Every day that I spend in my village I find new reasons to be impressed with the women I live with. I don't mean little I-respect-you-and-what-you're-doing kind of admiration, I'm talking a serious I-can't-believe-how-strong-you-are feeling that absolutely floors me even after 20 months. The women and girls in my village have strength of every kind: mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional. To illustrate this point I'm going to talk about every woman's favorite experience: childbirth.
Let's start with pregnancy. Pregnant women in my village get no breaks from conception right up to delivery day. A woman's typical workload in village includes, but is not limited to, pulling/transporting water, caring for a full house of children, gathering firewood with a machete, cooking for a household of 20+ people, and working in the fields harvesting crops. During Ramadan pregnant women fast right along with everyone else. As a health worker, most of these tasks make me shudder and I alternate between delivering stern lectures about self-care and averting my eyes. But when I can put aside those health-related concerns, I am astounded by what women are capable of.
Fast forward to delivery. The midwife in my village (medical training: four months) once summed up childbirth in an incredibly beautiful and concise statement. She said, "Giving birth in hospitals, women have access to medicines, medical professionals, and various machines. Here we have only our hands and God." And it's true. Our delivery room consists of an old iron bed and a scale to weigh newborns. No electricity, no professional medical staff, no medications. I reckon it's a place that could strike fear into the heart of almost any American woman.
And it can be absolutely terrifying. I attended the birth of my host mother's namesake and during delivery complications, we called the regional hospital and asked them to send the ambulance. The response? The ambulance is with another patient right now, but it'll come to you next. Thankfully our hands and God were enough to get mom and baby through the delivery safely. But that's not always the case. In 2010 American women faced a 1 in 5,000 chance of death related to pregnancy and childbirth. In Senegal, 18.5 out of every 5,000 suffered the same fate.
The things most women endure in village are enough to break your heart. But my takeaway does not concern the trials and tribulations, rather the strength women combat them with. Mental strength to birth a child outside a hospital. Physical strength to carry firewood on your head at eight months. Spiritual strength to observe demanding religious rituals while caring for a newborn. Emotional strength to accept and move on from a lost child, sister, mother. Senegalese women epitomize the Wolof word jambaar, which could literally be translated as "hard worker" or "person of substance." But it was once described to me as a "strong warrior princess," which is how I feel about almost every single female I know in Senegal. 