week ninteen

well its sunday evening, around six thirty (or twelve thirty if your speaking swahili... yes everything is backwards here) and it has been one busy week....

so i’ll start with today... we were invited to a church for there morning service and then to a ‘celebration’ afterward. the service ended (12:30) and we were told that at three we would begin the celebration. being hungary a few of us walked the short distance to the market area and bought ‘chips my eye’ (french fries and egg cooked together, very delicious!) it was pouring rain majority of the day so we were pretty soggy trying to eat under a small hut. we finished and walked back through the rain to the church... well maybe i should also mention that a ‘lunch’ was promised to us but after the service we found out that food would not be served until the celebration but they did prepare a soup for us in the mean time. but when the soup was being passed out one of the girls came into the church and looked at me and said ‘its bad news, its bad news’, Ema (one of the base staff that comes along with us as a translator) had a bowl of it and had us try it, but not before letting me know that it was ‘cows tongue’. i took a sip preparing for the worst, and yes it tasted like a cow. like a literal barn was inside my mouth, hence us going to the market for chips. so three o’clock rolled around and the church started filling up.... four o’clock rolled around and most chairs were filled and they were doing a mic check... four thirty came and they finally got things going! we realized once the ‘celebration’ started that what was actually happening was a ceremony for ordaining a new pastor. we were not quite prepared for another three to four hours of listening to swahili, clapping when other clap, standing when others stand and sitting when others sit so we decided we’d give it to five and then we’d leave. i’m thankful we did leave because its now dark out and a few of the girls who stayed are still there. this is what happens when your on outreach, many days go not as planned and things happen that your just not sure of!

yesterday we had a group of women who are from downtown and they spoke english come visit us at the base. we had a great afternoon talking with them about their lives and sharing about our experience so far. the girl i talked to was amazing! we’re hopefully going to get together with her again, it was neat to hear different opinions, we asked about dress code, as we are only allowed to wear skirts and t-shirts, and they laughed and said ‘what your not allowed to wear jeans? thats torture!’ i think we follow that rule because we’re reaching out to the muslim community and to be respected more we try to culturally oblige to what they wear. it was neat to hear about their lives, the girl i talked to was a journalist and going to school as a social worker, she learnt her english from watching cartoons as a kid. she was very encouraging to us, most Tanzanian women we meet its difficult to talk with because of the language barrier. we learnt a lot that afternoon theres a big gape in culture here. either your uneducated, living in the villages, probably working as a seamstress or in a shop or, those are educated, they speak english and have jobs in the city that pay a lot more. but today in speaking to a girl at church she told me that people who get education don’t stay here. they want to go to Canada, America, even Kenya or somewhere else where they can get paid more for their jobs. which is why there are not many educated people around. its also very expensive to get education here. and a lack of education is a main root of many problems a country can face. its neat to know that us being here is an encouragement to them and we can help educate the women in even the simplest things such as sleeping with a mosquito net can prevent malaria.

