Births and Parties

As I had mentioned before, not too much has been happening at the hospital; however, several of the PAs have finished their rotation so I think that starting next week, we will be able to work more next week. Yesterday, I watched my first natural birth. The woman was 22 years old and up until that point, I had only seen cesarean sections in the states and in Africa.

Honestly, the female body is incredible. I had to wait and care for the woman for 2.5 hours and within 5 minutes, the child had positioned itself naturally for birth. It was interesting because in Africa, there are three steps to childbirth: contracting, vomiting, and delivery. They believe that making the mother vomit induces labor and helps to make sure that the child is properly positioned for birthing. The delivery went smoothly and the new mother, initially reluctant to push the child out, was relieved when it was over.

Sidebar: I had to leave the delivery room for a brief moment to fill discharge papers. When I returned, the nursing staff ran to me and said, "Your friends are here! Your friends are here!" When I looked around, I realized that there was another Indian family waiting to delivery a child. Kenya has an Indian population that composes about 20% of the total; but there aren't very many Indians in Migori. I exchanged some conversational pleasantries and platitudes in Hindi with the family then continued to encourage Asha (the Kenyan 22 yr old) to "sokuma! sokuma! (push! push!)".

Last night, the house bonded together to celebrate and to mourn the fact that one of our members, Kelsey, was leaving the next day. We had an enjoyable time. Here is a picture of me and my good friend Hannah.

When I typed in "good friend", I accidentally typed "hood friend". Yeah, this Caucasian Iowa-native is not from the hood...







We are going to Lake Victoria this weekend. Updates soon to come.