STILL BORNS AND STILL MOMS: THE PLIGHT OF INFERTILITY LANGUISHING HOMES

On reading this short book by Sheila Ajok Lubangakene, I get to understand more about mental health, marriage and the exclusive details of troubles finding a child in some marriages. The turbulent winds that stir and rule the everyday plastic smiles of couples under wedlock. Sheila shares a brief awareness story that defines true marriage – without a mask.

What is marriage without children? On reading the title and reflecting upon it. I get to realize and understand what the title means. I would call it a double entendre. “Still a Mum” would simply mean someone who is definitely a mother even after losing many chances of siring children – or someone barren and unable to have children but is bestowed with an unwavering love for the children. On the other side of the coin, “Still a Mum” can come from stillbirth. Meaning, a mother that bears dead children. This is how reflective it gets while understanding how this book runs. It carries the robe of many meanings. However, it is incumbent for the reader to decipher the meaning for self and draw conclusions – this is an independent analysis that can be rebutted.

I am a population scientist major, so I understand that marriage is one of the proximate factors that lead to reproduction. This is according to John Bongaarts, one of the finest brains in the field of population. However, John stresses the concerns of infertility that hinder marriage or as a factor of less population in this world. However, these cases of infertility are almost negligible and from 1000 women you might find 5 infertile. The plight the authoress raises is a pertinent carcinoma that kills many families. Some are unable to even afford the gigantic fees of fertility clinics. The concerns she raises ring vividly in my heart for I have witnessed many families shredded to pieces due to the inability to have a child. Some go the extra mile of visiting ancestral shrines seeking counsel from Lubaale. Even Lubaale is quite deafened by their desperations, so he tends to quieten his voice as the medium seeks the gold within their thighs, proclaiming that he the medium has a magical stick, divine, to make “things” happen. Absurdity! Others spend nights in overnights, offering tithe and seeding waiting for a miracle to happen but sometimes even the tongues don’t answer their special supplication. In the field of phenomenology where individuals get to learn exclusively about people’s life experiences we witness the in-depth details of pain embedded in desperation for a “woman’s search for a child”.  Furthermore, the depleted happiness in their home. This all is well presented by Sheila in her quick and action-packed novelette. 

The book commences in the shackles of civil wars in Uganda. How Akeyo’s parents get separated during the wars that made the country run asunder. Due to love and the mantra of kindred spirits, the parents get reunited. Then, she gets to be born. How Akeyo gets to see the world for the first time, grows, studies and graduates. Akeyo’s growth was filled with love, support and caution about the boys. Her purpose was encased to her and her future. She never deviated from the course of her target, until Mark made her lose her mind. Mark she calls him her soul mate. The details of the phrase “soul mate” is well elucidated by Brian Weiss in his book called “Only Love is Real”. Weiss navigates his regressing therapy to two young people separately but their journeys in the past lives are intertwined. Even in the narration of this book we witness a punch of two struggling people – a couple. They fight tooth and nail, burning all the calories of agony until they reach victory. For an ordinary couple in Kampala, the man would have left already but MARK stuck by his wife until they won. Thus, such is a story between two lover birds that tweeted into the moaning nights of agony – childless. With the burning zeal and desire to be parents.

Reflectively, this reminds me of the mothers that throw their children in the pit latrines or at the hills of rubbish. This is where you question the philosophy of “corgito ergo sum” thus implying “I think therefore I am”. How complex it gets trying to understand the need (demand) and carelessness (negligence) all at once. These are mutually exclusive things. How burdensome it gets to be God! On one hand, someone has made a war room in her home praying with faith that perhaps God answers her prayers whilst another has neglected a baby. This again sparks the argument of “I think, therefore I am”. The book stems this argument throughout from the first page to the last. It grows with the reader as you tend to question this philosophy again and again. Extensively about doubting our existence by Descartes. He believed that you can’t doubt your existence if you are thinking about it. This I mean that you can’t claim you don’t exist when you have an entity of thought. So, throughout the entire novelette, Akeyo and her husband never doubted the existence of the child in their marriage. All they ever did was try again and again and again. Even in the valley of anguish, they stayed steadfast and never lost hope until finally Jacob came into their lives. A new hope anew, a sign that it is not a stale marriage but a marriage sanguine of I THINK THEREFORE I AM.

In our locales, we all have registered these number of cases of families broken down because of infertility cases. Some attribute all these to witchcraft whilst some (husbands) shift the blame to their wives and fail to understand that a man too can have a low sperm count, thus infertility is not a one-way traffic it can affect both parties and must be addressed with clarity and deep reflection to avoid pointing fingers.

To the youths out there, vying one day to enter into the union of matrimony. Should firsthand buy Sheila’s book which is Ugx.25,000. It should be a “holy writ” for it gathers all the dusty and fresh air encased in marriages. A simple emotional book!

AUTHOR: Sheila Ajok Lubangakene

TITLE: STILL A MUM

ISBN: 9789970767007