crybaby

There are local ways of doing things that still bring tears to my eyes.

Mai Danai texts me on Saturday afternoon. "At clinic. Bn blessd wt a baby boy."

She's pale when I get there with my bars of Dove soap and a blue babygro. "It was awful," she whispers. Her satin nightie is askew. "Much, much worse than Danai. They wouldn't give me painkillers." (Did they even have them?). "At least with Danai I was on a drip at Baines (a private hospital in Harare). And the nurses here are so rude."

"My husband was outside the door, crying." We whisper in the gathering darkness, two mothers swapping birth stories, baby Tafara wrapped slug-like in a cot between us.

Mai D arrives, hobbling on her bad leg. In her 60s now, she has seen many babies born. She ululates when she opens the door to the two-bed ward.

"Tinotenda Jesu," she sings to the tune of Happy Birthday -- "Tinotenda (thankyou) Jesu, tinotenda Amen." Mai Danai joins in, mouthing the words softly. I have seen this happen before, when an elderly relative arrived at the bedside of Mai IsheAnesu. (Song finished, the relative presented peanuts "to make the milk come in").

Half-angrily, I find my eyes are swimming with tears.