FOOD!

Traditional food.  Nshima with whole fish. The most respectful way to eat the fish is by starting at the tail and ending with the head. The eyes and cheeks are the best part. We weren't brave enough to try the eyes!!

Around the Hospital

A functioning canoe!

A barber shop at Tikondane

A great looking   basketball hoop!

A pile of children!

Sheets sheets and more sheets

These are the sheets that we had made.  The big rolls to begin with. Then the tailor at the hospital sewed them. Finally, women are benefiting from having a clean dry sheet to labour on.

Babies and Mamas

A group of women staying on the antenatal ward at the hospital waiting for their babies to be born. This is them eating nshima and relish.

Mama with sleepy baby coming to outreach clinic.

Marijke palpating a pregnant woman at one of the outreach clinics.

Children carrying children!

Aly palpating a pregnant woman at outreach clinic.  We would ask if they feel their babies moving, palpate for position and measure height of fundus with our fingers to see how far along the women are. Then we would listen with the pinard horn (you can see one silver one on the floor) and then we would do blood pressure. We always weighed the women and checked for paleness and swelling.

Outreach

Aly and Mr Mumba (one of the midwives) were peeking out the window one morning while cleaning the labour ward.

Aly learning how to put her Chitenga on in order to go to outreach. We all wore chitenga's in the villages as a sign of respect.

Here Marijke helps Regina...ha ha ha!!

This is our roundavelle that we stayed in at St Francis.  Small but cozy!

All dressed up and ready to go to outreach in Chisale

More work pictures

4 Midwives...Japhet, Aly, Marijke and Cathy...on our way home after a long day!

Marijke with a friend and her premature baby

This day we went on outreach and one of the student midwives brought a huge bag of groundnuts for us to shell. We had to learn fast how to keep up with them. Wow were they fast!

This was the smallest baby I have ever seen born. He was born in the car on the way to the hospital and weighed only 500 grams!!  Unbelievably, he survived for 4 days!!

This is Aly with two of the Waiters. Marijke and Aly went to dance with them one night and had so much fun. Really an amazing bunch of women that come from miles around and live at the hospital until their babies are born. They are there because they have bad obstetrical histories.

ANIMALS

Marijke and Aly with big elephants in the background. We were on a boat. This is in Botswana.

These two were having a lot of fun playing in the water.  We watched them cross the river together joined trunk to tail!

Check out this guys big crocodile smile!

Two young giraffe's drinking from a small watering hole. It is a long way down!

These animals remind me of magical reindeer (I can't remember what they are called) but they are beautiful!