The warmth of the womb

Each year in French Guiana, nearly seven hundred pregnant women living in isolated areas are required to leave their homes from the eighth month of pregnancy in order to give birth in a hospital located several hundred kilometers away. In this territory, 96% of which is covered by the Amazon rainforest, some communities are accessible only by plane or after several days of travel by canoe, making access to healthcare particularly difficult. Since the early 2000s, a policy of systematically transferring pregnant women from inland areas to maternity wards on the coast has been implemented. While this measure aims to ensure their medical safety, many experience it as a form of uprooting, marked by a sense of isolation and deep family, social, and cultural disruption. "The warmth of the womb" project seeks to narrate this experience of motherhood lived between two worlds, from the perspective of Businenge women living in Maripasoula and Papaïchton, two municipalities located on the French Guianese side of the Lawa River, across from Suriname. The Businenge (from Aluku, bushi: forest, and nenge: people) are descendants of maroon people who fled plantations in the former Dutch colony and fought for their freedom. Having escaped colonial control, they settled in the interior regions of Suriname and along both banks of the Maroni River, which forms the border with French Guiana. Within these matrilineal communities, childbirth represents a crucial transition in women's lives. Rituals and bodily care practices continue to accompany this period, rooted in a relationship to the body and to healing that connects women to one another and to the land they inhabit. Passed on by mothers, sisters, and aunts, these practices aim to keep the woman's body warm while her "womb settles back into place" (Brenda). However, the geographic and emotional distance brought about by the medicalization of childbirth weakens their transmission and reveals a broader imbalance: that of a healthcare system shaped by Western norms, which struggles to recognize the plurality of knowledge systems, spiritualities, and cultures in which it operates. This work explores how the women concerned navigate an imposed care pathway while continuing to invest in their relationships, their power to give birth, and to build a family.