My Bush Baby

This time of year reminds me of being pregnant in the bush! Caedmon will be 3 years old in 2 weeks, so the memories come flooding back! I'll share a little about my experience..

We moved to the bush on August 16 and found out we were pregnant September 24. From there, it got pretty rough. I was SOOOOO sick with Caedmon, and October-January is the hottest time of the year in Zambia. I can remember waking up and laying in our bed in our hut ALL day. I had my trusty red bucket that I threw up in that Blu would faithfully clean out for me (without ever complaining once!!) It was a really tough first 3 months and I struggled with depression. But at the end of December, we had our first visitors from the States, my parents!!! They brought us tons of baby stuff, Christmas presents, maternity clothes, and stuff to decorate our new baby's nursery in our hut! My spirits were definitely lifted!!

This was Caedmon's Veggie Tales nursery!


We didn't tell people that I was pregnant except for our closest friends, but I guess everyone in the village talked about us. One day, when Blu was in town some ladies asked him if I was "blah blah" (a Tonga word Blu didn't know..) He was confused and said "um, no..." Then, they told him "Oh!! Your wife is just getting fat then!!" He quickly told them "No she has a baby in her stomach!" They said "oh! Then she is blahblah." So we quickly learned a new word, less the whole village think the white woman was miraculously getting fatter by the day. (Those white people must eat some GOOD food!!)

Our mission flew me to South Africa to have the baby, and we kept that a huge secret from everyone. They would ask me if I was going to have the baby in the bush, and I would just laugh and say "no....." They would smile knowingly and say "ah...you are going to Monze..." (a small town 1 hour away with a small medical clinic!) It was so funny! Many of the women volunteered to come to our hut and help me have the baby right there..but I declined. :)

Most people probably thought that we wouldnt' really come back after we had the baby, but we did! When Caedmon was 4 weeks old, we returned to our hut in the bush. It was a Sunday and we stopped at our favorite church to introduce them to the baby. During the "testimony time" my favorite old woman, Margaret, took Caedmon from my arms (freaked me out just a tad) and took him to the front of the church where she rocked him and sang a song dedicating him to Jesus. It was precious.

As we drove back to our hut, people along the road screamed and waved and we could hear them yelling "mwana!!! mwana!!!" (baby!) Someone actually told us that our baby looked like Baby Jesus, because that was the only white baby they had seen from the Jesus Film!! One lady in town, a dear but a bit mischievous friend named Otria, had spread a rumor (just for fun I guess?) that the white woman had triplets, so for awhile people just swarmed our house trying to get a glimpse of the babies!

It wasn't all fun for me..there were some hard times. People would come over at all hours of the day yelling from the road "We want to see the white baby!!!" It got pretty old. I was amazingly calm when we went to churches and people asked to hold the baby. There were only 2 occasions that upset me--one was when a woman put her finger in Caedmon's mouth...I about flew through the roof. Another was when a young girl (about 12) asked to hold him and I let her and the next thing I knew, she tossed him into the air. A Zambian belief is that if you don't toss your baby into the air when they are young, you will do it one day when they are older and they will just die.... People constantly complained that I didn't dress the baby warm enough. At 80 degrees they wanted him in socks, hat, sweaters, and then bundled in a blanket.

But all in all, it was fun having a bush baby. One church told us when we left that we would have to bring Caedmon back one day and they would tell him how much they loved him and prayed for him when he was just a baby. :)

Blu went into the bush and cut some sticks to make Caedmon a "bush crib!"