Now we have finally started our practicals at the health centers! It a lot better than the hospital it seems when it comes to amount of health workers versus patients, and the way they treat the patients seem better as well. But there are no doctors or specialists here, so the midwives and nurses do it all, including prescribing medicines. They do refer a lot to the hospital though. They have no electrical equipment such as ultrasound machines, dopplers to hear the babies heartbeats or machines to control the fluid drips. All they have is a blood pressure machine, stethoscope and the wooden stethoscope thingys they use to listen to the pregnant womens stomach to hear the heartbeat of the baby.
There are several departments at the health centers, in one room they do all the vaccines, in one place they go with the sick children, in one they check pregnant women, do family planning and counselling and so on. We are supposed to spend 2 days in four different rooms (there is 3 of us in one health center and 3 in another about 5 minutes away). I have spent these two days in the labor and deliver ward, and they have had no births! So I'm a bit disappointing with that, but us students we have an agreement that if there is a birth we will call the other ones so that all can see. Torunn, who works in the other health center saw one baby be born on monday, and Oda saw one baby born in the hospital, but it was disfigured and dead :(
The things I have been able to see and do so far is examine the womens abdomens to feel how the baby is positioned and if the head is laying downwards, and also listening to the heartbeat with the stethoscope. I have seen some examinations of the moms who are pregnant and the ones who have had babies a few days ago, and also the examination of the little babies. The babies here are just so adorable! You can tell which moms are poor by how they and the babies are dressed. Some have just some cloth with a plastic bag fastened around for a diaper, while some have pampers, but put cloth inside them so that they can use them longer. They wrap the babies up really well with lots of acrylic and fleece blankets. Today we saw one baby with a knitted wool hat that just looked so Norwegian! We had to ask where she had gotten it, and she had bought it in a marked. So now we hope that the manager, whom we had given a bag full of hats, blankets and baby clothes today, actually distributes it to the patients and doesn't sell it for her own gain. So hopefully there will be some babies born soon so we can see if she gives them some clothes! We still have lots and lots of knitted stuff and other clothing items, but we don't know yet how we are going to distribute it to be sure it gets to the poor mothers. We might have to give them directly ourselves to people on the streets!
We do a lot of driving through Addis. It is incredible polluted with all the ancient cars spewing out black smoke. We also see a lot i the streets when passing by. There are people sleeping and living on the sidewalk, people carrying huge loads, people doing a lot of manual work such as tearing down concrete houses with hammers. There are kids and adults working. Some ladies carrying babies are begging, and some kids run around trying to sell little packages of chewing gum. Sometimes they come up to the car window and beg, and I have some change in my pocket available at all times for that. We have this really cool gray haired taxi driver, that we can call any time, and he told me that Ethiopians also give to beggars, and approximately what to give. Today we went back to the orphanage we visited earlier to give them some soap, lotions, shampoo, biscuits and crackers and candy, and he drove us there. On the way we discussed politics and what Ethiopia needs to move forwards and so on, he is so nice and talkative, some of the other taxis we have taken the drivers don't say a word the whole drive! Well, sometimes they don't really speak english, like the driver who took us to the health center today, who didn't come back to pick us up at the appointed time because he probably didn't understand a thing. So we had to find ourselves a taxi home, the problem is there are no adresses here (and no map), so its hard to explain where you are and where you want to go if they don't know the exact place, and the english isn't great either. So its an adventure driving here. Today the driver started saying all this weird stuff when I was talking on my mobile in the car, and I didn't understand a thing. After some figuring out we found out he wanted me to switch the phone to my other ear, the one away from the window, because he was scared someone would walk up and snatch my phone from me through the open window! Well, it all worked out in the end, we got back home. Luckily we found out the hotel is quite near one of the most famous traditional restaurants in Addis, and they all know where that is, which is by the way the place we went to eat injera.
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