They Forget Love Is Powerful....

Birth Control - Mascreti Seed - Baby?

Haiti is full of many superstitions that have wandered aimlessly (or not so aimlessly) into the lives of our ladies and their families. Oddly enough they don't seem to question if these are true or not. Nor do they question why they keep having more children when they are using birth control. I use that term loosely.
They just say, I got pregnant while I was on family planning!
We are all thinking to ourselves, yeah, right!
Now, we know why they keep getting pregnant. It is because of the method of birth control - the Mascreti seeds. We are thinking science, pills, condoms or shots. They are thinking seeds. They don't have to buy them, they find them on the road as they walk.

Part of our woman's program is to offer our ladies education about birth control choices, not seeds tied to culture that end up prolonging the cycle of poverty. Last week as we talked to different ladies about choosing options that would work best for their lives and we began to unravel some very different myths. One of those option was taking seeds. How does it work? You simply take as many seeds as the number of years you don't to be pregnant. Example: twenty seeds equals twenty years of protection.

Are you kidding me? I couldn't make this work in my mind. After all the teaching we had done, it didn't sink in. I finally had to spend the morning talking to Marjorie trying to make the idea fit in my head. I called Vanette in and she really seemed to believe the fact that if she took twenty seeds she wouldn't have a baby for the next twenty years.
Uuummmm - No!
Nope, Notta! It just wasn't working.
Marjoire and I sat asking questions so I could try and understand what was her thought process. Why on earth was she willing to believe such a thing.
Pretty soon Marjoire started to laugh and said, I can't believe such a thing.
When finished with the quiz, she excused herself and went back to sewing her bags.
Here all this time I was thinking it was just me, but Marjoire is Haitian and she didn't get it either. Honestly, I am thinking she has lost her mind. She can't feed the children she has now and she just took twenty stupid seeds and thinks she is fine.
We finally stopped laughing. But this was not a laughing matter. It wasn't funny, it was painful, actually. I just didn't know how to handle it.
We sat and just looked at each other and Marjorie tipped her head side ways and said, they forget love is powerful.
Marjorie understood that the twenty seeds wouldn't work and she would be coming to our program with another baby unless we could break off this thinking.
We will start with another teaching on birth control not on seeds.

One other note on the matter. I did ask the other sewing ladies if they used the seeds or if they knew about them. Yes, they knew. They had used them in the past as well. Some said, now they are too old and don't need to worry. Some said, no way, that is just talk and they believe science.