That first safari/ The day I was born

I knew the time had finally come when contractions began coming in quick succession. It was no surprise. I had grown so big and I had recently been wishing for more space. I had become so strong that when I kicked she would sit down and groan. Some hair was beginning to form on my head and my nose seemed to be as perfect as they come. So when I heard an echo saying “Push”, I lay back to hurry this thing up.
When I got out, the first thing I saw was a wildly haired man. There was a pool of blood around me and a lot of panting all engulfed in an aura of success, welcome and happiness. A woman in her mid life who had lost her shape a long time ago wrapped me up. The guy with a hairy face held out his index finger and slapped me with it. I cried and they were all happy. They were beating me in my mum's presence! Perhaps that was the reason why years later I would only threaten people by saying, “I’ll tell my dad”. I started my journey in this world on a sadistic note, but I hoped it was only that one man. There was little care in the woman's arms, maybe from the fact of her handling so many of us. I hated her hands. Thank God she made haste to pass me to her assistant, the interning nurse dressed in blue. I was passed on to my sweat-dripped, crying mum. She was glowing with love in her eyes and I wanted to remain in her arms. These other people around had other ideas. We were torn apart and I was put into a trolley of sorts. Mum needed rest and apparently I did too. But first, I had to undergo some tests in another place.
It was quite a long way (or so it seemed then) to my intended destination and full of discovery. Just out of mum's room, there was a room full of women, some expectant. They were really ugly in those gowns. One of them, close to the far corner by the exit, was writhing in her bed. The nurses just went past without even checking and I thought they were pathetic until the doctor commented, “When will this woman ever let people have some peace?” the other women in the ward could not pay any attention, they each had a bundle of their own worries. Nobody can afford to be the baggage bag of the world.
The next ward was a stinking piece of work, literally. There were wounded people all over. Some coughing their lungs out. Here the doctor would stop the nurse here and there, issue some instructions and move on. Everybody kept calling 'doctor' and he kept ignoring them. The intern always wanted to reply to those calling her, but you could see she was learning the trade. She could ignore with just a pinch of indifference. First the doctor stopped by the third bed on the right side. A young men whose face screamed to me the cruelty of the world lay there, lost in pain. He had his legs and right hand in bandages. The doctor read the instruction sheet out loud and I understood he was the victim of mob justice at Globe Roundabout. At the next stop I could not tell for sure, but it looked like the patient had just canceled my plus one addition to the population. The victim of a gang or the police (nobody knew which), he had been left for dead with deep cuts. The doctors left him there so I guess he was still alive, but he was not there when I went back to see mum. There was a really young boy – they said so, he was big to me - of 15 years. He had survived an arson attack during a school strike. The patient on the last bed to the left complained that he had been asking help for his neighbour in vain. The doctor checked the patient on the second last bed. After a short while of moving a stethoscope all over the patients chest with urgency, he pulled up the bed cover and covered the patient. “Take care of him'” he said to the nurse. We left the ward, a few patients cried, I think more in fear than to mourn. The one who had called out looked at the doctor like the angel of death.
The corridor was horrible. Soon as I had had my first sight of it I closed my eyes. There was a man with a broken femur with the edges showing. The corridor was full of people, some on the floor. Noisy and full of cries. I only opened my eyes again when all the noise was gone. Just then we hit a pothole and almost immediately came to a stop. I found myself in a room with another twenty babies or there about. Some of the babies were placed two in a crib. It was a glass house. The intern picked me up and placed me in a basket. Their reaction said my weight was okay for this world. They transferred me to the far end and I was glad. Close to the entrance was a woman with her lawyer, a policeman and an administrator. She had a story to tell. The story was really short. Some one had sold or exchanged her child. She had had a boy and was later given an older one.
As I lay back in my crib to rest, I could not help but reflect on my time on earth. The only smile I had seen was the fatigue-coated one from my mum. The rest of the place had been stinking and bad looking. The people were sadistic and indifferent. It seemed to me I had just married trouble and I was getting on so well with her sister; disappointment. Had I had the opportunity to make a request, I would have wanted to be taken – in supersonic speed- all the way back, and straight back into the womb. In that first journey in this world, I knew I would not mind to remain a sperm. My only care would be to swim and enjoy the irresponsibility of men and women.