Managing Motherhood, Managing Risk: Fertility and Danger in West Central Tanzania

6. The Community of Bulangwa

CHAPTER 6 The Community of Bulangwa [Southern Sukumaland] is the commencement of a most beautiful pastoral country, which terminates only in the Victoria Nyanza [Lake Victoria]. From the summit of one of the weird grey rock piles which characterize it, one may enjoy that unspeakable fascination of an apparently boundless horizon. On all sides there stretches toward it the face of a vast circle replete with peculiar features, of detached hills, great crag-masses of riven and sharply angled rock, and outcropping mounds, between which heaves and rolls in low, broad waves a green grassy plain whereon feed thousands of cattle scattered about in small herds. —Henry M. Stanley, Through the Dark Continent Despite a puzzling lack of reference to the presence of any people, the above description of the physical landscape of southern Sukumaland is still somewhat recognizable over a century later, although the cattle and the grassiness of the rolling plains are no longer as abundant as this entry in Stanley’s journal for February 17, 1875, suggests.1 Descriptions of this same landscape by forestry of‹cials and development agencies working in the Shinyanga Region during the 1990s are ‹lled with references to the serious problem of soil erosion in the area, a problem they link to the overgrazing of cattle and local people’s never-ending search for available sources of ‹rewood (cf. Austen 1968; Bates 1965).2 Periods of drought during the early 1980s, in 1993, and again in the early part of 1994 wreaked additional havoc on the environment. The resulting poor harvests and death of large numbers of cattle brought much hardship to rural households in the region. Bulangwa, the rural community that served as my home base from November 1992 to July 1994, is situated within this part of the country. This chapter introduces the reader to the ‹eldwork site in its contemporary setting. I begin by providing some preliminary observations about social relations in the community and the available biomedical and non83 biomedical sources of maternal health care. I then introduce the reader to the sample of 154 women who spoke with me about their pregnancy and birth-related experiences. This chapter sets the stage for the examination of the unof‹cial de‹nitions of maternal health risk that are presented in chapters 7 through 11. The Research Setting Bulangwa is best described as a small rural settlement—larger than a village , but not quite a town—where cold bottles of Coca-Cola and Pepsi products were always available in the only two local shops equipped with kerosene-run refrigerators.3 Throughout the course of my ‹eldwork, people would often wax nostalgic about how Bulangwa used to be quite a bustling center and a great place for business (“There even used to be several Indian shopkeepers and a guest house here!”), while noting in the same breath that it has experienced a gradual economic decline since the late 1970s.4 The community, with its approximate population of 4,000, was served by fourteen shops, two butcheries, ‹ve churches, two mosques, one government clinic, two private clinics, two primary schools, one secondary school, three motor-run mills for grinding local grains, and a weekly outdoor market. These amenities, excluding the primary schools, also serviced those living in nearby villages.5 The center of town was dominated by the presence of seventeen Arab households. Of the fourteen shops in the community, eight were owned by Arab families; two others closed in 1993 due to poor business. Two of the three mills were also owned by Arab families; the third was run by an African man who rented part of the needed machinery from an Arab man in the community. Eight of the twelve cars in town were owned by Arab shopkeepers, one belonged to me, one to a Sukuma man, one to the secondary school, and one to a local UNICEF project. The primary mode of transportation for other members of the community included transportation by bicycle, bus, ox-drawn cart, or foot. Privately owned cars could be rented out for a fee when emergencies arose and immediate transportation was needed. Electricity came to Bulangwa in 1993, although only those living in the center of town, or very nearby, had access to it. This latter fact was a function of both ‹nancial and physical restrictions. In addition to the large 84 Managing Motherhood, Managing Risk down payment required (8,000 TSH...