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The majority of pregnant women in Chapanduka Village, Buhera, turn to traditional birth attendants or midwives when they are due rather than go to a clinic or hospital. – File photo

Christopher Farai Charamba Features Correspondent
Traditional medicine and practices have often been viewed with disdain.

For many, the thought of using herbs to cure ailments is seen as backward.

For some, however, traditional practices are part of their everyday life.

In Chapanduka Village in Buhera District a lot of the pregnant women turn to traditional birth attendants or midwives when they are due rather than go to a clinic or hospital.

Most of them do it for religious reasons while some prefer to practise the customs of old.

Mbuya Makundwe Manjengwa has been a traditional midwife for as long as she can remember.

Her age is indeterminate but she is believed to be well over 100 years old as she claims she was a young girl during hondo yemadzviti and her grandchild, Mukwazhe Manjengwa, says they suspect she was born around “the year of the locusts” (gore remhashu).

Mbuya Manjengwa says that she has been working as a midwife since she was still a teenager helping to deliver hundreds of babies in her lifetime of whom only four did not live as they were stillborn.

“I have been a midwife for so many years now. I don’t remember when exactly I started; I just know I was young and have been doing this for a very long time.

“I was first taught what to do by a relative of mine and then once I had been practising for a few years I received some training from the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare at the time and was instructed by two Roman Catholic sisters, Sr Marian and Sr Ellen, near Birchenough Bridge in the 1930s.

“I then moved to Johannesburg, South Africa, where I was assisting women to deliver outside the health system. I think I delivered close to 60 babies in Johannesburg before I came back to Zimbabwe,” she said.

Mbuya Manjengwa has since retired from her work as a traditional midwife. She says that she cannot accurately recall how many babies she has delivered in Zimbabwe but they run into the hundreds.

“A lot of the women in this village have come to me for assistance; their daughters have come and their granddaughters have come as well.

“I can only say that it was God who gave me the knowledge that I have to do these things. I couldn’t have done it without His knowledge. There are some things which I was not taught but I just know how to do,” she said.

Working as a traditional midwife is a challenging process and there are different complications that one can encounter, Mbuya Manjegwa said.

She has, however, learnt different techniques of dealing with these difficulties.

“If a child’s foot comes out first I would use my hands help turn the child to the right position so that the head comes first but the mother must be careful when the child comes out. If the child falls out then the mother could be at risk of bleeding a lot and will die.

“If a child comes out with the hands first I would not try to turn it because I do not know how to. I would tell the mother to stand up, then the hands would then go back inside and then if I see that she is bending over I would tell her to sit down and I would meet with the head of the child.

“With the umbilical cord I would sharpen my tools which I still have today, then would tie it really tight as close to the stomach as possible so that no blood would come out. I would then tie a few centimetres up and then cut the cord. Finally, I would put traditional medicine on it so that it does get infected,” Mbuya Manjengwa explained.

Because traditional birth attendants operate out of homes in usually unsterilised conditions and not clinics there is a great risk of them and the mothers contracting diseases such as HIV or the child contracting infections such as neonatal tetanus.

Mbuya Manjengwa says that she has always been able to get access to gloves from the clinic and that in her line of work she has never had any serious complications or problems with mothers or the children.

“Only four of the children I have delivered have died and they were still births. If the mother is in pain I treat her with traditional medicines. There are many herbs and natural remedies that can be in the bushes and the forests and I know which ones to use to help people,” she revealed.

Mbuya Manjengwa added that she was very good at her work but has since retired as she is old now and has poor eyesight.

She also does not want to return to midwifery because these days it is not rewarding as those she helps do not give her anything in return.

“This is what I did because I was given a gift from God and I am very good at it. These days I have left the practice. It is a burden now when people come to me so that I can help. I don’t get anything from this work.

“I have told the nurses at Chapanduka Clinic to come and learn from me. It is good to learn but the nurses don’t want to come and get the knowledge that I have. Now I haven’t left this knowledge to anyone. None of my daughters or daughter-in-laws can do the things that I do,” she said.

A primary care nurse at Chapanduka Clinic, Mr Tariro Mutambwa, said as health workers they encourage pregnant women to come and register their pregnancies and deliver at the clinic rather than at home. He added that in recent years a lot more women have started coming to the clinic to deliver their babies.

“I came to this clinic in 2013 and then we would have an average of eight deliveries per month, now the figure is up to 20.

“A big problem we have is that a lot of these women are from the Apostolic Church and are not allowed to seek medical treatment at a clinic or hospital and as a result they go to traditional birth attendants who usually operate in unsterile conditions which can lead to complications.

“In 2013 infant and early neonatal death rate here was about five children per quarter which we suspect was due to neonatal tetanus because of unsafe deliveries. Now this has gone down to virtually zero,” he said.

Chapanduka Clinic is one of the clinics in Buhera District part of the Save the Children and Community Working Group on Health project known as Strengthening Community Participation in Health (SCPH).

The initiative is aimed at strengthening community engagement in monitoring of and advocacy for improved quality and outcomes of maternal, neonatal and child health services in 21 districts in Zimbabwe.

A core part of the SCPH is the Health Centre Committee (HCC) which comprises members of the local community including people such the village headman, the local counsellor, the clinic nurse, church elders, youth representatives and the volunteer village health workers.