March 1, 2013: AJ McSedge
March 1, 2013: AJ McSedge
On the morning of March 1st, I find myself stuck in the waiting room at the antenatal clinic, here in this city of parched, red earth that has become the one fixed point of reference in what has been the topsy-turvy life I have lived for the past three years. In the eleven months since I last passed through, sister #2 got married. Now as I wait on the telephone call that may confirm a new direction for the next couple of years for me, sister #1 is days away from a second birthing.
The antenatal ward — a small square room with two large doors flung open to let in as much air as is possible in the humid, 30-degree weather just before the onset of the rains — is a welcome relief from the dense, suffocating smell; and the beds lined up almost coffin-like; of the casualty ward I have just passed through. It is only 11:30 am, but is already packed full of women in various degrees of full-blown pregnantness- proof definitive, as if anyone needed one, of Nigeria’s exponential population growth rate.
Sister #2 finds me a spot on a hard wooden bench next to the door and then leaves me to attend to the small crowd of ten people who have gathered around her at her appearance. Left to my own devices, I take in the room and its surroundings; its walls are a mosaic of posters highlighting various maternal diseases with the one incongruity being a poster by the Omega Fire Ministries international Incorporated announcing an Operation let None Escape! Sister #2 tells me some of the women waiting have been there since 6.30am. Looking at the tired faces, swollen legs, and the air of resignation in the room, it is not difficult to imagine that this is indeed the case.
Thirty minutes after I pop into the room, Sister #1 limbers out of the consulting room where she has been sequestered for the last hour or so. Today will not be the day her little one #2 pops out. Like the last time, I will hop onto a flight and return to my life of perpetual motion without the centring balance of the sight of new life.
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Recovering bookworm meets lost son meets itinerant rust-geek, AJ McSedge has spent the better part of the last ten years pretending to know enough about rust and its effects on a variety of materials on three continents. In my down time I blog on a motley of uninteresting things mainly related to being a thirty something year old caught between two cultures at A Geek’s Life and (re)tweet the odd great link as @TheRustGeek