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....