One day at the hospital my supervisor tells me we are going to the communities. I was not sure what she meant, but I love going to different communities and visiting them. When I went outside of the ward I saw a Matatu (kind of mini bus) filled with nurses and new mothers who have been discharged form the hospital. There is a great program in the hospital which is directed by the nursing school. The program is to drive the new mothers and their new born babies back to their homes to many different villages because most of them don’t have money to go back home. Every morning around six mothers who have been discharged along with six nurses travel through different communities. Every time that we dropped off a mother, two nurses went with her inside her house to do a quick observation on the safety of the environment for the baby and the mother. We also visited the mothers who have been dropped off on previous days.
The checking on continues for seven days which at the end the nurse writs her final report. In each visit the nurse examines the mother and the baby. It was fascinating to see how they weigh the babies. They would strip the baby from his/her cloths and put her in a black plastic bag and hang him/her of a commercial scale. It was very interesting and frightening to watch because I was so worried that the plastic is going to rip and the baby is going to fall down, but the nurses are professional and know what they are doing.
The roads to these communities are very bumpy and it is a challenge to drive on them. Deep pot holes make it difficult to sit still in the car, and imagine if you are in pain going through those pot holes can hurt. In one our trips our Matatu (mini bus) stuck in the mud because it was raining that morning. While the driver was working hard to release the car we went to visit a mother. Her house was as big as a bathroom. She had a curtain up in order to create herself a bedroom. In the remaining side she had her dishes which weren’t so many on the floor and a coal burning cooker on the corner. There were no windows or natural lights, the walls were made of mud and straw, it was dark and sad. She was cooking something for lunch and the coal was burning in the house where her baby was sleeping. There was absolutely nothing in her house. In the reaming space where I think would be considered her living room only two people could get in. There was a small mat on the floor over the muddy ground. Her baby boy was bleeding from his cord for last while. He had lost lots of blood and was so weak. The nurses retied his cord and cleaned him up then my supervisor advised the mother to come with us to the hospital because she believed that the baby needed blood. The mother did not want to come. I found out that later that she did not have any cloths to wear, that is why she had wrapped a blanket around herself. Her only dress was washed and hung up to dry.
Eventually she agreed to come and the baby was saved. I can’t imagine what would have happened if the program was not there, most probably the baby would have never had a chance to live, to grow up….
In another occasion we were passing through a village where we just dropped off a mother and we saw a woman who was in so much pain and hardly could move. She had an abortion done in the village and she was in so much pain. The village was far away from the main road and is not easy to find a proper transportation other than Bodas (motor bikes which act as a taxi) to go around. We gave her ride to the main road, so she was able to get to the hospital. It was a privilege to experience these visits and be able to go to people’s houses and witness their life circumstances and their daily challenges. I have to admit there were times that I had to get out of the house because the amount of suffering was too much to bare. It is amazing to see how much a human can handle and still be able to live, have children and go on with life .
The checking on continues for seven days which at the end the nurse writs her final report. In each visit the nurse examines the mother and the baby. It was fascinating to see how they weigh the babies. They would strip the baby from his/her cloths and put her in a black plastic bag and hang him/her of a commercial scale. It was very interesting and frightening to watch because I was so worried that the plastic is going to rip and the baby is going to fall down, but the nurses are professional and know what they are doing.
The roads to these communities are very bumpy and it is a challenge to drive on them. Deep pot holes make it difficult to sit still in the car, and imagine if you are in pain going through those pot holes can hurt. In one our trips our Matatu (mini bus) stuck in the mud because it was raining that morning. While the driver was working hard to release the car we went to visit a mother. Her house was as big as a bathroom. She had a curtain up in order to create herself a bedroom. In the remaining side she had her dishes which weren’t so many on the floor and a coal burning cooker on the corner. There were no windows or natural lights, the walls were made of mud and straw, it was dark and sad. She was cooking something for lunch and the coal was burning in the house where her baby was sleeping. There was absolutely nothing in her house. In the reaming space where I think would be considered her living room only two people could get in. There was a small mat on the floor over the muddy ground. Her baby boy was bleeding from his cord for last while. He had lost lots of blood and was so weak. The nurses retied his cord and cleaned him up then my supervisor advised the mother to come with us to the hospital because she believed that the baby needed blood. The mother did not want to come. I found out that later that she did not have any cloths to wear, that is why she had wrapped a blanket around herself. Her only dress was washed and hung up to dry.
Eventually she agreed to come and the baby was saved. I can’t imagine what would have happened if the program was not there, most probably the baby would have never had a chance to live, to grow up….
In another occasion we were passing through a village where we just dropped off a mother and we saw a woman who was in so much pain and hardly could move. She had an abortion done in the village and she was in so much pain. The village was far away from the main road and is not easy to find a proper transportation other than Bodas (motor bikes which act as a taxi) to go around. We gave her ride to the main road, so she was able to get to the hospital. It was a privilege to experience these visits and be able to go to people’s houses and witness their life circumstances and their daily challenges. I have to admit there were times that I had to get out of the house because the amount of suffering was too much to bare. It is amazing to see how much a human can handle and still be able to live, have children and go on with life .
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