Razor Blade
by Mark Montgomery
A Busy Kampala Street – 2004
“Here…here’s the razor blade.”
“Noooooooo!” Florence screamed in terror.
“There is nothing else, child” said one of the two old women who flanked her. Florence had her arms draped over their aged shoulders. She could not stand without their support. Her legs were wide apart.
“Nooooooooo!” She let out a second, piercing, howling, scream. Her eyes were shut tight against the pain of childbirth. She could not see the laager of twenty women. Neither could she see the old woman who took the emerging infant by the head.
“Push as hard as you can!” ordered the woman kneeling in the filth at her feet.
“Nooooooooo!” Florence’s knees stiffened in obedience as she strained the muscles of her lower abdomen. The women in attendance were all old enough to be her bajaja1. The massed gathering formed a human curtain around her. They all lived on the streets. Each was accustomed to unspeakable degradation, both experienced and observed. But giving birth was sacred. They protected the young girl, barely 14, from the prying eyes of passers–by.
“The head is out, just the shoulders and it will be over” the old woman encouraged her gently.
“I’m dying! I’m dying!” Florence bawled. Pain pangs coursed through her ill–clad body. Each wave of agony broke on her flesh and bone with intensity greater than the one that had come before.
The bajajas had been unanimous. They concluded that she should give birth standing up. The sidewalk of the Kampala street was a montage of muck and mud. It was a collage of dented drink cans, broken beer bottles, old newspapers and fetid urine stains. Now, it was splattered with her blood and birth fluids.
An infant emerged from between her spread limbs.
“Use this!” The 10–year–old boy had slipped through the geriatric human screen.
“Get away! What are you doing here!” scolded a rotund grandmother with a brightly coloured scarf. “This is no place for you!”
“I am helping!” he pleaded as he dodged the swipe of a huge hand.
“Helping?”
“Yes! Use this to burn the razor blade. It will be clean.”
He held forth a cigarette lighter with a flourish of Promethean proportions. The ample–bosomed mother flashed a smile of gratitude at the impish lad. He dashed back into the gathering crowd as if Zeus and his eagles were after his liver.
The crowd grew in size and in volume. Three rows back, the curious stood on tiptoe. They could barely see the wailing child–mother being held upright by the two grandmothers. Passing cars claxoned their curiosity. The two arthritic women struggled to support Florence’s deadweight. Her dignity was still shielded, as best could, by the granny cordon.
The old woman with the ample–bosom and brightly coloured scarf raised the cigarette lighter above her head as if it were the Olympic torch.
“Bring me the blade!” she commanded. “I will cleanse the blade!” Instantly she commanded centre stage. The stout matriarch took to her task with near religious fervour. She held the blade within the folds of her street–stained skirt. She flicked the lighter wheel. It sparked then flickered then flared.
She held the flame steady. Gently, she fire–caressed the edge of the razor blade that had been retrieved from the gutter. Then she flipped it around and administered equal care to the other edge. Too hot to hold now, she dropped the sterilized blade into a fold of her filthy skirt.
“There, that should be alright now. Just give it a sec to cool down.” For Florence, the sharper edges of the birth pains were beginning to ebb away. She looked down at the impromptu midwife that cradled her baby. Then she looked across to the stocky old woman with the brightly coloured headscarf. She saw the rusty blade. Her knees buckled. “So, who will do it?” called the grandmother supporting Florence on the left. Everyone in the cordon jumped back, as if they had been personally invited to samba with a serpent.
The impromptu midwife obviously didn’t have the stomach for the next task in hand. “Well! I can’t bloody do it, unless someone takes over from me here!” said granny on the left.
“Let me through!” A tall, very thin, woman pushed through the crowd. Her eyes were dark. She wore the expression of one who had just been sucking a lemon. “I will hold her up. Take the blade.” A taxi passed by and honked its horn for no discernible reason.
Masese Slum, Jinja – 80 kms east of Kampala – 2003
The Grain Milling Company, on Tobacco Road, in Jinja, 80 kms east of Kampala, was a good place of employment. The workers at the grain mill agreed that the pay was not handsome, but the work was steady. The guarantee of secure employment kept Florence’s father working there. He was a security guard and proud of it.
He was a diligent man. He never turned up late for work. He would not take off sick, even if he were. He was the captain of his family. He would provide for them as best he could for as long as he could. It was not to be for as long as he would have liked. In 2002 he died after a short illness. The family’s fragile earning power lay in tatters. Florence’s mother continued to work as a cook in a school. Her brother was mentally slow. This, a self–inflicted condition. The fruit of an addiction to sniffing glue. He demanded much supervision.
There was never any question that Florence would go to school. Money did not grow on trees – even in East Africa. “If you go to school you will learn to read and write” a well–meaning community worker had told her. Florence stared back at her thinking that she had a better chance of success if she climbed a tree and tried to fly.
“Surprise!” shouted a familiar voice behind her. She prised the hands from her eyes.
“Jacinta! Jesca! Where have you both been?”
“We have been to the bright lights!” Jesca sang as she broke into a jig.
“…and the cool sounds!” Jacinta joined in the jig.
“Both of you? Where?…what…?”
“In Kampala, silly.”
“Don’t call me silly just because I am 13!”
“Oh, I didn’t mean silly, silly! You know what I mean!”
“And don’t forget the boys!” said Jesca.
“Yes!! They love us! They are always after us!”
“Hey Seesta!” Jesca mimicked the cat calls they got on the streets. The three friends burst into gales of laughter.
“Well, I am too young for that. Perhaps when I reach your age…” she said to the much older girls.
“You should come back with us. We will go back soon.”
“I can never do that! I can never leave my mother and my brother. They need me.”
