A big thank you to Giant Shoreham bike shop who have kindly sponsored the T-Shirts for our Uganda Bike Ride which begins on Thursday 26th September.
We will post a photograph of our 13 cyclists and 4 volunteers wearing the T-shirts when they triumphantly reach the finish line in Hoima, Uganda on 4th October!
If you would like to read more about the bike ride and perhaps take part next year please click here.
To sponsor the cyclists taking part in the 370km cycle across Uganda to raise money for our new project there please visit our Just Giving page here.
Giant Shoreham opened in Shoreham-by-Sea in Sussex in 2011 and is owned by Rod and Maria Lambert, existing Giant Retailers with Mr Cycles. The store is located at Falconer’s Court on Little High Street and offers the widest display of Giant bikes and cycling gear in the county in a unique modern store environment. For more information about Giant Shoreham please visit their website here.
Dr Karen Ballard, a senior lecturer in Women’s Health at the University of Surrey, writes about her year as a volunteer for Maternity Worldwide caring for pregnant Ethiopian women in a rural clinic.
As I squirted ultrasound gel on Balaynesh’s abdomen, she giggled nervously at the curious experience of being examined by a farengii, whose attempts to speak the language resulted in limited communication. Advances in technology allow us to bring portable ultrasound machines, not much larger than a mobile phone, to the most rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. They allow women, who do not even have access to a mirror, see images of their unborn baby.
Most rural health centres have limited supplies of water, electricity, equipment and drugs. They cannot provide caesarean sections or blood transfusions and staff are only trained to deal with simple childbirth complications. Being pregnant with twins means that Balaynesh is likely to require hospital care. Yet, her labour may commence at night when it is almost impossible to reach the hospital town. The transport costs will require her family to sell a coffee tree or a cow to raise the money; leaving their ability to provide for future family needs significantly reduced.
I was extremely lucky to have been given one valuable piece of advice from a friend in England who had also worked in Ethiopia. She told me that I would be confronted with vast numbers of people asking for help, and that I would certainly believe I could help many of them. However, she advised me to remain focused on what I was there for, and not to be tempted to take on everyone’s problems. Otherwise, she warned, I would achieve very little and end up exhausted and frustrated, running around trying to sort one problem after another.
I left Ethiopia with some incredibly fond memories of the people I encountered, many of whom have become treasured friends. They have welcomed me into their country and proudly shown me their way of life. They have invited me to eat in their homes and marked our friendship with coffee ceremonies. They have shown great courage and strength in dealing with their difficult lives, and their acceptance of adversity is remarkable. I recently visited Ethiopia for two weeks and was greeted by one of the nurses I used to work with, who had travelled on buses for two days to greet me. With so little, people can give so much.
On 12th May 2013 Save the Children launched their 14th annual State of the World’s Mothers report.
One of our trustee’s, Grace, is based in Zomba district, Malawi. On a recent visit to the UK she took a huge box full of knitted baby vests and blankets back with her along with some blood pressure monitoring machines. The vests and blankets are kindly donated by a wonderful team of volunteer knitters who regularly send us beautifully crafted items.
Here is a new mum in Pirimiti hospital who has just been given one of the beautiful knitted dresses. Many mothers can’t afford to buy extra clothes for their baby. At night time the temperatures can drop considerably so the vests and blankets help to keep babies warm at night.
Jeremy was soon busy in the hospital, working with Wasihun, the local obstetrician and Heidi, who was coming to the end of her volunteering time before returning to Denmark. In addition to offering ante-natal care to the immediate locals we were all hard at work helping women coming in as emergencies from far and wide; both from the Maternity Worldwide supported villages and from as far away as Asosa, a hospital 4 hours drive away, which sadly has no obstetrician at all. There was much to do and the first few weeks were full of surprises as we learned about the new and different situations we would encounter. A real difficulty was looking after the small babies, often born in poor condition. Initially, I adopted the role of neonatal ‘expert’ as she had previous experience in this area of work. Having discovered that staff were not always knowledgeable about caring for neonates, we developed protocols and taught our local colleagues about the simple care that could help keep these small citizens warm, dry and fed.
Midwives from both the local college and one further afield, attend the hospital for their clinical placements. Having realised that there were Maternity Worldwide volunteers available to teach much needed skills, the ward rounds soon became accompanied by student midwives eager to gain new knowledge and skills. Classroom teaching was now extended to the clinical environment, with clinical cases from the ward round being used as a forum for discussions about obstetric complications and their management.
My work was largely community-based and so we were delighted when our much-needed ‘truck’, an ageing land cruiser, had arrived in Djibouti. So off we set again, and after completing many forms, we drove away from the opened shipping container. After an exciting drive through the deserts of Afur and the eastern rift valley, we negotiated the unmade roads and were back home to Gimbie! I became an intrepid negotiator of the back routes of West Wollega, visiting the Maternity Worldwide sponsored health centres and offering both training for local nurses, midwives and health officers, and antenatal screening clinics for local pregnant women. As she bumped her way along the road, word soon spread and the clinics overflowed – the little faranji who drives very fast, as we were to learn she was called, was coming!
Women would travel for hours by foot to see her and were delighted, if not amazed to be able to see their baby on the ultrasound scan. In a world where women don’t have mirrors to see themselves, an image of their unborn baby must have been quite peculiar indeed. Having screened women for high risks, the car was always full on the way home with women who required hospital care. As many women remarked; it was an excellent team approach, with the wife finding the problems in the villages and bringing them back for the husband to treat in the hospital.
All too soon, it was time to leave and now we are home having left behind many good friends, but with many fond memories and tales of adventure. We feel a real sense of privilege having worked in Ethiopia as volunteers for Maternity Worldwide. Without all the contributions to the charity, none of this would be possible.