The Hindu Business Line : Where a ghost takes away their wombs...

Women in this Ugandan island are careful to avoid pregnancy and those who do get pregnant are quick to abort it... prompting the locals to call it the island of women without wombs.

Ziiru, in Uganda, is called the island of women without wombs. And this is certainly not because the women here have no wombs. It is because they are careful to avoid pregnancy, and those who do get pregnant are quick to abort the foetus.

With a tiny population of about 600, this is mainly a fishermen's territory, although some women do come here to smoke, fish and sell sex. "All women on this island are free, with no uteruses, no husbands. They go with any man if the price is right," says Moses Kiwanuka, a community elder.

But Nnaalongo Nabudware, one of the few women in Ziiru who has children, sets the record straight: women use local family planning methods to prevent pregnancy. Should this fail, they seek the help of the traditional birth attendants for abortions, and then it is business as usual on the island.

Traditionally, abortions and abortion methods were so secretive in this country that it was barely mentioned. Pregnancy before marriage was a huge taboo, and a matter of great shame for the girl and her family.

Among the Kiga tribe in Kabale, the mountainous region of western Uganda, if a woman became pregnant before marriage, she would be taken to a mountain peak and her brother would push her over the edge. Family members would look on as she rolled to her death. This particular tradition was abandoned after one of the doomed women grabbed her brother and took him along over the cliff.

Hence women went to desperate lengths to protect their daughters from men before marriage. And `cleansing rituals' were so expensive and humiliating that women often terminated their pregnancies before their community came to know of them.

Stephania Birwanya, 78, is a traditional birth attendant in Luwobo village, where the Ziiru women go for their abortions. She has "helped over 300 women to abort" so far, and learnt the skill from her paternal grandmother. "I use the leaves of a pawpaw, locally referred to as male pawpaw because it doesn't bear fruit, together with the leaves of a shrub called luwoko, which is poisonous and is also used as a pesticide. I add very concentrated tea leaves and the leaves of another plant called the ennanda. I crush all these together, add water and give it to the woman to drink," she explains.

But how safe is this `cocktail'? Stephania admits that two women died after taking her concoction, but quickly explains that they did not follow her instructions strictly. She is highly respected in her village, both for helping women deliver and for getting rid of unwanted pregnancies. The main problem she faces is the police, who keep arresting her. "They have turned me into their manna farm, where they can harvest money whenever they like," she complains.

In her Ganda community, traditionally an unmarried woman who became pregnant was sent into seclusion. A hut was built for her on the edge of the forest and she lived there alone until her delivery. The man who made her pregnant would then bring a goat to her parents to kick-start the `cleansing' rituals.

Some men even threw their wives out for not `disciplining' their daughters. If the father of the child refused to accept the woman, she could expect to remain single for the rest of her life.

In the face of such stigma, women resorted to poisonous herbs and crude instruments to get rid of unwanted pregnancies in the initial months. Anxious parents married off their daughters at 12-15 years of age to avoid the risk of "humiliating pregnancies".

Stephania says, "Abortion has always been a woman's secret affair and the golden rule that my grandmother passed on to me is: don't ever tell a man of an abortion; you never know when he will use the information against you." And at between $7 and $9, many women find traditional birth attendants more affordable than medical practitioners.

Shrouded in secrecy as abortion is, it is no wonder that the men here believe that a ghost called Ziiru takes away women's wombs as soon as they step on the island.

Women's Feature Service