The rap about men fearing the maternity ward is as regular as Monday mornings. So common that as O—'s girl was delivering her second baby, a son to carry on his name, we were all outside looking for things to do. It wasn’t hard to find them: hospitals now have restaurants, casinos, and God knows what next.
There should be a German word for the look on your friend’s face when he sees the kind of pain a woman endures in childbirth. When I looked at O—, I saw in his face a gnarled twist I had not before then, and have never since, seen in his store of expressions. The doctor had just cut up his lady, the second Caesarean section in less than two years.
O— was petrified. He had never seen his lady in such pain before, he says, and he stood there watching her nurse the baby as the morphine wore off—watching her endure it, as if it were something to savour. And maybe it was. You look at the agony women go through to birth children, the blinding pain, the loss of volition, and you wonder why don’t they just quit this baby-birthing business, but then you wouldn’t know until you got there, would you?
He wanted a distraction, a divertissement to get his mind off what he had witnessed. Or maybe he needed someone to talk to. Because I bore the brunt of his philosophical musings. O— considers himself some sort of contemporary yogi. That’s his ministry.
He tried to give advice, he really did. Nothing too complicated. Like, have children with a woman you actually like, and the financial complications of a pregnancy are child’s play (hehe) compared to the adult room of emotional investment. But did I listen? Of course not! For someone else, maybe that was fine advice. I just wanted a cold beer, because it was a Saturday, and why not? But I just said yeah and pole sana bro and congratulations, because my mother taught me and my brothers that the currency of manners didn’t cost anything.
I ask the soldier downstairs, some minutes before visiting hours, why there ain’t many men visiting their wives, or people they put up with, or people they got pregnant, and he laughs and says, Hiyo ni mambo ya wanawake . I want to ask him what he means, but I could see in his greying eyes that none of that would have mattered to him. I understood. He was a forceful man. Something in his manner advises one to defer.
Maybe he had seen the doubt in my face, maybe he felt I could use a hand around the shoulder. “Mwanaume ,” he said, “kazi yake ni kutafuta. Hapa hana kazi. ” I asked him if he was ever at any of his children’s births, and I might as well have asked the Vatican if the Pope could pass by Quiver next time he is in the 254. “Bibi alileta Watoto. Nilituma fare. ” That’s that then. A man had only so much time. Spending it in a maternity ward would be a net loss.
O— motions me over. His lady is ready to be seen. Baby and mother are in pristine condition, and the superintendent doctor says this one will be a suckler. Like father like son then, I want to say to O—. “Kazi safi!” I say instead.
We are thankful when O—'s lady’s cousin comes in and saves us from our misery. Despite my being in several maternity wards, we still don’t know what to say to each other in such moments. Maybe that is the problem. What do you talk about in a maternity ward? There are only so many times you can say, “Hiyo kisogo ni ya baba yake ,” without it getting trite. Maybe that is why men avoid going to the ward; women have many things to talk about, and as someone’s daughter informs me, women go into excruciatingly intimate detail. When they tell you about something (or someone), it stays told.
I want to leave because the beers won’t drink themselves. Now that O—'s lady’s cousin is here, we can go with O— too, take his mind off things. Just for a while. But O— still has some ancestral wisdom left stirring. He tells me that he is done dipping his stick in the honeypot. “I can’t put her through that kind of pain again,” he says. And because he was the kind of man he was, I knew it was the simple truth, no more, no less.
He’s been a good man, O—. Slept on the plastic chairs throughout the three nights they were admitted at the hospital. He said he wondered how women went through childbirth alone, and still went back to their nonparticipative men. The heart wants what it wants, I guess.
He is telling me how in his two weeks of paternity leave, he is in charge of the kitchen. The dayburg can make meals for him, but he will make every meal for his woman. It’s true what they say about men from Vihiga. If you bag one, you have a good partner for life, that they are everything one might want in a good husband. You could take that to the bank, and they wouldn’t ask for collateral when they give you a million shillings on it.
The soldier man tips his hat, asks when we’ll be back, and offers, unprovoked, that he knows I am not a father. Not with that skinny stomach. “Bibi anabeba mimba, mzee anabeba kitambi. Na zote ni bidii ya mwanaume .” Then he deadeyes me. A thousand and one comebacks came much later, with every beer I raised
