I don’t remember if I ever dreamed about being a midwife before that day. But, you know, your dreams can guide you and tell you what to do. Sometimes when I wake up from my dreams I take a few branches from the orange tree that grows in my yard and I hold them in my arms. I´ve done that since I was very little and it has always helped me. I was sick a lot when I was young. My stomach hurt and my face would swell up. My poor parents spent so much money on medicine for me. But when I began to take the orange branches in my arms after waking from a dream, I started to get well and not fall sick so often. A healer also gave me an amulet of flowers and ribbons. That seems to help, too.
When a baby is born here in Aguacatenango, people have a custom of giving gifts of atole, sweet breads, and cocoa beans to the family. Since people here don´t have enough money to buy chocolate in the stores, we grind cocoa beans on a stone. Then we mix it with water and make a chocolate drink to celebrate the arrival of the newborn baby. Three days after the birth, we kill a chicken and prepare a meal. That´s the custom here.
After my sister-in-law’s baby was born, my aunt came to bring the atole. We began to talk and she asked me, “Who helped with the birth?”
My mother told her, “Look, we couldn´t find the midwife and suddenly Victoria got out of bed and helped us deliver the baby.”
“Oh, that’s good,” my aunt said. “From now on we won´t have to look somewhere else for a midwife.”
So that’s how I began my work. Little by little, women came to look for me. Later other midwives came to visit me and even doctors from other countries came to learn from me. I´ve been a midwife for years and I´m still working today.
I don’t remember how many babies I´ve brought into the world. I´ve never counted them. But the first children I delivered have had children with me and soon they will have their own babies.
I buy some of the herbs I use during the births in Villa las Rosas. Others I gather from the countryside. I use them to ease the pain and to help hurry along the birth. Afterwards, I bind the mother´s stomach. She rests the next day and on the third day I give her a steam bath with herbs.
By Gayle Walker and Kiki Suárez
Edited by Carol Karasik
All photographs by Gayle Walker
