Traditional birth attendant struggles with abandoned newborns

Sometime in August 2003, a high school student was brought to the doorstep of Metrine Nafula's home.

The girl was seven months pregnant and her mother wanted Ms Nafula, a midwife, to help the teenager get rid of the unborn baby.

But Nafula flatly refused.

"I told them children were a gift from God and there was no reason to kill the baby. I offered to stay with the girl until she gave birth," Nafula, 54, said.

After the teenager delivered a healthy baby boy, the mother returned, this time demanding that the baby be quietly made to disappear.

Again, Nafula refused and ended up with the baby in her arms.

“After giving birth, the girl's mother brought me a white goat as a gift for taking care of her daughter. She then told me that she did not want the baby and that we should kill it, but I refused," she said.

Nafula grabbed the child from the other woman and went inside the house to fetch a warmer garment for the newborn. When she came back, both the teenager and her mother were gone.

“I went to the bedroom to get a towel to shield the baby from the cold but on coming back, I found they had disappeared,” she said.

Mother arrested

She reported the matter to the Children’s Department and the teenager's mother was arrested. But the baby's mother has never been found.

That is how the midwife suddenly became a mother.

The child was put in Nafula's custody as the case dragged on and in court before he was eventually put under her care officially.

Today, he is a 15-year-old lad and one of 18 children abandoned by their mothers after Nafula helped them deliver.

Each case is unique and Nafula is able to recollect the events surrounding their births as if it were yesterday.

In the teenager's case, for instance, Nafula would later find out why the girl's mother wanted the baby dead. The teenager had given birth to her brother's child, which, according to local culture, was an abomination.

Over the years, Nafula has learnt to be prepared to be a new mother every time she helps a woman to deliver.

The midwife recalls another case in 2006, when two babies she had helped to deliver were abandoned in her home.

On that day, she received five women in labour and attended to them with her husband.

“Three of them delivered around 4pm and the other two started experiencing labour pains at 8pm. While we helped the two to give birth, two of the three young girls who had delivered earlier vanished, leaving their babies,” Nafula said.

The couple heard the babies crying from the room and when they went to check on the two baby boys, did not find their mothers.

In another case in 2008, a woman in her early 20s claiming to be a university student went to give birth. After delivery, Nafula gave the mother water to go and bathe but she never returned.

“After waiting for 20 minutes, I decided to go and check on her because the child was hungry and wanted to breastfeed. She was missing. I bought glucose and mixed it with hot water and gave it to the baby,” she said.

“I fed him with cow milk until he grew up. He is 10 years old now and going to school ," she says.

In 2011, a woman in her late 20s, who was impregnated by her brother, gave birth to a baby boy and abandoned him at Nafula's place three days after delivering.

In 2013, yet another woman from Elgeyo Marakwet was referred to her after delivering at Bungoma District Hospital. She left the child with Nafula on grounds that if she went home with him he would be killed as she had conceived with a man who was not her husband.