Pregnant in Mozambique

I decided long before I left for Mozambique that I'd write a blog post about being pregnant in Africa. I'd assumed there would be plenty to say, in a cosy, sisterly, down-homey kind of way. I've spent five years now intermittently visiting poor countries, where women of all sorts tend to pity my ageing childless state. By now I've reached a ludicrously advanced age - I should by rights be nearly onto grandchildren - but all the same, I am at least finally acknowledging my womanhood and fulfilling my god-given purpose. And I seem to have expected to have something heart-warming and life-affirming to report from this experience.

Of course few people were bothered. I was in Maputo for five days, working with an exceptional organisation dedicated to transparency and participatory governance, along with some of the representative structures they support. In all that time, two women took note of my pregnancy, both what you might call "local people", probably politically well-connected, elected to represent their communities or associations before local government. I chatted to each of them in halting portugnol. The best conversation went something like this:

Her: Is this your first baby?
Me: Yes. (embarassed smile. I can't say a great deal in portugnol).
Her: If you're lucky it'll be a girl.
Me: MmHmmm.
Her: Do you know what you're having?
Me: Actually there's two babies. They're twins. (more embarassed smiling)
Her: Oh dear. (she looks sorry for me). Well, maybe you'll have a girl and a boy.
Me: No, I'm fairly sure they're two boys.
Her: Oh. How far are you gone?
Me: 5 months.
Her: And is the father here?

That's about as far as it got. Funny. She told me to come back so that they could see my babies. The other lady had said that too. She was astonished when I told her I was having twins. How could I possibly know such a thing already? All the same, I think they both felt sorry for us foreigners that we live such mobile, rootless lives.

I had thought of pregnancy as a very fundamental, basic thing, an experience that runs beyond barriers of class or education or wealth. I had thought the strangeness, the newness, the utter physicality of it all would somehow incite a sense of common cause with fellow women. Of course there is as much that divides us as unites us, even in this thing. Here I was on the other end of 3 flights, the other side of the world, carrying so much knowledge about the lives growing inside of me already. Advising this group of people on how to include women's perspectives in their campaigning to local government. Advising them on strategies to tackle the fact that women walk to health posts only to find them closed for the night - and then give birth on the road outside.

There really aren't any experiences left that transcend inequality.