World cheers arrival of Bolivian bundles of joy

BABY Maya Condor doesn’t know it but her birth in a Bolivian delivery room this week was celebrated by strangers as far away as Brussels, the United States and Ireland.

Maya was born in a clinic 4,000 metres up in the mountain city of El Alto, a once sleepy settlement on the outskirts of La Paz that in recent years has experienced an explosion in population that leaves it rivalling the capital for size.

The average resident is a poor Aymara Indian, one of Bolivia’s largest groups of indigenous people, who have abandoned the toil of tilling the countryside in the hope of a better life as urban dwellers.

Traditionally they don’t engage much with even the limited health and social supports Bolivia has to offer. Few have identity papers, many speak Aymara rather than the national language, Spanish, and most have an inherent mistrust of authority.

A few years ago, local charity, CIES, set up a clinic here in the dusty, treeless streets to provide healthcare in a non-judgmental way that the community could trust and afford.

“Many women try to have their babies at home because they don’t want to go to the public hospital. In the hospitals, the doctors and nurses don’t speak their language and they don’t allow the family to stay with them so the women are frightened,” nurse Patricia Rattos explained.

“But then maybe something goes wrong and there is an emergency and if they can’t get help, they can die.”

CIES has the facilities to perform emergency Caesarean sections and has saved the lives of both mothers and babies. But just as significant, they have succeeded in encouraging women to come to the clinic for antenatal care so that they are ready and willing to come to the delivery room when the time comes.

Marina Chambi Condor, 34, was more than willing. Proudly holding one-day- old Maya, and surrounded by her own parents and her husband, she says she went to the public hospital before for the births of two of her three other children but preferred the clinic.

“It’s very nice here. Everyone is very nice to me and the birth went very well. I feel very good,” she says through an interpreter. Marina decided to try the clinic because her sister gave birth there last year. Word of mouth is a powerful medium in a city where many of the inhabitants have little reading or writing skills.

It’s also the medium relied upon by the women’s empowerment projects CIES runs throughout El Alto’s ever-expanding neighbourhoods. Local women are trained in the basics of sex education, family planning and healthcare and organise small meetings in each other’s homes to spread the word to their neighbours.

In her traditional bowler hat, heavy sweater and thickly layered skirt to her ankles, mother-of-two Orlinda Charca, 30, looks every inch the stereotypical Aymara woman, culturally inclined to be an obedient wife of modest behaviour who keeps her views to herself.

“I was afraid to participate at first,” she said of her initial contact with the empowerment project. “My husband didn’t want me to go and I thought I would be mocked because I am not educated.”

Egged on by neighbouring women who wanted their friend to find out for them what the project was all about, she overcame her nervousness, went to a meeting and is now a community leader.

“I help to educate the women about contraception and encourage them to go to the doctor when they are not well and I go with them if they are afraid. It’s good because they are taking better care of themselves and then they can take better care of their children.

“Before I had my children, I didn’t know anything about sex. It is the same for many Aymara women. Now I have decided not to have more children because it’s very expensive to send children to school and I want my children to have a good education and become professionals. My husband is happy now. He sees this is a good thing for all of us.”

The CIES clinic and women’s groups were among the projects visited this week by a delegation from the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) and three Irish politicians, Deputy John Deasy and Senators Fiona O’Malley and Dominic Hannigan.

Currently the projects are funded by the EU and USAID, the aid agency of the US government, with the IFPA providing the links to Brussels. The delegation are exploring ways in which Irish Aid might also become involved in supporting the organisation’s work.

lCaroline O’Doherty is travelling in Bolivia with the Irish Family Planning Association. See www.ifpa.ie