Babies Everywhere!

Babies seem to be popping out everywhere around Namumu these days. In fact, two Namumu employees saw their wives give birth late Tuesday night around the same time.

First, my right hand kapenta man, Mubita, saw his wife give birth to a bouncing baby boy, their fourth child and fourth boy.

I felt bad because I had no idea that she was pregnant, even though I’d seen her a few times in the past few months. Whoops. I figured it was nsima weight. Apparently it was baby weight.

Mubita came into work as usual on Wednesday morning and was planning on working because, as I’ve said, that’s just what kind of guy he is, a hard-worker. I yelled at him and told him to go take care of his wife, which he did right away.

Then there’s Kanyama, Namumu’s poultry attendant, whose wife’s delivery was a bit more of an adventure.

Apparently she went into labor around midnight on Tuesday night. There are no ambulances in Siavonga, so Kanyama called Alfred, Namumu’s driver, and told him to bring the Namumu SUV (Namumu’s only functioning vehicle at the moment), the Toyota Surf. So, Alfred rushed to pick them up to drive them into town, usually a rocky, bumpy, 10 minute venture.

Well, the Surf must have rocked a bit too much, because before they had made it very far away from the Namumu complex that baby popped right out, right in the back seat, as they were driving. It’s by no means a big vehicle, so still I’m struggling to grasp the play-by-play of the incident. Fortunately, Mrs. Kanyama and the baby were both a-ok. Alfred brought them back to the Namumu clinic and Saviour, the Namumu girls’ caretaker and nursing assistant, took care of Mrs. Kanyama and baby Kanyama.

But you know what the most interesting thing about the whole thing was? I was talking with Alfred and Kanyama the next day about it and they were both so incredibly nonchalant about the whole thing. I kept asking them questions and saying how crazy the situation sounded and they just looked at me like I was a total idiot. It was just so not that big a deal for them. I guess it’s pretty common for babies in rural Zambia to just come out where they come out.

The next day the same Surf carried a number of Namumu employees to the bank as usual. Nobody seemed to mind sitting in a seat where a baby had been brought into the world just hours earlier. And you know what? I said to myself “When in Rome...” and hopped right on in too.