“You need to look out for what you want, Seesta!” They burst into laughter again at Jesca’s impression of Kampala street jive talk. “No! I will not! I can’t even pay for it!”
“The matatu2fare is only UGX 2000!” Jacinta was happy to inform. Despite earlier protestations, Florence made some calculations in her head. She was not agile at this kind of thing. Laboriously she mused “If I carry 2 jerry cans a day for my neighbors and I am paid UGX 100 for each jerry can…”
The Old Taxi Park – Kampala
“Get your damned garbage cans out of my way!” The driver leaned out of the window and swore viciously at the three minibus drivers whose vehicles blocked his passage. He was exhausted and irritable. It was already 10 pm. The traffic had been a sluggish succession of jams. This was his third Jinja–Kampala–Jinja run for the day. It had been an early start and heaven knew how he hated the old taxi park – the matatu terminus, shoehorned in between Ben Kiwanuka and Burton Streets in Kampala.
Hundreds of taxis wrestled for every spare inch of space. Each wanted to be ahead of the other. Often, they parked so close to each other that the passengers could not squeeze between them to get in or out. The long lines of vehicles, thirty rows deep, stretched for close to a kilometre.
The taxi rank was a satanic symphony of petrol fumes, foul–mouthed drivers and irate passengers who had made uncomfortable and expensive journeys to the capital. Many hoped for fortune. Most sought survival. Those arriving fought their way through the counter–tide of humanity that was as eager to leave the city as they were to discover it. Voices were raised. Tempers flared.
Jesca and Jacinta, two seat rows ahead of Florence, were closer to the door than she was. They squeezed out of the taxi before Florence could fight for exit between her taxi and the one from Tororo, that was parked almost up against theirs.
“Jesca! Jacita!” She shouted at the top of her voice. She looked all around frantically. She could not see them. “Jesca! Jacinta!” Hysteria stalked her. She knew it was impossible that they could hear her over the cacophony of hundreds of minibuses and thousands of passengers. Satan’s Symphony played on. She moved randomly through the gaps between the taxis not knowing where she was going. She darted wildly through the maze of metal. The only illumination came from the vans that had left their lights on.
“Jesca! Jesca! Jacinta!” she croaked. She could not shout for much longer. Florence could not decide if she should stay in one place and wait for them to find her or if she should keep looking for them.
“Hello Seesta!” She swung around. Four boys leaned against a taxi that had just arrived from Masaka. “Where are you going Seesta?” said a boy who seemed taller and older than the others did.
“Leave me alone!” She slipped through a crevice of an opening that was created when the taxi behind her inched forward.
“Jesca! Jacinta! Where are you!”
“Why don’t you come with us?”
“Leave me alone!” She turned away from them. The youngest of the hoodlum quartet pulled her hard, by the arm. As she swung around, he slammed his fist into her mouth. She dropped to her knees. The one bag she had went flying under one of the taxis. A second thug crashed his knee into the side of her head.
“Get up, bitch! You are coming with us!” ordered the leader of the gang. Two of the boys frog–marched her through gaps in the bumper–to–bumper queues of minibuses. The leader of the pack showed the way. Dazed and in shock Florence could do naught but follow where led. Her head throbbed. She could feel the side of her face swelling. At least one tooth had been loosened. She felt it with her tongue. It would not take much to dislodge it. She suddenly felt weary and famished. It had been a long day. She had not eaten since lunch. And then they were out of the forest of vehicles, heading uphill on Burton Street. The Devil’s Symphony progressed to the next movement. The tone of the clamour was different. Cars screeched along Kampala Road.
“Enough!” declared the leader.”
“Just one more?”
“No! Get her down.” Florence had no resistance left. It took no effort for the juvenile psychopaths to pin her to the ground. Just when she felt she could feel no greater pain or shock she felt his weight descend on her. She knew it must be the leader. He paid no heed to her protests or pain. He seemed more attuned to the cheering of his little band of followers. Eventually he finished with her. “We will see you again” he said. Someone kicked her in her side. Eventually she stopped weeping. She tried to move. Every sinew in her body mutinied.
Yet, she could not lie all night in the plot of waste ground. “Jacinta and Jesca will be looking for me.” she thought. Laboriously she forced herself to her feet. The hazy half–light in the distance told her which way to walk. She took five steps, then needed to rest. With each step, a spear of agony pierced her frame. By the time she made it down the hill, back into the centre of Kampala, it had gone two in the morning. The city had settled down. Florence found some old newspapers that would serve as blankets. She collapsed into the doorway of a shop and settled down for the night. Still shock– shivering, she cried herself to sleep. “Jacinta? Jesca?” she wept softly till sleep halted Satan’s Symphony – for a while.
The Voice won the battle. Florence reached the foyer of the of the church just as the service ended.
The congregation spilled out. Florence did not know what to do next. Before she could decide her next move a young woman came up to her and hugged her.
“She hugged me! She hugged me!” was all Florence could think. The young woman relaxed her grasp.
“Hello, I am Gillian. How can I help you?
About Florence
Florence with Cathy and Jackson
the time, the Dwelling Places team did not know that Florence was pregnant for a second time.
Florence received full medical care and prenatal supervision. In 2009, when came the time to give birth, she was admitted to the Agali Awamu Clinic in Kampala. Her son Jackson Kiyimba was born in sterile and carefully monitored conditions. This was an experience so remarkably different to the first time she gave birth. Throughout her time in hospital, she was accompanied by Kristen and Betty, two of the Dwelling Places staff members. The new–born was provided with clean clothes and professional medical follow–up care. In 2010 Cathy, her first child was enrolled at the Agape school. She is now in the middle class at this institution. Florence was enrolled in a sweater-making course provided by a private tutor, Mrs Imelda Sebalu, of Mutundwe.
