Due to the sudden disappearance of the dial tone on our phone last Saturday, I haven’t been able to post any blogs of late. So I’ve had to call on my good buddy Pearl to help me out. (yes we can still email as that is done through MAF’s LAN but because of the restrictions on internet access through the LAN I can’t post to or read or comment on blogspot blogs.)

Here is a blog I had written last Sunday:

Today I actually had a conversation with our pastor’s wife. She is currently pregnant with their 5th child together. He was previously married to her older sister and had five children with her before her sudden death. Anyways, I don’t even know her name I just call her “Ibu” out of respect. She is a very difficult person to talk with. She speaks very quietly and doesn’t really seem to have any sort of interests that you could talk about. I brought her a banana loaf a few weeks ago and we just stood at her door talking for a little bit - or I should say, she was answering my questions. There was no, “Would you like to come in for a coffee or tea?” However today she talked. I guess the language of pregnancy, pain, delivery etc... is inter-cultural. I asked her if she knew where she wanted to deliver the baby (she is seven months along). She didn’t know. She went on to tell me that the first three kids were delivered at home by midwife but the last two she delivered herself. With the second-last one she even cut the cord herself and with the last one her husband cut the cord. She said that they were born at night and at night there are no taxis and the only way for her to get to the local government clinic would be to walk - so they were just born at home. At that time they also did not have a cell phone to call a midwife. Now they do. However, if she had to get to a hospital in the night she’d have to go on the back of a motorcycle… I don’t even want to imagine doing that while in labour…