All was quiet in the doctor's office as Kollie stared at the hospital documents for his wife. After giving Kollie the red emergency form and another medical questionnaire, the chief medical doctor, Joseph N. Togbah, had fallen silent. But he soon noticed that Kollie was growing pale.
Kollie had just rushed into the hospital to see his wife that Monday afternoon, a few days after she had been admitted. When he found Miss Washington, she told him that the chief doctor wanted to see him.
“Oh, right now?” Kollie nervously asked.
“Well, yes, but it's a routine call,” the midwife replied.
The carpenter could feel his heart thumping as he walked into Dr. Togbah's office. He sat down quietly and folded his hands. Though the air-conditioned office was very cold, he soon began to sweat heavily. He pressed his lips tight, as if he would never talk again in his whole life.
“Can you read and write?” the doctor asked Kollie. “We've got a few papers here for you to sign.”
“Yes, Dr. Togbah, I'll try,” Kollie said. “I ain't go far in school, but I kin read and write a little.”
Then the doctor put two sheets of paper before Kollie; one was red and the other was green. Kollie stared at them. He was afraid to touch the red hospital certificate.
“Is this my wife's death certificate?” Kollie asked in a trembling voice.
The doctor sighed deeply. “Well, yes, Kollie, the red paper is the death certificate for your wife,” the doctor said. “It's our regular emergency form for major risky or critical operations, but don't worry about it. Just fill it out and sign it ⦔
“Is my wife going to have any operation soon?” Kollie asked.
“We can't tell right now, though our exams show various complications. Your wife's in a very critical condition. So we must have all the necessary papers signed for her. She might have to undergo an emergency operation.”
“But why you ain't keep the death certificate?”
“Any person coming to us here for any surgery for a critical condition must sign this red emergency certificate. By signing this death certificate, you and your family are waiving all your rights to hold any doctor, nurse, midwife, or hospital administrator responsible for anything if your wife should dieâor even develop any complication before, during, and after surgery.”
“I think this death certificate kin bring bad luck on people.”
“Don't be superstitious,” the doctor said. “We have explained this one red hospital paper to many patients and their families, but nobody seems to understand what it's used for.”
“There ain't no other way to help my wife 'cause she too scared of operation?”
“We'll see later what can be done for her. The main trouble with your wife is her various complications: swollen legs, frequent dizziness, elevated blood pressure, excessive vomiting, gastroenteris, and a history of cesarean section. So I don't think any medical doctor
would touch your wife on an operation table
without the death certificate being signed for her ⦔
Kollie stared at the death certificate; he knew that everybody was afraid of it. It had now become legendary enough for superstitions to grow about it. In fact, Kollie had learned from some of his friends in the neighborhood that only a few people for whom the death certificate was signed ever survived their operations.
Kollie moved his hands tremulously toward the doctor's desk. Because his hands continued to tremble while he wrote on the hospital documents, a nurse had to assist him, as if he himself were a sick person.
Kollie shuttled daily between the hospital and his carpentry shop to visit his wife. A week after he had signed the death certificate for Marwu, Dr. Togbah called him into his office again.
“This time we need to talk about the payment of your wife's medical bills,” the doctor said. “By any chance, are you on any government health program or medical insurance?”
“No, sir,” Kollie replied. “I'm working for a private house-building company, but my bossmen ain't give me any medical insurance.”
“Then you must pay your wife's medical bills in full and possibly in advance.”
“How much will we pay?”
“Well,” the doctor said, scratching his head. “Let's say seven to nine hundred dollars, if any surgery is undertaken.”
Kollie gasped. Where could such a large sum of money come from? His wages wouldn't help him out with such an amount.
“But my wife was here for an operation before, and we ain't pay much and we paid in installment,” Kollie said.
“That's true,” the doctor said, after reading over Marwu's hospital record. “That was a long time ago and things have changed. Anyway, if your wife doesn't need any surgery, you'll pay much less than that. But if she takes an operation, gets delivery services, stays in the hospital for a few weeks, and gets special care, you'll be looking at about a thousand dollars.”
“I'll try my bossman at my working place to lend me some money 'cause money palaver is hard on me this time.”
“Money palaver hard on you? But your wife's in our hospital.”
Kollie felt like saying: “And so what?” But he realized that his pleading wasn't doing much for him.
Four days after his meeting with the chief medical doctor, Kollie was able to get a large advance on his wages from his employers. When he got the money, he rushed to the hospital to show it to Marwu.
Kollie waited outside the Midwives Department for Miss Washington, who had now become his best friend in the hospital. When she walked toward him, she had a big smile on her face.
“Kollie, your wife gave birth to a baby girl this morning, and the doctors didn't have to operate on her,” Miss Washington said, all in one breath. “Your troubles are over now.”
“Really, Miss Washington?” Kollie said excitedly.
“True. The baby and the mother aren't doing too bad yet.”
“Thank God for that,” Kollie said, smiling. “I want to see my wife so I kin show her the money for her hospital fees.”
“I'm not sure you can see her now, but let's go and find out.”
Miss Washington and Kollie walked over to the room where Marwu was resting. She was asleep, and the midwives assigned to her said the doctors had advised that Marwu shouldn't be disturbed for any reason.
“Maybe I kin see my baby and then come back tonight to visit my wife,” Kollie said.
“No, no,” Miss Washington said. “The baby is in the Baby Pool, and we normally don't let people in there.”
The Baby Pool was a spacious room where all infants delivered in the hospital, dead or alive, were deposited until their mothers were ready to take them home.
“Why was the baby separated from the mother so soon?”
