One last trip to Chipata

Today I travelled to Chipata to purchase material for linens for the hospital. During our time working at St Francis we decided that one thing they really need are bed sheets, especially for the maternity ward! Often women have to labour and birth on plastic mattress covers and if they are lucky to get a sheet it is the only one she will get. As you may know, birth is a messy process. Everyone is very pleased with our idea. On Saturday, Marijke and I came to Chipata to find the best sheets or material. Today, I have returned with Mr Chulu (Marijke had a meeting in Katete Bohema with the District office). We went to the linen store and spent 4 hours there looking for the right type of material, the right colour and the right price. It was all in large piles in the attic so we spent a long time finding enough. This was a very big purchase and the shop was not used to selling in such big quantities. So, we all worked together and found 1200 meters of linen. We had to unroll it and measure how much there was!! We are returning at 16:00 to collect the material which cost 1,456,000,800 Kwacha (the local currency). Tomorrow the hospital tailor will begin to sew the material into sheets. Once he is done there should be approximately 600 new bedsheets. We are very excited and the directors, nurses, midwives, matrons and patients are quite happy as well.

Today, I was reflecting on how much I love it here. The pace is so so so slow and it makes me feel calm. We were talking about how long it took to get the material sorted out this morning and I realized that in Canada people would have been so angry with the slowness. I felt so good all morning knowing that I had to just accept and go with the flow. This is the way. The hospital truck was suppose to leave this morning at 07:30 and it left at 08:30. I was dropped off here at the internet shop and was suppose to be picked up in 1 hour. It has already been 1.5 hours. I know they will come for me. There is no reason to be worried.

Yesterday on the labour ward Marijke and I had a hard day. Two babies died. The woman I was caring for had come in from Mozambique. She was a gravida 6 and had been in 2nd stage of labour for some time. She had blood in her urinary catheter and her contractions had stopped. These are both signs of obstructed labour. We started an IV, took blood and called the doctor. The fetal heart rate was good and strong at 150 beats per minute. By the time the doctor arrived the fetal heart rate was not heard. We went to theatre but it took a very long time for the doctor to arrive because he was busy with another woman who had just arrived in prolonged 2nd stage of labour. This was the woman Marijke was caring for. She was a primigravida (meaning it was her 1st pregnancy). The doctor did a vaccum delivery and the baby was born not breathing. She died 40 minutes later. The baby that was delivered by c-section with me had already died and the woman had a ruptured uterus.

It was a hard day. My transport is here so I must go.