Postcards Home from Zimbabwe – Day 3
Waiting mothers wrapped in prayer
By Melissa Lauber
June 11, 2016
At the Old Mutare Hospital, about a mile from Africa University, conditions, by Western standards, seem harsh and a little primitive. But for the 600 women who give birth there each year, it is a place where miracles can happen.
The hospital serves a rural population of about 15,000 people. Six rural health clinics are in this region, but the medical professionals were noting that the difficulties pregnant women were having in getting to the hospital were causing complications, and in some cases, even deaths,
In a field behind the hospital, a Waiting Mothers’ Shelter was created. Twenty to 30 women, who are at least 36 weeks pregnant, stay in this modest home, designed to house 12, to ensure they are close to access a skilled midwife and emergency obstetric care.
During the past year, the United Methodist Women of the Baltimore-Washington Conference knitted and crocheted prayer shawls. They were made and sent with love to our partners in Zimbabwe. The women at the Waiting Mothers Home seemed like ideal recipients.
Today, late in the morning, we visited the hospital. The nurse-in-charge took us on a brief tour of the modest hospital – the men’s and women’s ward, large rooms with about a dozen beds and a handful of patients wrapped in red blankets in various stages of sleep and unrest. There was a pediatric unit and an exam room where a little boy was in tears as his arm was wrapped in a bandage, and a new dental office.
Parked outside was an ambulance donated by the United Methodist Board of Child Care in Randallstown.
We – the BWC’s director of Connectional Ministries, the Rev. Maidstone Mulenga; his wife, Charity; the Rev. Jim Miller; Barbara Matthews and I, were introduced to the midwife in the maternity ward, Ranm A. Muposhi. She had just delivered a baby but took the time to greet us – even introducing us to one of the Zimbabwe’s newest people, a newborn passing through the hallway with his mother.
Sister Muposhi walked us past the sign for the x-ray and morgue, to a lawn where some of the pregnant women were visiting with friends. Nearby was their kitchen, an open air, three sided, cement platform with a fire pit in the center.
Barbara and Charity struck up a conversation with Chenou Nezomba, one of the women staying at the residence. In a shared language as old as time, they shared stories about babies and hopes.
Barbara explained the shawls and conveyed the prayers and blessings from themselves and the women of the Baltimore-Washington Conference.
Walking back to the van to leave, I asked Sister Mupposhi if there was anything she really needed. “A resuscitator for neonates,” she said immediately and with urgent certainty. I’m not sure what that really is, or how one acquires one. I do know it’s probably a small portion of her real needs.
That evening, after the sun set, the temperature dropped. It’s winter in Zimbabwe. I thought of the women wrapped in their new prayer shawls.
I had only a small glimpse of their lives – a hint of their stories. But my prayers are now wrapped up in the shawls they’ll put around themselves. I pray their waiting goes well. I pray God holds them safe in the palm of her hand.