this week i also got to see my first birth since being here!!!!!! i was feeling very discouraged, last week on monday and tuesday there were births at the clinic but when i went wednesday and thursday, no births. then last week monday and tuesday there were births. and wednesday morning two women were in labour and it was not my day for the clinic. so wednesday at lunch the girls got back and reported another lady arrived who was in birth, and since we had a free afternoon me and another student decided to go and observe/help out in the labour and hopefully see her deliver. we hung out at the clinic with her till around five and she was only four centimeters dilated... far from delivery. so we left a number with the nurse to call us if anything changed and left. at eight me and Emily decided to go and check in on her, we walked to the clinic and she was still labouring progressing but not near delivery, as were talking to the night nurse a lady was brought in carried in a wheel barrow type contraption (can you imagine if that was your mode of transport to the hospital?) she nearly fell to the floor upon arrival and we knew we had to be quick, that baby was coming. we ran back home and got our uniforms on, labour room shoes, bp cuff and stethoscope and ran back with Louise (student) and Marchien (staff). Me and Emily got there and the baby was already out, we missed it. but we did get to see the placenta delivered which was really neat! (i’ll spare you the details) we took vitals of baby and mom (a baby girl by the way) and then they rested. we continued to take the vitals of our first mama who was now around 8 cm along. time reached around nine fifteen and another lady came in who was labouring. the nurse checked her and she was 9 cm along. Marchien told us at nine thirty we had to be back at base by ten because they lock up the doors then... feeling a little disappointed me and Louise prayed that there would be a delivery within the next twenty minutes. the nurse then came to check that new mama, Asha is her name, and said she was going to rupture her membranes (break her water) to get things moving. when she did we discovered that the baby had pooped inside and we knew we had to get that little one out of there. her heart rate was slowing down slightly so the nurse was going to give a drug through IV to help speed things along, but before she could get the IV in Asha started pushing and at 9:50 a beautiful baby girl was born! (fourth delivery of the day for the clinic!) it was so amazing, after the cord was cut i carried the little girl and weighed her, 4.3 kg (9.5 pounds), and dried her off and wrapped her in a clean conga (like a sarong, the mama’s are responsible to bring there own conga’s to lay on the beds and to wrap baby in and their families need to bring them food because hospitals and clinics don’t provide anything). i don’t know what she named her baby as we had to leave and the first lady, that i had stayed the afternoon with didn’t end up delivering in time which was a little disappointing but it was an exciting evening for me! i’m not 100% sure on how births are done in Canada but i can imagine its a very different experience then here. the mom’s are responsible for providing the things needed for delivery and they usually leave within hours of delivery. even they just sitting in there conga wrapped around, like if we wrap a towel around after a shower, pacing the room making hardly any noise at all, as they get yelled at by the nurses for being too loud. i’m interested to know how women will be once we’re in the hospital, because.....

...... WE GOT OUR VISA’S!!!!!!!!! yes yes we FINALLY got all the right letters and things signed and we are allowed to go to the hospital! so thursday we got our tour of where we’ll be working for the next 5ish months. it was a very different set up then a western hospital. we were showed around the different wards, some that we don’t have at home, such as a leprosy ward, malaria and HIV wards. for now we will be working in the antenatal/postnatal ward and labour/delivery ward. there is another ward for complications in delivery but we need to go through our second round of lectures (starting in January) before we’re able to help out there. it was so crazy to see the labour ward, all the women taking up the beds and sitting on the floor just waiting.... i think it’ll will take a while to get used to the way things go there but i’m sure we’ll adjust soon. we start monday! tomorrow!

so yes, so far i think most exciting week we’ve had. another story, on thursday after the tour we had the afternoon to hang out in the city which was fine except we were all extremely tired. me and Naomi decided to take a ‘short cut’ to the dala dala stop which turned into us walking for a half hour and realizing we had gone too far and could not find a stop anywhere. being over tired, a bit hungry and i had smashed my toe back, so also being in pain (Naomi slightly concussed because she walked into a huge metal sign)we sat on the side of the road and half cried half laughed. we sat there until a creepy man came and started talking to us and then proceeded to ‘shake’ our hands. and when i say ‘shake’ i mean the creepiest hand shake i’ve ever received in my life. he shook our hand but at the same time used his middle finger to ‘tickle’ our palm... left us feeling quite violated. so we started walked again to get away from him and got to a round-a-bout. feeling slightly ‘crazy’ i started yelling at all the dala dala’s going our direction for them to stop, but being on a round-a-bout of course they didn’t. a man heard me and yelled from the other side ‘taxi taxi’ i yelled back ‘we don’t have any money for a taxi i need a dala dala’. me and Naomi just looked at each other and wondered, ‘what do we do now?’ before we could answer our selves the man came across the street and asked us if we needed a dala dala and to where. we told him where and he said to follow him he will bring us to the stop. he led us right there and got one to stop for us, praise the Lord! but getting on the dala dala was another adventure in itself! it was completely packed.... we squeezed our way on (let me mention i was carrying a backpack that contained two laptops as well) and with me half bent over and Naomi practically out the door its took off. we were laughing so hard, entertainment to the entire bus as they were all staring at us, and one man even asked us why we were laughing. how do you even explain that mood when nothing is going right and so you just have to laugh and everything seems so funny when in reality its probably not that funny at all!? after a few interesting conversations, including one with a women who wanted to speak swahili with us but all we could do was reply to the common ‘how are you?’ questions, “Habari! - nzuri, Jombo! - si jombo, Mumbo?! - poa” we tried to explain that was all we knew, and she laughed every time we answered her, apparently being quite amused! we were finally at our stop, only one more dala dala ride to go and then home!
sorry this has been so long, hopefully not too boring to read, and i hope it made sense, its been a long day and i’m quite tired!

