Midwife tours villages at the foot of Mount Merapi

Text and photos by Ali Budiman

YOGYAKARTA (JP): The sun regally shone that morning. Warm air replaced the coldness enveloping the villages perched at the foot of Mount Merapi. The road was deserted and the two young women sped up their motorbikes. A few kilometers before entering Muntilan town, from the direction of Yogyakarta, they took a shortcut to the north, taking the road village most of which is yet to be asphalted. After taking a winding road, they stopped before the house of the head of Mancasan village, Salam subdistrict, Magelang residency.

A bag containing injection equipment and medicines hang round the shoulder of one of the women, Adri Nurhidayati. In her hands was a pile of medical record books of the villagers she had visited. Her assistant Rohmah Fauziah carried a plastic bag containing a thermos flask in which there was immunization liquid.

Dozens of young mothers carrying their under-fives and scores of children were awaiting for Adri, a midwife known to them as mantri desa, a village medical aide.

Suratno, the village head, had prepared a hanging scale with a piece of sarong on which a child would lie down when the body weight was taken.

Adri and Fauziah immediately got all the equipment ready on the sitting room table. Dozens of sterile injection devices were neatly standing in a special can while ampules and medicines as well as vitamins were neatly arranged on their own tray. Then one by one the children got their body weight measured. Their data was taken and then they were given polio immunization drops or injections to prevent TB, inflammation, cough and tetanus, and immunization against measles, hepatitis. The mothers and their children were given vitamins, additional food packages or milk powder.

At the last visit, pregnant women had their pregnancy checked. Adri was always patient and listened attentively to every complaint. She also gave advice or medical treatment to the villagers. Understandably, some adults make use of this posyandu (integrated health service station) for the treatment of their common illnesses.

Bamboo gong

The schedule of her visit is usually announced to the villagers a week ahead. This is done either through the meeting of village women activists or the meeting at the village meeting hall. The announcement is also made through loudspeakers at prayer houses or mosques. Uniquely, at Karang Talon hamlet, Adri must strike a large bamboo gong on the terrace at the house of the village head to announce her arrival. The sound of the gong will make mothers and children rush to this place.

On that particular day they visited five villages: Mancasan, Karang Talon, Ngresap, Gatakan and Perbutan and each visit lasted 1.5 hours. Always gracious, Adri and Rohmah enjoy the warm welcome. Children, learning from their mothers, kiss their hands when they arrive and later when they leave.

Gatakan village is not far from one end of the Yogyakarta- Magelang road. A village road made of stones and sand runs through the village and then ascends to the valley and slope of Mount Merapi. Giant truck have been using the main road of the hamlet, which previously was quiet and deserted, since last year. The trucks collect the sand and the stone Mount Merapi has belched out and take these materials to somewhere around Semarang to be sold as building materials.

Every hour hundreds of trucks come and go and during the wet season only the buzzing sound of the truck engine disturbs the quietness of Gatakan villagers. Unfortunately, during the dry season the thick dust spread by the truck wheels is inhaled by the villagers, particularly those living close to the road side. The dust also settles on everything inside the house.

Adri realizes the adverse effect of unusually thick layers of dust as they can easily cause bronchitis, particularly to children and pregnant women. She can only ask the village powers that be to think of a way to solve this problem amicably, not by demonstration or confrontation.

Education

Adri's father is a teacher at a junior high school and her mother an elementary school teacher. Originally she had an ambition to study agriculture as her parents own an ample lot of ricefields. But she changed her mind after completing her senior secondary education at SMU Godean in 1988. She went to the Nursing School as she knew that there were numerous job opportunities in this sector. Now Adri believes that her decision to dedicate herself to fellow human beings is the right vocation and it has motivated her strongly.

She spent three years in this school and in the second year she learned midwifery. During this time she was allowed only to take care of the placenta in a labor. She was yet to deal with the head of the new-born babe. In the third year she was assigned to a nursing midwife in an ICU.

She left the Nursing School with a diploma in 1992 and in 1993 she took a special training course as a midwife for 1 year in Pekalongan. After completing this special training she began to deal with childbirth independently.

After apprenticing at Maternity Office in Magelang for three months, Adri got her civil service registry number and was inaugurated as a midwife. Since then she has been stationed as a village midwife at village polyclinic at Gulon, close to the northern corner of Salam junior high school building in Magelang residency.

Adri has collected many experiences in her seven years' assignment at Gulon and also from her regular twice-a-week visits to the villages in the valley of Merapi.

"What concerns me most is the poverty and ignorance, resulting in the misery to mothers and children," she said.

Once a baby was born, weighing only 1.8 kgs. When the navel cord was removed Adri, then making her house-to-house visit, left a message to the parents not to give a bath to the baby. She told them to monitor the condition of the baby until the next day. However, the traditional midwife dealing with the childbirth simply ignored this advice and the baby died in the afternoon.