Suffering at home gives birth to project

The banquet hall is in a commercial mall, so far north it is nearly off the map, and so far west the guests are having trouble finding it. By 8: 30 p. m., it is apparent that the events of the evening will not start as scheduled, at 6 p. m. Ah, well; a handsome man in a white and shiny suit looked up from his cell phone, smiled broadly and said, to no one in particular, “ African time.” Never mind whose time it was. The gathering was intended to be a fundraiser, a seminar, and a networking session, the subject of which was maternal mortality in Sierra Leone. The guests were refugees, men and women who escaped that country’s blistering civil war, and a few interested others. And what the refugees have endured, you or I can only guess at. But some bear visible scars, and some bear scars you cannot see.

However, they are safe here now, and so they feel compelled to help their brothers and sisters back home. Some send money. Others contribute to causes. Osman Bangura — you have met him in this space before — has created the Sierra Leone Canadian Humanitarian Organization. The first project of SLCHO is simple enough. The women of Sierra Leone are dying in the act of giving birth. The figures are astonishing. According to some accounts, 2,000 women die for every 100,000 births. By way of comparison, the mortality rate in Canada is five dead for every 100,000 births. The women of Sierra Leone die because they are too young to bear children, or they have no access to health care, or they succumb to a variety of simple, often preventable illnesses or complications. And so SLCHO is trying to launch the Village Midwives Initiative. It is simple, straightforward, and to the point: Where there are no hospitals, there should be midwives. And so there were many speeches that evening, and the speeches were formal and sincere, and meant to raise both money and enthusiasm. One of the speakers was Judy Rogers, director of the midwifery program at Ryerson University. She was happy to have been invited and said she would be glad to help, although she said she needed basic information before she could assist in any way. She said, “For example, I’d need to know if a woman needs help, does she need the approval of her husband, or her husband’s mother?” Other obstacles may not be cultural. “ Sometimes during a pregnancy, there is a delay in recognizing that a problem exists, or a delay in deciding to get help, or a delay in transportation.” She said a simple solution — one that has proven useful in some other countries — might be to provide remote villages with carrier- equipped bicycles — cheap, yet useful for getting a pregnant woman to the nearest medical help in a time of crisis.

After she spoke, several men gave speeches, and they all said they knew stories of women who had died in childbirth.

I did not want to hear men tell me of the problems of women, so I sat down with Salimatu Kamara. She shrugged, as if she were talking about some minor annoyance. “ It is an everyday problem, women having problems.” I asked her if she know anyone who had died in childbirth. She considered the dozens of women she could tell me about, and then said, “ A friend of mine that I went to high school with got pregnant. She had to drop out. She couldn’t afford to go to hospital. She didn’t have adequate medical attention. There are midwives in Sierra Leone, but she was not fortunate to have one. She died giving birth. I was in grade 10. She was 17 years old. Her name was Fatmata.” She said, “ The baby didn’t live.”

This, of course, is another problem. In Sierra Leone, one child in five does not live to the age of five.

“ I have two boys,” said Salimatu. “ I always tell them they are lucky to be born in Canada.” And then I met Fudia Conteh. She said, “ My best friend, Barbie Doherty, was 32 years old when she died. She was my best friend since primary school. She was a serious girl. Around the age of 30, she got married.

“ The problem is medical facilities back home. She started losing weight during the pregnancy. I think they gave her the wrong medications. I think she was supposed to take half a pill, and she was taking two.

“ One day, she called me and said, ‘ Come see what is happening to me.’ I could see that her toes were all cramped up. I told her she needed the hospital. They told her there was no bed. She was bleeding. They sent her back in this condition. For two days, it got worse. Finally, she was admitted. She miscarried. Her eyes were yellow, like jaundice. We lost her. She died. They didn’t say the reason why.”

After the rest of the speeches, several elders were honoured, and there was a supper of chicken and fish and plantains, and there was music and dancing until the early hours; African time.

I didn’t ask Osman how much money he raised that night. It’s still early days. Too little would be a tragedy. There can never be enough. Joe Fiorito usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@thestar.ca