well till next time....

week eighteen

i think so far this has been one of my better weeks here in Tanzania. i’ve gone to the clinic twice (wednesday/thursday) which was really good. the first time was not very exciting, immunization and baby weighing day.... so kinda a slow day. i helped out a bit with immunizations, mainly watching how they administer them. i did hold one one of the babies that was born on tuesday, so only a day old and was holding her while they gave her, her BCG shot. it was neat to hold this one day old little girl in my arms pray over her and just be with her. it dulled down a bit as not many people came, so i went to help out in the pharmacy filling prescriptions which was kinda neat to learn about different medications. the second day however was more productive, i spent a bit of time doing prescriptions again, and then got to spend just over an hour in antenatal care doing palpations, measuring fundal heights and listening for the babies heart rate. the great thing is most of the women i met with were at least 24 weeks along so the babies were easier to feel for and i even had a lady 37 weeks with twins! i hope she delivers at the clinic and i can be there to help her. i love palpating twins, its a little difficult to figure out where exactly each baby is but this lady had had a ultrasound down at a hospital so we knew that both were head down. which is good since she’s due very shortly! i did two palpations all on my own without the help of my staff or a nurse and located the heartbeats right away! i was quite proud of myself considering my first time doing it i was so nervous and couldn’t figure out anything! so this time went much better, each time my confidence grows!

did more community profiles this week. one lady we interviewed had five children, all at home and all on her own, apart from the first. she said that the first one she had someone helping her so she do the rest on her own. she even had a set of twins and her last baby was born breech! we asked what she did and she said ‘she was scared when she felt the foot come out, but the baby came out okay but wasn’t breathing. she put it in a bucket of water and hoped it would be okay... and a few minuets of being in the water the baby started breathing!’ we asked her if she believed in God cuz he was defiantly taking care of her and her little guy. its always interesting to interview these ladies and learn how they handle different situations. (she said she did believe, in case you were curious!)

we had the normal, intercession and worship times. spending time praying for our visa’s to come... still waiting for the letter that gives us the okay to start the visa process.... in the meantime we’ve been discussing other options we can do as a team in our community we’re in. such as helping out at the orphanage, working with the street kids, teaching in some of the schools, perhaps teaching an english class to some of the people in the village, and even working with a lady who helps cook for us. she was a prostitute when she was younger and when she did her DTS with YWAM she has devoted her life to helping girls who want out get out of the industry. she has about 3-4 girls living with her now that she helps by giving them jobs making a way for them to provide for themselves without prostitution. we have looked started looking into these ideas and some may not work (such as the orphanage) but lots are looking promising!

our power was out for nearly two full days.... because of that the water pump stops working so we were without water for a while. so saturday (day off) i had planned to chill, watch movies and just relax, but well no power, no water.... so i went to the beach instead! it was a good day, relaxing. came back to base and the power was still out.... it did eventually come on around eight-ish, which was lovely since as of friday we got our fan fixed in our room! but had had no power yet to try it out! we still have an incredibly hot, stuffy room by night fall but its nice if you stand directly under it (ceiling fan) or lay on the concrete floor underneath! hmmm trying to think of any other news that might be interesting... i baked ‘cookies’ from scratch without any recipes! i was quite proud! haha! we had a team night on friday night and ingredients were bought for cookies but all recipe books found in the home (base directors house) were either swahili or german (his wife is german).... so i thought, i’ve made cookies before, no big. so i mixed stuff together and put it in the oven and they actually were not that bad... a little cakey but pretty good! it was fun baking, we don’t have any use of an oven usually, they make our food here by the fire, frying or boiling everything. and they don’t really do sweets.... we had chopped up chocolate bars because they don’t have chocolate chips here and it was delicious!

