SHELBURNE — Tihitena is in labor and in extreme pain. She pleads with the attending midwife to take her to the hospital, but her tradition-bound husband, Gashaw, will have none of it. He insists on a home birth.
TIHITENA: Oh, I can’t stand it any more! My God! Why won’t you take me to the hospital?
MIDWIFE: Are you afraid? Be brave, woman. Don’t forget that I have helped countless women safely deliver their babies.
GASHAW: She’s just putting on a show!
MIDWIFE: Please, Gashaw! How can you say that while she is in labor?
GASHAW: Well, that’s a fact. All of us respectable folks, haven’t we all been born at home?
Tihitena’s condition worsens, and only when she is near death (“I’m losing her,” cries the midwife, “Help! Help!”) does Gashaw relent. And only later, at the hospital, does she learn why her delivery was so extraordinarily difficult. The cause lay in a crude but culturally sanctioned form of surgery she had undergone as a child. More on BurlingtonFreepress
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