Precious cargo

We had already picked-up a number of people and bags of fish on our three-hour journey from Sunuka to Kigoma, but as we rounded the top of a hill just after crossing the Malagarasi River, we were asked to transport something I could have never expected.

I saw six men carrying a wooden platform with a colorful wooden mat. I recognized the design immediately, having seen it used in several funerals near Kigoma. Her name was Asea and she had suffered complications in childbirth. “Could we take her to town?” her brother asked. Men reorganized luggage in the back of the flatbed truck and laid her over bags and backpacks, putting her head in the lap of a mama who would accompany us to town. Other men – mostly those already on our convoy – piled in the back, offering no comforts to Asea or the mama, and holding as tightly to their social roles as they did to the side of the truck as we sped our way to Kigoma – two hours away – only slowing for military road blocks.

In the double-cab of the pick-up truck, the driver started shouting about something. A mother riding with us began yelling back. The guard we had in the front seat – to protect us from rebels and bandits – just sat there, his semi-automatic weapon bouncing between his legs as we bumped our way down the road. The children looked around, stared at me, smiled. I wondered if I was the only one in the car who remembered the precious cargo we were carrying in the back.

I found myself getting angry at the circumstances - that medical care is so poor in rural areas that women die unnecessarily from maladies that could otherwise be cured; that the roads are so bad it is difficult to get someone the urgent medical care they need. I had met a young man earlier that very day who had pointed out the Doctor in his town to me, commenting that the man had traded the town’s medicine for beer. I was suddenly angry at that Doctor, too, even though he had nothing to do with this woman. And I also found myself saddened that community had piled Asea into the back of our truck without so much as a kiss on her cheek, a last grasp of her hand or a whispered goodbye.

Once we reached the hospital, a Doctor met us at our truck and suggested we drive around to the back. We then carried Asea’s body into the postmortem wing of the hospital and laid her on a white-tiled table where Doctors hoped to save the precious cargo she was carrying – the baby she still had inside.

“OK, Robert, let’s go home,” the driver said to me cheerfully as we walked out of the postmortem room. I nodded my head quietly; and as I buckled my seatbelt, I looked back into the hospital where Asea was finally resting, wondering under what circumstances the local attitudes toward death became so blithe.