no creepy creatures lately... well there was a tarantula in the house the other day but it was high up in the corner... so no big... oh it rained today! actually was raining on and off all day long! so nice, it cools the air down and it was just really nice to hear the pouring rain. wellp i think thats all....

till next time....

week seventeen

monday we got the opportunity to visit a Maasai village! our whole team took the hour long dala dala ride and then walked for about twenty minutes till we came upon the village. we first saw the well in which they draw up their water by buckets and surrounding the area was about five women doing their washing (clothes and dishes). we continued down the path and saw about four huts. i mean literately huts. mud houses held up with sticks and thatched roofs. they were extremely welcoming, the tribe was a family, four generations. meeting the great grandma was especially neat, this women was so beautiful. i hope to try and get some pictures up so you can understand a little more about the Maasai people. they’re known as strong warriors, and incredible jumpers. yes jumpers. apparently they can get several feet off the ground. they also were very different in appearance then the African’s we’ve visited in our area. they dress differently, wrapping a long strip of cloth around there bodies, tying it over one shoulder and wearing many earrings, necklaces and belts. the women all had stretched out ear lobes and all had their heads shaven. we were invited to sit under a group of trees on straw mats and spent the days hearing their stories and learning different things about their culture. we were also able to talk to a group of five midwives from the family. not one had specific training they had all learnt from there mothers or each other. we got to ask questions about how they do things and learnt MANY interesting things! things like, using thread off their robes to tie off the umbilical cord and cutting it with a razor or when they have a breach baby, they ‘push the baby back in and turn it around from the inside’... yes i would imagine incredibly painful for the mama. we also heard stories from the men, who have killed lions. apparently ‘the lions were killing their cows, so he had to kill the lion.’ he mentioned that young men will kill a lion and then cut out their heart and eat a part of it to symbolize they are no longer afraid of lions. he himself had a scar on his leg from a lion. pretty crazy!

tuesday was also an interesting day... started off with me going to the clinic and finally getting to do some antenatal care! which consists of taking blood pressure, doing palpations (feeling for the baby), measuring the stomach which helps determine how far along the mama is and listening to the fetal heart rate. it was really neat when a women, about 8 months along, came in with twins! feeling for the two heads was a little tricky because the babies were actually opposite each other, one which its head up and one down. but it was really neat, a little scary for me as i’m not super confident in it yet but all in time right? okay so then (and i hesitate to say) i went to help in the pharmacy, and while i was in there the nurse told me to come in with her to help dress a wound. she said ‘abscess’ and i didn’t really think much of it.... she handed me scissors and i started cutting away the dressing that was wrapped around this mans hand. Ash (a girl on my team) continued removing the dressing while i held the mans hand and prayed for him, as he was in a lot of pain. well it soon became clear as to what an abscess was... it is a hole that has been drained and then packed with gauze so it can heal from the inside out. the gauze needs to be removed from the hole every day and new gauze needs to be packed back inside so the wound can hear properly. well as Ash continued pulling gauze out of this guys hand i found myself getting a wee bit dizzy. so my praying turned to ‘dear Jesus help him, oh Jesus help me’ i tried not watching but of course i was curious and it was happening right in front of me. i’m pretty sure she pulled out about 2 feet worth of gauze that had been packed into his hand (between thumb and first finger). after i left and sat on a bench feeling really dizzy, i’ve experienced this right before fainting when i was young. i remember thinking ‘i will not faint i will not faint, water, yes i should just get some water’ and the next thing i know i’m hearing muffled voices saying ‘she fainted and was fitting (seizing)’ and i can feel my legs still shaking and my head was incredibly painful.... lucky for me i always faint in a health care center and get the right care! haha! i came to more and had many people come and talk over me saying ‘pole (pole-ay)’ meaning sorry and telling me i was okay.... i had two cuts, one about my eye and the other on my nose, luckily not deep enough for stitches! (i really did not want stitches) and a very large goose egg on my head. but i was okay. i sure must have looked a scene, apparently no one saw what happened but the ‘crash’ was heard through out the clinic and scared a little boy. i guess in my dizziness i had gotten up, cuz where i fell was not where i was sitting, and i’m sure i would not have been in as much pain if i had fallen from sitting down. so the remainder of that day was spent in bed... and the rest of the week of taking it easy, mainly because my head and nose hurt so much. its been a week (i’m writing this a week later) and i’m doing much better, swelling around my nose is slowly making its way down and my head looks good, cuts are healing. my bruises are also disappearing its mainly just my nose that still hurts a lot when touched. its okay normally and then i’ll forget and go to scratch it and dang, it hurts a lot. they said it wasn’t broken but its defiantly been bruised.

