| Get Into It! Spring - Summer 2008 |
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A Somalian Mother Tells Her Story
By Faduma Mohammed
I did not become a mother in Somalia. My three children were born in Germany.
My own mother had a similar experience to every other mother in Somalia. In Somalia, if you are married, the expectation is that you will bear a child. A child is expected of every couple in Somalia, really.
When a woman gets pregnant, we don’t announce it for the first few months. Back then there was no chemical testing like nowadays. So we would wait and see if it’s actually a pregnancy.
By the fourth month or the beginning of the fifth month, when the woman is sure that it is a baby, she announces it. Everybody becomes very happy. Even if there were ten children before in the house, and number eleven is arriving, people won’t get shocked. People will be happy for the new individual that is coming.
Many people in Canada think first about where will they sleep, what will they eat, how will we live? In Somalia, that is not our first thought. Our thought is that, for each child, God will give them the opportunity to succeed. The expectation of success and survival is a given from the beginning.
Here we are limited to, if I have a two-bedroom apartment, I can only accommodate two children. But sharing the little bit people have is why we can afford to have all those children.
When the woman is near ready to deliver, at eight or nine months, we will make a big ceremony. In this ceremony, only women participate. The mother, she invites them and she cooks food. The women come and have nice food together. People will pray for the mother, because child delivery can be very complicated – especially when you are living in a rural area where the medical attention is not that great.
What we also do in that ceremony is that we will put some oil in her hair, and comb the expectant mother’s hair. Then everybody massages around the stomach, massages the muscles there. It’s like going to the spa and getting the treatment! But it’s done in privacy.
The delivery is also an act of the whole community. The midwives used to come and sleep with us when my mother was delivering. The last days or weeks, the midwives come and they stay there. If something happens in the night, they will wake up and help with the whole process. I know that in [Canada], the woman labours for a couple of hours and if you don’t deliver, you will be C-sectioned. In Somalia, there was no rush to C-section. The midwives, they massage and they help the child come. The midwife will be there until the child is delivered, until the mother has the baby.
| “The whole community is taking care of you. So it’s not that only your mother is responsible for you. That’s why parenting is much much easier in Somalia than here.” |
That is the end of the job of the mother. When she delivers and she has family members around, the woman’s family members will take care of her for the next forty days. It’s really important. For those forty days, the woman will not do anything. No housework, no chores. All that she takes care of is to clean herself and to breastfeed the child. That’s it. Even in the daytime, she just breastfeeds. All the child-holding and bathing and everything is done by her relatives or even by her neighbours. Her neighbours will come and take care of her if she is from another town and she doesn’t have family there.
Sometimes in the first few months when a woman announces the pregnancy, some women have morning sickness. They can’t cook, they can’t smell food. The neighbours will even cook food and bring it. They go shopping, they cook food and they bring it for her if she
doesn’t have family members around to take care of her.
So, for the forty days, she will be taken care of, front and back. Everything will be done – housecleaning, washing, cooking, taking care of the child. Usually in these forty days, she doesn’t go outside, she doesn’t go shopping, she doesn’t work. She stays at home resting. After forty days, that’s the day the mother and the baby come out together.
We make a little ceremony for that final day when they come out. Usually a person who is a leader, a community leader, a very honest person, a brave person, a generous person – whatever is the value for that family – will bring the child outside.
That’s when the mother can start taking care of her family again. But the support for the families and the children will always continue. You are born by your family and you have a father and mother but the whole community is taking care of you. So it’s not that only your mother is responsible for you. That’s why parenting is much much easier in Somalia than here. We are all valued in the community. Everybody believes in that value.
I went to Germany to study on a scholarship. My husband was also doing the same subject that I was doing. I did the equivalent to the Bachelor’s Degree of Science. After that, we wanted to have a child.
My first pregnancy was very nice, until the delivery. I didn’t have any problems. I’m not one of those women who get morning sickness. Culturally, however, it was very different in Germany.
I tried to do some of the things that were done back home. Like the ceremony that is done when the woman is in the eighth or the ninth month – I did that too. When I was pregnant with my first daughter, there were not a lot of Somali families in Germany. But I invited some of them and they came. They had to drive four or five hours to come and be at the ceremony for me. It was important for me that I do that.
I think I had my last exam a week before I delivered. I was going up to that day. I could not say “Oh, I’m expecting” or “I can’t walk” or anything. I had to make my own accommodations.
There was no maternity leave. After the delivery, I had to get back to work because I was in on a scholarship. The whole system does not have any understanding of the process of delivery and child care. You have to finish within a certain time and if you don’t, they won’t continue the scholarship. As a student, you don’t get work permits. If you don’t have any means of income, you have to go back home. It would mean very devastating consequences for your future. So I did what they wanted me to do.
When you are a foreign student, you are not part of the German culture. You are foreign to them. You have very different, low privileges. You don’t access the services that the Germans have. As a foreign student, you don’t enjoy those rights.
My first daughter I got through C-section. That was the first complication that happened to me. Somali women are FGM (Female Genital Mutilation). The doctors around the city where I was having the baby did not have the knowledge or experience of how to deliver a woman who has had that operation.
I tried to explain to them and say “If you don’t know, I will tell you. This is what you have to do.” Or I could go to the capital city where they have more experience delivering the women of Somalia. But they said “No, we know; no problem.”
If I had given birth in Somalia, I believe that I would not have had to have a C-section. The midwives would have been experienced and had more patience.
| “The whole system does not have any understanding of the process of delivery and child care.” |
With FGM, the whole [female genital] area is closed, with only a small opening so you can pee. In some cultures, some areas in Somalia, when you get married, they will take scissors or a knife and open everything again. Some cultures, we don’t open the whole thing – just enough so that you can have contact with your husband. The rest will stay closed.
When you go into labour in Somalia, the midwives will cut [the opening]. In Germany, I told them how to cut. At the beginning, they thought they understood. But when it became an issue, they did not handle it properly.
I also had to have a C-section for my other two children. After the first, it becomes a routine. It was very common at that time, during the 1980s. My first daughter was born in 1983. My son was born in 1987 and my last daughter in 1995.
Faduma Mohammed is the Executive Director of Labour Community Services, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of working people and their families. LCS helps to build and strengthen communities through ongoing programs, customized workshops and activism. For more information, visit their website at www.labourcommunityservices.com.
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