So after a long journey up into the hills of Africa we arrived at our accommodation for the rest of the week - village style! You could call it a little African village resort. It had little bungalows set in a tropical garden and a little bar, what more could a girls want! The views were stunning, we were in the heart of Africa now with beautiful banana and coconut tress everywhere and hills that just went on and on. My room was basic and kind of clean! Thank god for wet wipes, thats all I can say. I had to give the sink a once over as it was pretty dirty. My only real complaint would have been the toilet - it was a sink in the ground. Anyone who says squatting to go to the toilet is natural - they are liars!!! It felt like the most unnatural thing in the world. I now officially apologise to all those birthing women over the years, I have encouraged to squat to give birth, lol. Here I am squatting over this sink in the ground trying not to touch anything as it stinks and doesn’t appear very clean (no way I was getting my wet wipes in there!). I look up and there are these 2 eyes looking down at me. It was a rather large lizard on the ceiling, I nearly fell in the toilet at this point.
After settling into our accommodation we set off in the local ambulance for a drive further into the villages. From here on in the tarmac rd turned to a 4x4 rd so we couldn’t go any further in our poor little Rav 4. The ambulance had been purchased for the villages by the program I am working for, to help encourage them to transfer their patients to the main hospital earlier, I was later to find that it was not used as often as it should have been!
So we set off along this rd with the 4 of us sat in the back of this ambulance, we had no seat belts (sorry mum!) and the rd just got worse and worse. We were bouncing around like were on a bouncy castle, we were laughing our heads off for the first 10 minutes, after that we were over it. There were huge pot holes and craters in the ground made from the rain which created big holes. We went up and down these big slopes and tilted to the side like it was going to tip over. It was an interesting hour long journey that was for sure. Not sure if the suspension was gone on it or not ( Dad we could have done with you help here to have a look at it for us) but it was the roughest journey I have ever had (note to self- wear sports bra tomorrow, lol).
One of the ozzie midwives had bought a giant kangaroo with her, whom she had named Ruth - we are doing the adventures of Ruth! She comes with us everywhere and has her photo taken in all these weird places - she was our patient in the ambulance and even Ruth who is used to bouncing all day was not happy (lol), but the locals loved her. We are using her to demonstrated the idea of kangaroo mother care (non midwives may need to goggle this concept - although prob can guess!).
We visited 3 villages and met all the local nurses and doctors at the local clinic’s/hospitals there. Each clinic was small but had 2 labour beds and 2 postnatal beds. They obviously did everything here from GP clinic’s, child health, maternity to A&E. We met some of the villagers and saw how they lived in these amazing mud huts. Everyone was so friendly and pleased to see us. I don’t think some of them had ever seen a white person as they were all staring and looked shocked to see us. The kids were especially funny laughing and staring and trying to touch us like we were aliens or something, it was funny to see. We arranged with them the training which we were going to provide for the rest of the week and then headed back to our accommodation along the same bumpy rd!
Back at base camp we sat and had a Savannah dry and watched the sun set over the hills of Africa - awesome day had by all.
Will blog again soon xxx
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