When my future wife and I “dropped out” from city life (1969) to discover how people had gotten by in earlier years we were young, idealistic, and put off by much of mainstream culture. When the A/C wires came off our rental on the Oregon coast,we both learned about alternatives in a hurry! That included woodstoves for cooking and heating (including our water), kerosene lanterns, using rainwater, eventually pumping water with a bicycle, adding a roof to our house, building a drainfield for the cesspool tank (an OLD house) by hand, keeping the outhouse clean, and raising livestock, etc.

Another thing was… health care. We read books about herbs, and decided that we would do without doctors as much as possible. When my wife became pregnant I found a midwives handbook (from Oregon State College, ca. 1939) and used that knowledge to facilitate that first birth in the old 1920s-built one-room school that was our home. I read about the possibility of a “caul” about 5 minutes before the baby was born… and realized why she made no noise, after several seconds of wondering(!)… but she was fine when it was removed.

The next child, 2 years later, had her umbilical cord wrapped 3 times around her neck… and I had to move her back inside to get enough slack to unwind it. She was also fine… as were the next two born there, before we finally moved away in 1977 (to live in a schoolbus, and caretake an old farm in the foothills… still without electricity, but with a gravity water system added).

I was threatened with arrest for delivering a child at home. Even when I attempted to fulfill the ‘requirements’ of the State workers who had got wind of us, there was a great deal of tension. We weren’t on welfare… and grew perhaps 40% of our own food (along with wildcrafting)… and read a lot about nutrition (Adelle Davis, Euell Gibbons, etc)… things that were never touched upon when we were growing up.

I’m mentioning this because I think that the midwife training is a wonderful thing to support. Childbirth here in the U.S. has undergone a sea-change since those days… and that kind of training helps break through the barriers around race & class… and gives a point of common interest to the various cultures (and subcultures) here… and anywhere that there are diversities in a population… and maybe especially in Africa, where countries contain diverse linguistic groups in the cities, and more so in the rural areas.

Thanks for the work you do. Even an old hippie can appreciate this! ^..^