The week started by going with Jean and Victor to teach the women in a village how to build a wood burning stove and to check the maize which they had helped and advised with planting.

The wood burning stove was being constructed because so many trees were being cut down for fuel and not being replaced, so to use other forms of heat using what was less harmful to the environment and what was available was encouraged. The mud hut was big enough for about 5 women and Victor showed them how to lay out the bricks in a square against the wall to form the shape of the stove.
The women then went off and brought back in buckets on their heads, manure, ant hill soil, top soil, sand and water. This made up the ingredients for the stove and they dumped this outside the hut and mixed it with a made spade and their hands and feet. It was then shaped between the bricks using banana husks to form the cooking pot holes. This is then left for 6 weeks to dry out.

The labour ward was slightly better staffed this week as in there were three or four of us (meaning the Norwegian Nurses, Rachel and myself) on duty along with the two or three Malawian midwives.

The same things frustrate me, every shift .No absorbent cloths to wipe up body fluids, just the women’s precious cotton chitenjes . These are all we have to dry and wrap the baby and what the mother lies on and then hopefully a clean one for her to wear. They have only a few that we are very aware of trying to keep one or two dry.

The one toilet in the labour room continually gets blocked and on Thursday it was overflowing. There is no cistern lid, no sitting lid and a wet floor. There is never toilet paper but then would the women know what it was?

A cockroch crawled over a shoe lying under a bed I was at. Flies and beasties are the norm, no fuss just accept and move on.

There was a locum (bank) midwife on duty and I asked her what pay she got for the day shift. She said it was 1600 kwatcha. (£4 is 1000 kwatcha). I had bought the day before a drying rack for my dishes which cost me 1700 kwatcha, I just find this so hard to get my head round, midwives don’t shop in supermarkets.

A trained electrician gets 500 kwatcha a day.

I looked after Florida on Thursday morning from 7.30 and this was her third child. She gave birth easily to a boy at 1145 and I was to name him. She had a Beatrice and an Amos already so I suggested Grant. The clinical officer student who was with me explained to Florida that I had two girls and if I ever had had a boy he would have been called Grant as this was my husband’s middle name. Being with her continually for those few hours was obviously very positive for Florida as when I reacted to the birth she did too. More often than not there is never much joy to see on the mothers faces, as Rachel says the women’s feelings are so suppressed because of the culture that for me to react at the birth also gives her permission to react to her feelings.
I went on that day to deliver two more babies.

I went to a different village on Wednesday and it took an age to get there through horrendous mud track roads, between maize, tobacco plants and ground nut fields eventually arriving at a clearing with children running over to meet us. Some of the children have very swollen abdomens a severe sign of malnutrition. We spent two hours in a mud hut on the floor waiting and then teaching about bleeding in early pregnancy. I was able to participate in the very simple teaching through Cameron the interpreter. There is a huge belief in herbs and witchcraft and this can so often endanger the women’s life. We told the women to share the knowledge with other women in the village so they can help each other when there are problems.

Yesterday I had a meeting with the principle of the School of Nursing and the head tutor of Midwifery. They asked me to tell my ’MUMS’ story to the new intake of midwives next month and also to travel to Blantyre to do the same to the midwives studying Masters in midwifery. An inspirational story which they feel would inspire and motivate the midwives here in Malawi.