“This is a big hospital, and we must separate the babies and their mothersâespecially if the mothers are sick, as in the case of your wife.”
“This is the first time that I ain't see any of my babies after delivery.”
“Maybe your other babies were born in a country hospital, but this is the new way of things in big city hospitals.”
During the three weeks Marwu spent in the hospital, Kollie couldn't visit her as much as he had wanted because visiting hours were short. He couldn't even see his baby as frequently as he had wanted; visits to the Baby Pool were restricted. Marwu herself didn't get to spend much time with her baby. She was sick, and the nurses and midwives told her that “sick mothers don't play with their babies much in the hospital.”
Kollie arrived early at the hospital the morning Marwu and the baby were ready to go home. He was anxious; he wanted to take a good look at his baby. He stood impatiently with Marwu before the Baby Door, the entrance to the Baby Pool. It was actually a large window through which all babies had to pass from the pool to their parents. Several other couples were also waiting.
About an hour passed, but nobody brought a baby to Marwu. Kollie's anxiety greatly increased.
“Why the nurses and midwives taking too long to bring our baby to us?” he asked Marwu.
“Be patient,” Marwu said to him. “We'll soon get our baby.”
Kollie tried to calm down, but when a midwife told Marwu that the nurses were looking for her baby in the pool, Kollie panicked.
“Looking for our baby in that big place?” Kollie said. “I hope they ain't give us the wrong baby.”
The midwives finally brought a baby to Marwu in a wheelbasket, almost two and half hours later. Kollie looked skeptical about the features of the baby. After the midwives had laid the baby in Marwu's arms, they watched Kollie curiously as he examined the infant seriously.
And as soon as they had left, Kollie turned to his wife. “Do you think this is the baby you born in this hospital?” he asked.
“Why you asking me that kinda question?” Marwu said, laughing softly,
but her face changed as soon as she remembered why Kollie was so concerned about the baby. “Well, I ain't God to make you a boy child.”
“Don't you worry about that. But I think this is someone else's baby the midwives gave us.”
“How do you know that?”
“Oh, you ain't see how they took too long to bring us this baby from that big-O Baby Pool?”
Kollie felt somewhat disappointed that he didn't get a boy child. But he felt that something might have gone wrong in the Baby Pool. He had heard rumors that apart from mislabeling of infants in the pool, which sometimes caused problems, an exchange of babies frequently took place. Sometimes rich men gave large amounts of money to nurses and midwives to give them the boy children if their wives had given birth to girls in the maternity hospitals. Kollie tried to believe Miss Washington, who was the first person to tell him that Marwu had delivered a girl child. But he wondered if the senior midwife wasn't part of trading in babies in the hospital.
“Let's go home now,” Marwu said. “We just have take this baby since this is what God gave us.”
“You had better say that this is what the nurses and midwives gave us from the Baby Pool,” Kollie said.
Marwu laughed. Kollie he still looked somewhat skeptical, but his mood had changed. He had even smiled. When he looked at Marwu's
lappa
and
buba
suit, he thought she looked very much like when she graduated from the literacy class in Monrovia where she had learned to read and write simple English.
“I thank God I'm safe again,” Marwu said. “I know you men always want boy children, but I ain't going to get any more big belly just to get you a boy child.”
“That's all right 'cause this was the only way out for us,” Kollie said. “Maybe this is our baby, but I ain't know.”
Â
â1975
(BORN 1930) CAMEROON
René Philombe (Philippe-Louis Ombedé) attended Catholic mission schools before he was admitted to secondary school in Yaoundé, where he first began writing poetry and prose. One of his young history teachers at the high school so radicalized him that Philombe was expelled, and thus his formal education came to an end when he was sixteen years old. But writing and political thought had already become entrenched in his personality.
While working as a secretary for his father, Philombe continued his extensive reading, which included the study of his people's indigenous traditions. By the 1950s, he was actively working for the anti-colonialist movement within Cameroon, including union organizing. While participating in the liberation struggle, he began suffering from the acute pain of a spinal tumor, the effects of which he would suffer the rest of his life. After surgery, Philombe continued his writing during periods of convalescence. In that decade, he also began an active career as a journalist.
Further encounters with the colonial authorities continued, including periods when he was incarcerated. Richard Bjornson, his translator, describes Philombe's repeated altercations with government officials as “reprisals by political authorities who resent his independence of mind.” Philombe's harassment did not cease with his country's independence. Like many of his contemporaries across the continent (Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Wole Soyinka), Philombe has always been a spokesperson for social and political injustice. Again in Bjornson's words, Philombe himself is “a man
who passionately identifies with the suffering, disinherited, simple people of Africa and just as passionately cries out against oppression, injustice and cruelty. Always implicitly urging his readers to penetrate false masks and to preserve a feeling of what it is to be human ⦠.”
Injustice is at the center of “The True Martyr Is Me,” which Bjornson describes as a story of the colonial past, “foregrounding the corruption of a sociopolitical system and the effects of that system on human consciousness.” More specifically, the story describes life within the
sixa
, “a curious institution invented by Catholic missionaries in French West Africa. Before any woman could receive the sacrament of marriage, she had to spend an indeterminate amount of time in a special compound at the mission. The compound was called a
sixa
, and the ostensible reason for its existence was moral and spiritual instruction, but because the women worked in the fields of the mission, they were sometimes kept there for unreasonably long periods and exploited for their labor.”
“The True Martyr Is Me” was first published in
Tales from the Cameroon
(1984), which included the stories from both of René Philombe's collections,
Lettres de ma cambuse (Letters from My Hut)
(1965) and
Histoires queque-de-chat (Cats' Tails Tales)
(1971).