I liked Tanzania, can you tell?
In terms of Midwifery however, it was probably the hardest experience I have ever had. Resources were poor, the culture is very different, and the outcomes were not always good. Coming from a country with some of the highest standards of care and healthcare provision to this was quite the shock for me. Doctors led the care. Kindness and compassion was rare. Beds were shared by up to 3 people, regardless of whether they had a live baby in their arms or not.
The hospital was the biggest in the town. Women usually birthed in their homes, especially those from the tribes in the surrounding villages, meaning they usually only came into the hospital if something had gone wrong. The ward had about 12 births a day. Running water was not always a given and gloves were used on a only-if-absolutely-necessary basis because they were hard to get hold of. It was hard.
The delivery room complete with three beds and the adjoining utility room for equipment cleaning.
Some lovely student midwives who took me under their wings and laughed when I told them we were allowed to deliver babies and undertake vaginal examinations as students - apparently that's unheard of over there!
Babies were not labelled at birth, merely wrapped in a 'kanga' blanket which the mother provided. This meant that the single resuscitaire on which babies were stacked after delivery was always beautifully coloured.
I cannot deny that it was not an easy place to volunteer, but it really opened my eyes to birth and midwifery in it's rawest form. There were no assisted deliveries, because there was no equipment to do so. Women birthed and it was expected that it would all be normal. Surprisingly, whether that be to do with the lifestyles of the women or the culture and expectations of birth, it usually was. Intriguing.
The one caesarean that I saw was due to eclampsia and there was a little bit of oxytocin thrown around if a woman's labour really was slow. Everything else was just normal birth, with entire belief in the physiology of women from both the professionals and the women. 'Birth will happen. And then you will breastfeed. Your mother did it, you will do it.' - the mind-set of every single woman. It was mind-blowing.
It made me think quite long and hard: about our own culture around birth, what influences the differences between their style of thinking and ours. Why have we gone our way and them theirs?
For more information on volunteering in Maternity in Tanzania, see the companies I used below:
http://www.thegreenhouse.co.tz/volunteer.html
http://www.lovevolunteers.org/programs/tanzania
Personally managed births to go: 17
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