Data Collection Day

Bristi and ABBY participant

Maternal Mortality and Nusrat

On the global health stage, the United Nations set the Millennium Development Goals and MDG 4 and 5 calls to reduce infant and improve maternal health. While Bangladesh has effectively reduced infant mortality, unfortunately women are still dying during child birth. One approach to reducing the maternal mortality rate is to get women to give birth in the hospital rather than at home. I discussed this problem with some employees of the medical college that I am working from while here in Sylhet and to guide my comments I drew from books I had read about the use of birth attendants and community helathworkers. It was a text booky macro public health discussion. Then I met baby Nusrat.
While attending a friends wedding here, I met 2 sisters who were kind enough to recognize that I was alone (Greg was with the men, see upcoming Wo/men post) and greeted me in English. I instantly felt the warmth of their genuine hearts . A wide-eyed smiling baby bounced back and forth between their laps and I started to coo and ca along with them. Between the wedding feast and photo session, my new friends revealed that 11 month Nusrat was motherless. He mother died while giving birth. Her mother did not go to the hospital because the elder son was taking exams, but the more deep seeded reason was that she feared the doctors and hospital and so gave birth to Nusrat at home. Suddenly that MDG #4 came crashing down to the personal level. “Her life will be full of sorrow”, one sister explained. I, drawing from my American optimist side, offered an alternative perspective, “Well now she has 3 mothers as you, your sister and mother care and love for Nusrat.” “Not 3 mothers, 3 sisters,” she corrected me “but she has brought new life into our family as my father died 3 months before she was born.” In Nusrat's case the the wide-spanning Bangladeshi family will support her but not all babies will be so fortunate.
Nusrat's story can teach the MDG #5 a valuable lesson. Yes, getting women to the hospital is important but understanding why they are not going is the first step in achieving this. Why are women scared of the hospital? What can doctors do to be more welcoming? It is not a simply matter of educating the uneducated as so many top down approaches preach. Nusrat's mother's fear was very real whether justified or not and being educated does not erase fear. Many of my friends have been or are recently pregnant and even for them, despite the technology and infrastructure of the British/ American health care systems, fear is part of pregnancy. We should not be afraid from learning about this fear from women themselves in order to reducing maternal mortality.

White

My RA tells me that her family says she has been getting brighter (read whiter) since working with me. They wondered if I rubbed off on her each time we hugged goodbye? If this is the case then I am hoping her lovely brown skin would rub off on me too. Obviously this is not case but face cream to become a lighter whiter beauty are advertised widely here. Popular brands such as Garnier and Ponds pitch the ability of such creams to lighten dark spots. You can even measure the effectiveness of the lightening process by comparing your skin to the skin colour scale provided in the box. Its like choosing a skin color from a paint sample in the Home depot.
I was shocked when I first saw these advertisements, but really it exposes the other side of the same coin. Is lightening one's skin really that different from using bronzer or spray tan. One would argue that these are not as harmful as bleaching ones skin (as some women instead of getting whiter, kinda go a pinker colour where the chemical has burned her skin ) but what about baking under the sun's rays to achieve that desired glowing tan at the risk of skin cancer? It seems that the grass is always greener: As the west burn to be blacker, the east peels to be whiter.

Earthquake!

I was enjoying a relaxing Friday evening watching Mad Men when all of a sudden the room started shaking. "What's happening I yelled as I quickly wrapped a scarf round my shoulders and slipped my leggings on under my dress (always the anthropologist making sure I am culturally appropriate, even in life and death situations!). I could hear screams and booms from doors opening then slamming closed could from the hotel hallway and so I ran out and down the spiraling staircase. I remember glimpses, like photos passing too quickly in slideshow, of women dressed in yellow, pink and gold and an employee carrying a naked baby. I gathered on the hotel steps with the other guests including a rather fat man who stood there on the dusty dirt road in his blue plaid boxer shorts and belly hanging over the loose elasticized waistband (he, unlike me, didn't bother taking the time to put more clothes on.) His face was a mixture of embarrassment and fear, the latter justifying the former. I was still unsure what exactly was happening: is it a bomb, an earthquake, is there more to come? Failing to find the Bangla words to ask these specific questions Greg, put his hands in the air and with a puzzling tilt of his head and asked the waiters (whom we have come to know quite well during our extended hotel stay) "What happened?" They kinda just laughed. We saw the manager of the hotel on his cell phone and waited to ask him; he said it was an earthquake, probably 6 on the Richter scale. He explained that we are situated right on a fault line here , 100 years ago there was a large devastating earthquake, and the last few year s they have been happening more frequently. "We are due for another big one", he said while laughing. Still scoffing, he said "Life is nothing." Thanks. I thought, for the comforting thoughts. I forced myself to eat dinner despite me loss of appetite and after packing an emergency bag in case another one hit that night, I surprisingly fell asleep quite easily dreaming of Don Draper in his boxer shorts.

Research assistant training with 5 amazing women from Shahjalal University including 2 sociology, 2 anthropology and one English student.