- Throughout Southeast Asia, work, play and everyday events become ways to stave off thoughts of death and sorrow. Boys from devastated beachside communities play volleyball in homeless camps. A couple marries. Babies are born. Life takes minute steps toward normalcy.
Khrismawan Karnain sits behind his desk in the Kesehatan military hospital for a brief rest. His arms flop over the wooden chair, and his eyes struggle to stay open.
“(The women) need help,” the obstetrician says. “There is no other OB.”
It’s been a marathon for the 37-year-old doctor, who is grieving the loss of 28 members of his family while helping others celebrate life.
A month after the tsunami, an estimated 800 women in Banda Aceh are expecting. Karnain sleeps on a mattress on the floor of his small office off the examining room. A color television flickers in the corner.
“For one month, I haven’t left the hospital,” he says. “I need to work to forget. I work, get tired and sleep.”
He started his birth marathon after spending a week looking for missing family members, including a brother, a sister, his father and wife’s father. Karnain’s house was destroyed, but his wife and children were safe in another city when the tsunami hit.
After seven days he went to the public hospital and asked if they needed help. They did; before the tsunami, Banda Aceh had nine ob-gyn doctors. But all were gone, helping family or are away on the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, leaving only Karnain. Before, Karnain delivered about a baby a day. In the weeks after the tsunami, he averaged 10 to 15 births daily.
On this day, Karnain will deliver five babies. At one point, two women will be in labor at the same time, as Karnain runs back and forth between them. One labor lasts for 15 hours and the other baby is born in minutes, two months premature.
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| Post / Helen H. Richardson |
| The small baby girl of Husnaini Rusli, 26, settles in next to her mother after successfully being deliverd by Dr. Khrismawan Karnain.
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Both births are successful, bringing two girls into the world.
“I’m just giving it up to Allah,” he says. “It’s the destiny of Allah. I lost all of my family. That’s destiny. Giving birth is also destiny.”
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