few meters away lay Kache, her muscles tightening and shortening, laboring against the tiny body inside of her. Balancing on the precipice of a stool, Kache squatted with the support of a piece of lace, horseshoed around her waist and harnessed by the midwife in front of her. Another midwife buttressed the mother’s shoulders from behind while yet another crouched in anticipation of the slick newborn’s body. At 55 years, this was Kache’s 21st child.

Her husband was away tending to the shamba, the desperately infertile tract of land in which he toiled to grow corn. They lived hand to mouth in a migratory settlement, shifting with the crops and livestock in the rural bush area of Ramada, Kenya. Today the sun hung round and bulbous overhead. The ground underneath it was dry, red, and unforgiving. The bush in the dusty soil lay sparsely scattered about like a multitude of thorny, brown tentacles. In the distance lay a spotty perimeter of trees, clinging to sustenance along the banks of the sediment-filled lake. The alvera tree her husband planted stood firmly rooted to the northeast of the mdzi, the homestead where Kache labored. The thatched roof sheltered the women as they gathered between the four walls of her mud hut made of dried earth insulating a scaffolding of tethered twigs.

Two of the women assisting Kache were midwives from the village, but also in attendance was another of her husband’s wives. Kache rescued her as a six year old child from being sold into marriage by an uncle greedy for a profit. Allowing the girl to marry her own husband, Kache watched over her until she was old enough to take on the duties of a wife. Today her husband had four wives, but it was Kache who held the esteemed position of elder wife and successful child bearer. She was a vigorous woman, resilient in physical endurance and resolved in her tenacity to govern the actions of her family. While her husband was the head of the household in title, she embodied the matriarchal role with dictatorial firmness.

She continued her labor, tightening her grip on the sides of the stool. The tawny skin along her hands pulled tautly across her knuckles. Her head bent towards her chest, her closely cropped hair beading in perspiration at its roots. She exhaled deeply, resolving for this delivery to be her last.

The previous nine months of carrying this child had been relatively peaceful for her. The baby did not even disturb her with a gentle nudge or a playful kick. Over the past 21 hours of labor, however, she wove a tapestry of colorful condemnations and guttural groans. Even the midwives whispered concern. The closest hospital was in Malindi, a journey over 20 miles away. The women considered carrying her on a traditional tribal bed with wood frame and knotted rope, but in her obstinacy, she refused to move from the cluster of huts she called home.

It was now the second sunrise of her labor. Digging in her heels, she summoned every fiber and sinew. When her contractions reached their apogee, the child slowly began to emerge from the security of her womb. Then Kache cried out. The legs of the infant preceded the head in a painful breech. Her jaw clenched in paroxysms of pain.

Concealed in a nearby hut, her 15 year old daughter, Janet, listened to the cries of her mother with rapt interest. Her brother’s purpled was body thrust forward into the world, his aberrant wail issuing forth as a loud, catlike roar, alarming all of those in hearing distance. The midwife received the boy’s clubbed feet first, which emerged at a 180 degree angle, his toes pointing behind him. In another second, the infant contorted and its head also materialized.

“Mvulana,” she murmured, “a boy.”

The midwife reached up and unwrapped her kanga, the traditional cloth wound and knotted around her head. With the corner, she began to swab away the amniotic fluid. It was then that she recognized another irregularity. Where the boy’s nose and mouth should connect lay a cleft palate, a deep depression gaping in startling disfigurement. She withdrew her hands abruptly when the boy’s loud voice issued forth.

Kache, defeated by 21 hours of childbirth, cried out in exhaustion.

“I was dying and now I have given birth to such a child!”

She questioned how to care for a child unable to drink from her breast and how to endure the scorn of the community that considered him a curse from God. The midwives themselves were already edging away, distancing themselves from the abomination before them.

“This is not a child to care for,” she admitted. After a long silence, she commanded her voice. “Go and drown this child.”

From her seat nearby, Janet heard the midwives exit the hut and hasten down the path. As they moved, she heard the piercing cry of her brother, smothered in cloth and furiously discontent.

When they came to the white trunk of the Mkone Tree just several meters from the lake, one of the wives stood by and watched. As a family member and Kache’s designated representative, she was bound by tradition to act as a witness. The women laid the infant on the ground, its protective cloth inadvertently slipping open. One of the women began to stoop down and dig at the soil while the other left to fetch the water.

The baby screamed in discomfort, trembling at the openness around him. His eyes squeezed shut and his fingers gripped into fists, curling tightly to bring back the security of his mother’s womb. Beside him was a pair of busied hands. The hands clawed at the soil, concentrated on the shallow trench before them. They were hands that brought countless babies into this world, but at the moment lacked any sort of consolation. Behind them, the other midwife arrived and maneuvered a water canister from the top of her head to the ground. Its yellow plastic sides lay next to the supple skin of the baby, deteriorated in long cracks from years of heavy use.

The hands of the midwife laid the baby into the shallow depression. The other wife stood by while the child’s cry grew louder, a siren to be fed. Glancing around, the two midwives picked up the large water container and began to tilt its sides. Water lurched forward and his legs flailed, causing his clubbed feet to kick at the dirt behind him. The sandy soil drank greedily as the steady stream continued. Soon the urgency of the infant’s scream intensified into an emphatic wail.

Back at the mdzi, Janet listened to the gurgling cries of the brother she never met. The louder he became, the more she recognized his will to live. She absorbed this realization with slow revulsion.

Inside the trench, the infant’s cries continued.

Near the Mkone Tree, the water continued to rain down and the child spluttered and flailed, lacking the ability to close the lips of his cleft palate. The women picked up the second container of water, offering his curse to the Mkone Tree in hopes of future blessings. At the hut, Janet’s eyes squeezed shut over a pool of tears.

Yet inside the ground, the infant’s cries continued.

As the women continued to pour, the water rested over the tiny outline of the child’s body entirely. They began to fill the trench around him with soil. Blanketing the body with dirt, the earth became level--as if barely ever disturbed.

But inside laid the infant, still beneath their feet.