the rest of the week for me was much less exciting, typing community profiles up and doing team things. for some of the girls though it was the first time there have been births at the clinic! and they had 3 in 24 hours! so a bunch of the girls have now gotten to witness and help out in some healthy births. two baby boys and one girl was born last week! so precious!

i have two clinic dates this next week so i’m praying for big things to happen, and not me fainting again!

currently trying to keep cool, it gets hotter each day as we head into the ‘rainy’ season. i think though its only rained three times since we’ve been here and they’ve all been at night. staying in the shade, having a wet clothe to wipe sweat away, laying on the concrete floors in our rooms and taking multiple showers a day are all ways we’ve found have helped us. but the relief doesn’t last long! we did however find out about a ‘resort’ (not like one you’d picture at home, its much smaller) about a thirty minute walk away that has a pool, but its about five dollars to use for the day, so every once in awhile i’m sure that will be very nice to keep cool for a day, well at least until you have to walk back!

take care till next time....


ps please be praying for our visa's apparently this 'letter' we need was put in the post (mail) like 2-3 weeks ago and we have yet to see it, it is the letter that gives us the okay to get the visa's processed....

week sixteen

monday started off with a bang, that evening there was a lovely cry through the entire base around seven thirty in the evening, and it was announced that we had a visitor on the grounds.... a snake. a python to be exact. i of course was not a fan of this little find and retreated to my bedroom and jumped to a top bunk and stayed there for about an hour till i felt safe once again. needless to say i do not go out in the dark anymore by myself. i try to avoid it if at all possible. if your wondering what happened to the creature, it was killed, i believe with a machete? not sure the details i didn’t stay around to listen and didn’t ask any questions. but i did catch a glimpse of it when one of the girls tried to call me over to see it and i, being oblivious to the situation went over.... did not end well!

moving on.... hmmm i’m trying to remember what happened this past week. there was a lot of community profiles. lots of typing them up and i went on a trip to a nearby village to conduct a few interviews. met some neat women and am actually going back this week on thursday to see them once again. one of the women is actually eight months pregnant and her appointment at the clinic is on tuesday, the same day i’m scheduled to go to the clinic! so hopefully she’ll be there and i’ll get to see her once again. it was neat to talk to the group of women, in doing the interview we learnt that they didn’t know some basic things about when to wean your baby and little things about breast feeding. (this was the first time pregnancy for the one lady) so we got to do some basic teaching as well. at the end they wanted to ask us questions, which was pretty interesting. it started off with asking us if we were married and had children, then why when we were ‘so old’. we tried to explain our culture but i think its difficult to understand because here some girls are married and pregnant at fifteen. then the ladies asked us if we would ever marry ‘one of there brothers’ is how they worded it! and then the conversation turned to them asking about Canada and why we were fighting with Germany.... i asked where she got her information and the response was ‘i hear things from people’. so i was a little confused, but the conversation moved on to poor people in our western countries and how they get by. it was really interesting to have such a conversation with these women.

on friday we had a team day and went to the beach! so much fun to hang out as a big group, we packed chapattis (pretty much the best thing ever here in Tanzania, basically there a crepe but more fried) and banana’s and scrambled eggs.... quite the beach lunch! we had to eat in the parking lot cuz there is no outside food allowed on the beach as it belongs to a small resort. but it was a really good day. saturday was our day off and a small group of us ventured off down town to find the ‘mall’ and we found it! it took an hour and a half and three dala dala’s to get there but it was air conditioned and had an movie theatre! it felt so removed from the life we’ve been living here, but it was nice to relax and be ‘cool’ feeling all day! sunday was ‘find your own church to go to’ day and we had heard of a Vineyard church down town, that is apparently near the American Embassy. so we thought we could find it, gave ourselves two hours to get there and set off just after seven thirty am. well by ten o’clock, four dala dala’s later we had arrived at the American Embassy and could not locate this church anywhere. we asked the security guards outside the embassy and they had no idea either. so after a bit of discussion we decided to give up and the seven of us piled into a taxi and headed for a nearby mall. where we ate our lunch and had our own ‘home church’ in the restaurant. it was nice day besides all the extra traveling we did but we did talk to a staff from here on base and he said that we were walking distance from the church but it is tricky to find.... shucks eh?! next time!

