Just returned from visiting one of our K’jong employees, Lucy. She went to the Tokura clinic last week, fearing she was having another miscarriage. Instead, to everyone’s surprise, she delivered a healthy baby boy. Pre-natal care in Karamoja is very sporadic compared to that of the States. Though a woman can undergo a pregnancy test at the clinic, I don’t get the impression that this is the standard. It seems that pregnancies are noticed later, meaning that the expected date of birth is absolute guesswork. Lucy did not expect to deliver until much later, and maybe the baby was early, but he was sufficiently developed to survive without modern technology.

We walked to Lucy’s home, which is about half a mile from our own. The locals live in stick-framed mud huts, several of which will be clustered in a yard. These yards are shared by loose households and enclosed by thorn bushes. [The K’jong couldn’t believe the mizungus would build their houses so far (maybe 100m) from one another!] About nine of us, including Lucy and a couple of local women, crowded into the small hut to see the baby. They joked that the child looked like a mizungu when he was born, as it takes some time for their pigment to fully develop. He’s a beautiful child, but the old woman kept criticizing him, stating she did not like him because he was too small, his skin was too pale, etc. We assured her that he would grow. I don’t know if she was being mean, or maybe trying to give the child good “juju” (karma) – the K’jong think a child will get bad juju if someone says that s/he is beautiful. So maybe it was a blessing of sorts? The children were huddled at the door, watching us (not room for them inside). They were afraid that one of our pastors had purchased the baby, and that we had come to take him away. Where they got this from, I have no idea. The K’jong women laughed at this too, recognizing their fears as being as ridiculous as we had thought. The mission women brought a few gifts for the baby and mother, a shirt and hat and some sugar and vitamins. Giving anything here is very challenging, as it causes a lot of jealousy and strife (“I should get one too”, regardless of one’s relationship – or lack thereof – to the giver), but this is apparently one of the few non-contentious occasions and means.

Update to post: Talked with our clinic administrator, and learned I was mistaken: women know right away if they’re pregnant, because they assume that they’re almost always pregnant. If they do have their regular cycle, they think they’re having a miscarriage. The clinic staff estimate that about 85% of the K’jong women are unaware that women have a monthly cycle. For this to have escaped everyone’s notice, it indicates that: a) the women are almost always nursing or pregnant (birth control is available, but apparently not utilized), and b) girls are sexually active even before puberty. Ten-year-olds may be married off to much older men. An employee’s eight-year-old daughter was raped, and her community deems it acceptable. There’s definitely good here too, but some aspects of the culture are really tragic.