[Ailist] Giving Birth to Community Futures: Of Mothers and midwives

[Bliss Browne]

 I encourage you to take a look at a new website which accounts for
almost all of my volunteer labor these days: UBUMAMA. www.ubumama.org.
Ubumama is the Zulu word for motherhood and a global arts-based safe
motherhood project I started in 2004 in partnership with Create Africa
South and the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood in conversation
with WHO. 

Ubumama gathers mothers in high risk areas to share their stories of
giving birth and commissions and pays them to create a beautiful native
garment embellished with their birthing stories and to compose a message
to the world about their situation as mothers.   While creating the
garments,  they are provided education on safe motherhood practices by
local midwives or other health professionals. Their messages and images
are published on the web and also put onto a series of greeting cards
which help spread the word and raise support for the next project.
Funding for the project has all come from individuals. Staffing of the
administration (I spend about 20 hours a week on this) has all been
voluntary.

Ubumama garments have been produced to date in South Africa, Malawi,
Tanzania, India, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, and Burkina Faso with another
one currently underway in Senegal. The intention is to produce Ubumama
‘birthing garments” in at least thirty countries with very high
maternal mortality rates and create a traveling exhibition to raise
awareness and mobilize support for preventing maternal death in
childbirth.  Next countries on the list include Nepal, Bangladesh, Kenya
and Afghanistan.

Not sure how many of you know this but almost 600,000 women a year are
dying in childbirth. Every minute of every day, a woman dies needlessly
during pregnancy or childbirth, most in the developing world. Ten
million women are lost in every generation.  Huge disparities exist
between rich and poor countries and between the rich and the poor in all
countries. In Nigeria, for example, one in sixteen women will die during
pregnancy or childbirth, compared to one in 4,800 in the United States.
In the ten top-ranked countries on the UN’s new list, however, fewer
than one in 16,400 will die because guarantees of good-quality health
and family planning services minimize women’s lifetime risk. At the
same time, four million newborn babies die every year, also from causes
that are mainly preventable. 

The experts agree: with increased political will and adequate financial
investment, most women and newborns can survive so that their families,
communities and nations can thrive.

In 2000, 189 countries of the United Nations adopted eight Millennium
Development Goals for the year 2015. MDG #5, improving maternal health
(with its targets of cutting maternal mortality ratios by 75 percent and
achieving universal access to reproductive health by 2015), is often
called the heart of the MDGs, because if it fails, the other MDGs fail
too. Maternal health underpins — all the other MDGs, particularly
those aimed at improving newborn and child health (MDG 4), reducing the
toll of HIV and AIDS (MDG 6), ensuring universal access to education
(MDG 2), and promoting gender equality (MDG 3).

I've been thinking a lot (and writing some in a new Taos book) about
motherhood and public life. I suspect this is a time we need flexible
institutional structures that look most like a pregnant woman's body. We
need midwives of community futures who know things get messy but are
intent on looking for the promise of life and keeping it safe while also
protecting the one bringing the new life into the world. Having a
skilled birth attendant gives the mother the best chance of surviving.
Those of us who care about AI, I think, are fundamentally devoting
ourselves, to seeking life and bringing life that may be hidden into
view. Reminds me of being a midwife — or mother. Which is why Ubumama
has my attention as a concrete action in the world. 

Check it out. www.ubumama.org.  If you want to help sponsor a new
community, let me know.

Warmly,
Bliss