so yes not a terribly exciting week but it had its moments! next week i’m in the clinic again and it looks like our team is going to have a few more opportunities coming our way!

till next time...

week fifteen

its getting a little difficult to write these weekly updates, i feel so much happens in a week here that as i sit down on sunday’s to put it all to paper becomes hard to remember all that has happened. (actually today as i’m writing is actually monday because i forgot yesterday to do this!)

okay so lets begin..... this last week has been challenging with a lot of good moments as well, i did go to the clinic again, but was disappointed because the day i went to do a teaching and help in antenatal care was actually a holiday here in Tanzania, and because of this there were not very many women who actually came to the clinic. so needless to say i did not get to do any antenatal checkups, rather i did my teaching and ‘observed’ in the lab. i say ‘observed’ because there was not much going on there either! however i did get to do a few checks with a microscope to look for malaria in different blood samples which was kinda neat to see what the organisms looked like.

something our team is doing in this time of waiting for visa’s and such is a project called ‘a community profile’ basically doing interviews with local women (who are or have been pregnant) to find out more about the needs in the area. as well, to learn about different areas of the culture we are in such as, nutrition (what do they eat, whats available, are they lacking any nutrients?), their past experiences in pregnancy, did they have regular check ups, how was the labour, where did they give birth, did they have a skilled birth attendant present, do they have support in there homes/families and what is there role as a women in there family/community and so on. every student is in charge of doing twenty interviews and then they will be compiled, along with information and statistics from the hospitals in the area to have all these facts together for present and future knowledge. anyways, me and two others have been put in charge of compiling the information that is gathered as well as going to the hospitals and retrieving facts and stats needed. at first i was slightly overwhelmed with this job but think it interesting in reading some of the findings that the girls have discovered upon interviewing.

hmmm other things we have been doing is working on our team dynamics. it has been a challenging week in working through differences of opinions and personalities but its amazing to see the breakthrough that can happen when we pursue and turn our focus off ourselves and each other and put the focus on God. it was said today ‘when our focus is on God then everything else will fall into place’ it challenged me to really think, ‘okay where is my focus right now? where do my thoughts go when i’m upset or frustrated?’ and to be honest they have not always been directed to God, but instead have gone either outwardly to others or inwardly where i’ve allowed them to affect my attitude. i am encouraged that our team has been open with each other and been able to share these things and pray into them. my prayer is that God will re-focus my mind to how He see’s situations and not how i see them.

as for this week, i was sick for a part of it with a bad headache and stomach aches... i think the lack of nutrition is getting to me and i wasn’t drinking enough water but i’m doing much better now so that is wonderful! but because i wasn’t feeling well i spent two days in my room so nothing exciting to share about that! by friday though i was feeling better and it was our day off (we get one a week so i pray that i’m never sick on a day off!) where three of us students went to one of the villages to check emails and things and then went to the beach. it was so amazing to sit in the sand and have the water just lap over my legs.... its really one of my favorite things, the beach, and i find so much relaxation from begin there. the ocean is so warm as well and i don’t have to worry about creatures and things that will bite me! so yes an enjoyable day off with a crazy dala dala ride back! its amazing how they squish so many on to them busses. and praise the Lord my ‘motion sickness’ has not been an issue!

on sunday we had a ‘home church’ instead of going out to church. we broke up into groups of five and had an amazing time of discussing and praying and encouraging one another. i think besides the beach that was a highlight of my week. to just sit with one another share and learn from one another because we all have different ways we see things. we can learn lots just by listening!

till next time.....