A Woman's Life

Several weeks ago I was standing beside a patient bed in the pediatric ward at Biharamulo Hospital and I happened to glance down at the floor. I had become used to the malodorous fragrances ever present in the hospital by this time. It no longer surprised me to see a patient squat on the floor to defecate during patient rounds. The sight of cockroaches scurrying to find cover under a patient's bag of clothes now seemed commonplace. What caught my attention this day were the bare feet of the mother who was silently sitting on the side of her child's bed as the group of white coats discussed the intricacies of the case in a tongue completely unintelligible to her. I did not know anything about this woman and still I don't claim to understand the complexities of her life, but even without her saying a word her feet revealed much about her and her and her way of life.


She lacked shoes...even the $3 red or blue plastic sandals that are ubiquitous here... most likely because with 4 or 8 or even 10 children to provide for, shoes were a luxury that she could not afford. Without protection from earth and elements her soles had become calloused from long treks over gravel roads and uneven footpaths, often baring the load of not only her own body weight but also the weight of the baby strapped to her back and the bundle of firewood or bag of cassava or bucket of water that she balanced gracefully atop her head. Alternate exposure to dry, dusty paths baked by the intense morning sun and then to a myriad of tiny rivers or pools of muddy water that arise within minutes of the first drops of rain from an afternoon downpour in the rainy season had left her toes and heels dry and cracked. Bruises and scrapes in various stages of healing gave witness to the difficulty of traversing even the most well-known paths in the deep black of shadows of a night with no moon and no street lights...indeed no true street...for hundreds of kilometers. The thick musculature of feet and toes were evidence of the long hours she spent trudging barefoot through muddy fields of rice or maize or potatoes in order to provide food for her family... and hopefully enough extra to make a small profit selling the surplus in the market. She probably was ignorant of the fact that the incessant, though not severe, itching of her feet was due to the tiny hookworms in the soil or the schistosomes in the pool of water where she baths and washes her clothes that penetrated her skin en route to their new living quarters in her gastrointestinal or urinary tracts. Hers were the feet of one who has worked tirelessly, and with little fruit to show for it besides her remaining living children, ever since she completed her government-sponsored primary schooling and realized that she would not be able to attend secondary school (high school) because her family only earned the equivalent of twenty dollars a month and could not afford to pay for further schooling (if in fact she even completed primary school). Her feet had carried the weight of a new infant every year since she had been given in marriage because as a woman in her culture she had no liberty to refuse her husband's advances, and because birth control methods were too expensive or not available and even if she had access to them her husband would likely frown upon them because for him more children meant more respect and higher status.


Her feet were the feet of a woman who understood more fully with each new Land Cruiser that sped by her as she traversed the main road leaving her enveloped in a cloud of red dust, and with each copy of Glamour magazine that somehow made it to her village, that her degree of poverty was unimaginable to many people in more developed countries. And yet they were the feet of a woman who was proud...she walked with head held high... and so refined that in addition to all of her other work she somehow found the time and energy to make sure that her dress and sarong were so meticulously cleaned that when she brought her child to the hospital one would think she had just purchased a fine new wardrobe and would never guess that her day had started in an overcrowded, single roomed, mud-brick house in which she slept on a mat on a dirt floor.




These were the feet of a survivor, of one who has had no choice but to be a survivor because she happened to be born in a poor corner of a poor country on a poor continent where climate and microbiology and economics and a long history of international power struggles have left her and millions like her to bare the brunt of the world's burden of poverty and disease and suffering. I have struggled to try to figure out what is my role...if any...in her story and in the story of a hundred men and women like her that I have passed every day while I have been here in Tanzania. My time here has been rewarding and I feel that it has been valuable if for no other reason than to be reminded that there are a multitude of people who are innately just like me whose entire lives are characterized by struggle and suffering. By no means has everything about my experience here been depressing though. I have had the pleasure of seeing people who are suffering smile and laugh and somehow enjoy simple pleasures that I would have overlooked completely. If I close my eyes the sweet laughter emanating from a group of children in tattered clothes playing with a ball made of wrapped twine in a filthy slum is indistinguishable from the sounds of a similar group in the latest fashions playing in a posh playground in Manhattan. In fact when I open my eyes the sound rings even sweeter. In spite of the pain and the tears that abound there is vibrant life here. Even the clothes people where seem to celebrate life and color. When there is occasion to smile people do so unabashedly and with no self-conscious thought of their crooked tooth or their sun-leathered face...and their smiles are the most beautiful you will ever see!




I feel uncomfortable in this place not only because I don't know the language or the cultural nuances but because it makes me confront difficult questions like is it wrong to take this woman's photograph- even with her permission- with a camera that cost more money than her family will make in three years? I make myself feel better by giving her a copy of the picture. She flashes a radiant smile in response to the gift and I am struck by the fact that her beauty would rival that of most models in Europe or America. What does it say about me that I somehow feel proud of myself for having done my part in making her life a bit better by going out of my way to give her this generous gift? The copy cost me twenty cents.