Mukung, Kapchorwa’s birth attendant with a golden touch

Jan 27, 2006

FOR Margaret Mukung, Tuesdays and Thursdays are very busy days. Before the sun fights its way through the cold misty Kapchorwa skies, her compound is filled with women.

By Mathias Mugisha

FOR Margaret Mukung, Tuesdays and Thursdays are very busy days. Before the sun fights its way through the cold misty Kapchorwa skies, her compound is filled with women.

The fat, the slim, the tall, the young, the middle-aged, the light and the dark-skinned, all converge. Some lie in the compound while others sit. Some prefer to remain silent, others groan and some engage in light gossip. All the women are pregnant.

Pregnant women love Mukung. They crave for her touch. Their testimony is one,“She has a golden hand,” they say. “All babies born around her premises since 1970 are successful adults,” they testify.

“Next…,” Mukung, standing in the doorway of her old iron-roofed house, calls out, before a newly-born baby, barely four hours old, in one of the rooms, wails, cutting off her sentence mid way.

Born again, Mukung, 50, is not a prophet. During the 36 years she has been a traditional birth attendant, her fame has grown from Burkoyen village, though Kapchorwa district and beyond. Her house, which also doubles as the labour ward, is always full of newly-born babies and expectant mothers. Some come from as far away as Mbale.

She can tell whether the unborn baby is in the wrong position and position it accordingly. She can detect whether an expectant mother will have a normal or caesarean delivery. The latter, she sends to Kapchorwa Hospital, three kilometres away.

“Next.” When she calls, one woman leaves the group in the compound and enters the house. Mukung makes her lie on a mat, pulls up her lesu and using both hands, squeezes her protruding belly. “Your unborn baby isn’t in position,” she says and squeezes the bulge until she is satisfied. Using an improvised fetoscope, she listens. “Ok, you can go,” she says and another woman enters.

Since 1970, when she started practicing as a traditional birth attendant, Mukung has handled more deliveries than she can remember without referring to her well-kept records. “Seventeen twins have been born under my hands since 1993. I handle between four and 15 deliveries a month,” she says, revealing a big gap in her teeth.

Like all the Sabiny of her age, her front teeth were knocked out when she was young. The reason was that in case somebody fell sick and became unconscious, a straw would be used to feed the sick person through the gap. With the advent of the modern intravenous drip, the custom became irrelevant.

Mukung was a self-trained birth attendant until 1993 when she went for training in Kapchorwa Hospital and graduated with a certificate. She also has another certificate from Reproductive Education And Community Health Project, an organisation funded by United Nations Population Fund. The body has for 10 years been advocating for eradication of harmful traditional practices like female genital mutilation while promoting cultural values and reproductive health services in Kapchorwa.

While Mukung has recorded no fatal complications, she admits that most circumcised women often get problems during delivery and sends them to hospital.

“They are narrow and tight. They get a lot of pain. I send those who fail to hospital,” she says.

The district director of medical services, Alfred Moyo, says the pain is because the inelastic scar left after circumcision is prone to tear.

As a staunch Christian, many expectant women go to Mukung because they believe their children will be successful in life, basing on what has been happening.

“All the kids that I have helped deliver are doing well. They have nice jobs and some are married,” she jokingly boasts in fluent Luganda. Mukung says she studied Luganda in primary school for 13 years and only attained the equivalent level of primary three.

Since her husband died in 1995, Mukung has been able to educate all her seven children using the proceeds from her services. Women who come for check-ups pay between sh200 and sh500.

Check-ups are done on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Delivering is sh7,000 and sh10,000 if they are twins.
With limited resources, Mukung performs everything from her house. Sometimes she turns the sitting room into an emergency labour ward.

“My wish is to get a stretcher or a wheelchair if not an ambulance to get mothers to hospital quickly and a bigger house,” she says, before dashing inside to attend to another mother.

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