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Fadzayi Maposah-Correspondent

Is there a standard for being strong? In what percentages is strength measured?

How do we compare it to the days when we were back in school when the pass mark was 50 percent and the teacher would tell us that we almost failed because we just barely crossed the 50 percent mark?

Is the word strong not just a relative term. What can be deemed as strength for one person may not be the same for the other individual.

There was a time I would happily carry two 20 – litre buckets on either side and fill water containers in what appears today like the shortest of time.

Now I cannot do that, does it mean I am a weak person?

I was talking with a colleague and somehow our conversations drifted to having babies.

I told her that I was thankful that I would no longer have to go to the labour room unless I was just being there for support.

She tried to scare me by sharing that she knew of some people older than me who had given birth.

I told her that just thinking about getting pregnant and being wheeled into the labour room was enough to get me traumatised.

The three visits that I went to labour were all not without adequate drama.

If I live to see my great grandchildren, I will still be able to recall what I went through and describe it with so much detail that they may think it is from a film that I watched recently.

By now you may all know that I love interacting with people and talking to them too.

I can strike a conversation easily with people from different walks of life .

Recently, I was taking a walk up to one of the central hospitals in Harare. Walking up to the buildings at the central hospital is no easy feat.

So I ended up walking with one of the women who had babies on their backs and were going for the six week baby check up, something that I later discovered as we talked.

I complimented her because both the baby and her were smart. She smiled as she acknowledged the compliment.

People love smart babies, she said when a baby is not smart, people are not so eager to hold the baby.

I agreed with her.

She told me that she was not keeping her baby smart for other people though. She was taking care of the baby because the baby was very special. I agreed that babies are special.

“Manje uyu Amai ari special nokuti ndakamudhedherwa uyu.” ( This baby is extra special because I was ripped for her)

The way she said it spoke of what she had gone through inorder to have this baby. She did not say that ndakachekwa (cut) which is how many people refer to Caeseran Section.

Kudhedherwa emphasised that she had had her body ripped open in order to have the precious bundle that she carried on her back.

She was the first in the history of many women from her family and kinsmen to have an operation to have a baby.

She said that she had not understood it all when she had been told that she would need to have an operation.

She had assumed that she would just have a natural delivery as the other family members had done.

While it was shared during ante natal class that in some cases, some women would need to have their babies delivered through C-section, she had not fully listened.

She had looked at C-section as being not applicable. That is when she had made a mistake, thinking that it was for others, herself excluded. She was looking at it as a lesson learnt.

I felt that she had been looking for an opportunity to discuss this issue and the fact that I had greeted her and complimented her on the baby, had given her the leeway to talk.

I have learnt that everyone needs an opportunity to let out and not be judged in the process.

At times when we talk to people who know us, they tend to judge based on what happened in the past.

It was her first baby, a daughter and she was so hooked and proudly in love.

Her husband was equally hooked despite having been told by some “societal family therapists” that it would be ideal to have a baby boy first so as to be firmly established in the family! The things that people say.

This young woman needed no probing to continue, she just let herself talk.

She said that when she woke up from the operation, she was really elated when told that she had a baby girl.

She was grateful that she was alive as she had been told that there are women who died during the operation.

While she acknowledged that information sharing is good, she bemoaned how that information was shared, instilling fear rather than empowering the recipient.

Visiting time while at the hospital was worse she told me. Why? I was eager to know. All sorts of people came to visit and some of them said things that had left her wondering why they had said such things, they could have been silent.

What had they said, I wanted to know .

The response had some effect on me. She said that some female relatives had asked why she had not just pushed the baby out rather than kudhedhwa (being ripped open).

Others would go ahead to tell her that they had pushed many babies “easily” and some of them who had more birth weights than her baby. Such visitors who speak loudly in tones that tended to be hurtful.

She said later she had learnt that there are some women who had an elective C-section and she had great admiration for such people.

She laughed when she added that she was sure they told no one that it was an elected C-section for fear of being “condemned.”

I was happy to note that she did not consider herself lesser of a woman because of how she had delivered her baby.

Now when people said she had been ripped, she was happy to say she had her baby and she was determined to be proud always for a process that had blessed her with her daughter.

She did not consider it a weakness as there are different ways to be strong!