When she got into the car she was mostly clothed. But by the time we pulled into a gas station, I had a nearly naked African prostitute lying across my lap about to give birth any minute. I was half expecting, half hoping, to deliver a baby in the backseat of that car, which I was excited about until it occurred to me the mess of fluid, possibly HIV/AIDS infected, that would flow out along with the baby and I hadn’t a clue what to do to keep things clean without gloves or towels. All we had was a plastic grocery bag I was instructed to put underneath Nondogoza, the seventeen-year-old mother. I found myself asking God what I would do about the mess. He reassured me with the logic of trusting Him in the small matter of cleaning up if I didn’t have trouble believing He’d enable me in the bigger issue of the actual delivering of the baby. Funny how sometimes it’s so much easier to trust God to come through in big miracles than in all the little details of life. Maybe it’s because I adopt this mentality of depending on myself to handle the little things so often, when I ought to still depend on God, whereas with the big things I know that God’s the only one who can come through for me so I have to depend on Him.
I could see the top of the baby’s head beginning to immerge, iridescent with the sheen of the amniotic sac. Nondogoza and her friend Colille kept trying to push it back in but the baby was determined to come out, and was no longer willing to wait. Colile began shouting orders to Mxgolisi in SiSwati to pull over the car in front of some little houses where nurses from a nearby clinic lived. After negotiating a deal for one of the nurses to come help deliver the baby, Colile began showing me how to push on Nondogoza’s upper abdomen to help her push the baby out. Nervously I began pushing as directed on the abdomen of the women lying across my lap, all the while thinking about how bad I am at CPR and I better not push on that one bone they tell you not to push. I seemed to get dangerously close to pushing it in CPR training and I felt dangerously close to it now. Colille keeps ordering Nondogoza to “PUSH!!” and Lila to answer her phone, though the conversation couldn’t proceed beyond “Yebo.” But then the magic began: All thoughts of correctly pushing on Nondogoza’s abdomen and how to comfort the body from whence came the agony-filled groans of childbirth became secondary as the iridescent head once again began to immerge, but this time to continue to come fully out, followed by the rest of its delicate person (along with a torrent of amniotic fluid with which I’m shocked I was not soaked). The nurse arrived just in time to catch the baby coming out, then cut the umbilical cord and, thankfully, clean up the mess God had rightfully shown me not to be worried about. It was so incredible holding her little baby girl, only seconds old, that I had just helped deliver.
Those moments holding that tiny human being brand new to the world were absolutely magical. But I have to say that what they symbolized broke my heart. Prostitution is more than common here, and sex is simply a part of the culture, teenagers being no exception whatsoever. First of all, prostitutes are paid more if there is no condom used and so the HIV/AIDS rate is unbelievably high. In Nsoko where we’re living, 9 out of 10 people are infected with HIV/AIDS. These girls who prostitute themselves rarely use birth control, because they believe this reduces the enjoyment of sex for the guys. And so many of these young prostitutes are becoming pregnant, often passing HIV/AIDS on to their babies through their breast milk. But they are unable to take good care of their babies, financially being only one of the ways they are unprepared. For instance, they most likely already were struggling to afford their middle school or high school education, but with this added financial stress, not to mention new full-time job of motherhood, they are prevented from even having the time to go to school. And this disables them from getting the education needed to attain a better job. But for now these girls are essentially stuck in a catch 22: if they are going to have any source of income, even to afford school fees, prostitution is basically the only option available to them. It is, in fact, such a practical choice in their desperate need for money that they simply call their prostitution “making ends meet.”
Lila and I saw this firsthand in the group of teenagers we meet with on Friday afternoons. These girls were only ages 12-15, and yet already they were fighting against the pressures of their culture to be having sex. Along with this, these young girls are struggling to stay in school because of the cost of school fees themselves, plus uniform and transportation costs. Sometimes even their parents are either unwilling or unable to provide all the money needed. One fourteen-year-old girl wanted prayer because her dad wouldn’t cover the cost of her uniform or transportation fees just because he doesn’t think it’s important, and her grandma is too poor to be able to provide the money. Most heartbreaking of all, some of these girls wanted prayer that their moms and dads would love them. Please help us pray for these young girls. Their deepest need is for Christ. These girls rarely have experienced in their lives what it means to be truly loved and desperately need to encounter the unfailing love of Jesus Christ in their lives.
Thank you so much for the intercession you’re already making on my behalf and the behalf of Swaziland. Know that I am acutely aware of the effects of your prayer in our lives. I love you all!
