Conception Island

“Ay, long time I ehn see you- I didn’t know you pregnant again’

“Girl dat is the last one, Boyo saying de chile is not his”

“ Same ting yuh say last year when ah see you. Ent Boyo say that about the two before this one?”

“Yes but they have he mother features. Is me first two children and the one ah have for Redneck that doh favour him”

The history books tell us that when Christopher Columbus sighted Grenada in 1498 he called it Conception Island. It was an uncanny prophecy. Maybe he spotted the virginal white beaches with sand softer than a SilentNight mattress, perfect for clandestine night-time rutting sessions. Maybe it was the hidden hills that is now Old Fort, the ideal backdrop for furtive meetings prized for being outside of the view of persistent gossip. Maybe he observed the narrow inlets and coves that constituted Quarantine Point and saw its potential as secret mating grounds.

The island of Grenada, with its undulating hills and lush green vegetation is rich and fertile. Its people, too, are fertile but not so rich. In the year 2000, Grenada had an average birth of four children per woman (IFAD, 2000). This compares with 1.2 in developed countries. Bronzed, young, nubile bodies swell each year, tenacious yet audacious, to deliver more mouths to feed into the homes of parents who already do not have enough. Fathers are sometimes absent or disputed, but this might, perversely, be in the young mother’s best interest because if he lays claim to his seed, chances are that the following year, she will be pregnant again. Older women, three and four children in tow, meet new men who promise a better life, but who cannot be expected to contribute to a new family’s upkeep without having their own interests in the home, so a child is born, and then another, to counterbalance latent feelings of resentment of having to take up the slack of an ex lover’s responsibility.

“So how you go make out?”
“Ah ehn know nuh. It doh have work. I was waiting on some travaux but dem people giving who dey want yes”
“An what’s about yuh first chile fadder in America, he helping yuh?”

“He does send something now and then”

“You went an talk to the nurse about the contraception I tell you about the last time?”

“Me? dat does make people sick and big and full up. Plus dat nurse fass to much- she like to mind people business”.

Children are the opium of the poor. IFAD (the International Fund for Agricultural Development- a specialised agency of the United Nations) tells us that 51% of the very poor in Grenada were under age 20. It is a cyclical cause and effect chain. Teenage or adolescent pregnancy was featured as one of the primary causes of poverty (along with unemployment). It was reported that many young mothers go on to have more children by different men and that this was particularly acute in rural areas. I do not think in any way, that only people of means should have children, but the lack of choices and opportunities available to the pregnant poor in Grenada, makes the thought of bringing more children into these circumstances alarming. Families survive on less than $5 US dollars a day. There is no welfare state to cushion the fall of poor housing and inadequate resources. Substance abuse features as strongly as the aged grog that is drunk by the populace, rendering lots of relationships abusive.

The statistics are frightening, but I do not need statistics to tell me that one out of every 5 Grenadian teenagers will have a baby before age 20. I did not need a UWI report to let me know that my neighbour’s daughter, who looked oh so promising, will be perched on the steps of her parents’ aspiring house, baby in hand next year, telling me that “children hard to mind yes” as if she didn’t know from her parents’ own recent experience. That the mother who spent years selling drinks/roast corn/fried chicken to local patrons or who cleaned the houses of more well to do neighbours and who harboured hopes of daughters becoming teachers and nurses and professionals, is still selling drinks/roast corn/fried chicken because her three daughters are now parents themselves and it is a tight squeeze in the little house she struggled to build. That at least one CXC grows every year in the tummies of the students of the local secondary school. That private abortions are used with alarming regularity. That one of the first things that one can expect is a pregnancy when a girl has left school for one year or even two. The Grenada Government’s National Strategic Health Plan for 2006-2010 states that a study conducted by Dr. Everold Hosing in a private clinic in 1994, suggested that for every 400 live births to teenagers, there are approximately 200 abortions. This is shocking.

“So many of de young children belly big too. An some of dem belly like mortuary. D pharmacy stop give de tablet, dat is why they pregnant all over de place. Me, ah too old for that”

The Grenada Planned Parenthood Association lays blame on the institutions of church and school, which continue to preach abstinence, even where the evidence is clear that teenagers are already sexually active. Some blame lies squarely on the shoulders of these catholic styled organisations but, the influence of school and church on the viewpoints of teenagers are very limited- teenagers have sex in any event even though they are told not to, why would they listen to school and church on the sticky issues of contraception?

I am more inclined to believe the study done by UWI and the United Nations which put forward that a combination of gender stereotyping and a lack of challenges are underlying causes. Manhood tends to be measured by the number of sexual partners a man has and the number of children that result from those relationships. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, breeding, a measure of virility, is also a measure of masculinity. Fatherhood is often equated to manhood. The report also states that at the same time, girls are offered few challenges or supports for their self-esteem outside of relationships with men and their domestic role. I take some issue with this because I know that women have been encouraged and have, over the years, continued to exceed menfolk in education and the arts. What is clear, however, is that childbirth certainly seems to offer some measure of validation and acceptance to those who perhaps have no other way of attaining such. These women breed to feel wanted, desired and loved.

“An yuh ehn hear me first daughter pregnant? She making ah chile for Jean boy by the pasture”

“I thought she was in college, you tell me she get seven subjects no?”

“Yuh ever see more? Not to say she ent see the situation”

From my experience, many of the pregnant poor want or actively desire children. This may seem bizarre on first blush because the presence of a child has significant constraints on income generation. However, particularly among young people- contraception and especially oral contraception is viewed upon negatively. “She on family planning” is often recited with distaste. An admission of using the pill, is a tacit admission of having regular sex, so it is preferable to rely on nature and the gods and to take one’s chances so to speak. Children are also the cement to relationships in a society where marriage is not the litmus test of commitment, and bearing a child is a tentative approach towards a long term future. Those of the pregnant poor who do not want children appear to be insufficiently informed about contraceptive options and rely on methods that are not foolproof.

Some of our women, especially younger women, do not have sufficient say over their bodies- men dictate how they have sex and when they have it- they are not independent or assertive enough to demand the use of some form of protection. Sex happens when it happens and children, too, happen when they happen. From my experience, planned parenthood initiatives and reproductive clinics are not sufficiently outsourced into the rural areas – they are based in the capital-and they do not work alongside the already struggling family units. Family planning also has a negative reputation about being only about pills and injections and coils, the holistic approach of timing is often never broached. The agencies often intervene when it is already too late. The result? Aborted education, pre-term families, stuck in a quagmire of poverty.

“So give me a change nuh, yuh know how things hard already”

“No I ent know how it hard cause it look like yu having more regular sex than me” (chuckling)

“Ay... yu ehn easy nuh. Doh watch that man. Children must mind”