Hope springs anew with Zimbabwean newborns

Progress Garakara felt a jolt of pain run through her, and she knew.

It was time.

In her modest home on the outskirts of Zimbabwe’s capital, she waddled across the bedroom to where she kept the small bag she’d packed weeks before.

Then she called to a tenant who lived in the next room. “The baby is coming,” she told her. As dawn rose over the city in a smear of wood-smoke, dust, and car exhaust, the two women, along with Progress’ husband, Alfred, set off on foot for the Edith Opperman maternity hospital, a mile away.   

Fifteen miles to the South, in the scrappy dormitory town of Chitungwiza, Moreblessing Mutsakani had already arrived at the labor ward of the town’s hospital.

On a long narrow bed in a long narrow room, Then the nurses’ words slipped out of reach: another contraction had seized her. Moreblessing breathed sharply and quickly and waited for it to pass.