Meet Robert, our newest student midwife in Malawi whose training is being sponsored by Maternity Worldwide.
Having a midwife present at birth is one of the most effective ways to help to prevent women dying during childbirth. Robert’s entire 3 year course to become a midwife is being paid for by the money raised last year from the Muffins for Midwives campaign where people held cake parties raising money to sponsor the training of more midwives.
Robert is from the Zomba region of Malawi and returned home for Easter where he gave this update to Grace, our trustee based in Malawi:
“My name is Robert, I was born in the year 1988, in a family of four children. I come from zomba district – Malawi.
I finished my secondary education in the year 2009, but because of the shortage of universities in Malawi, and lack of funds to pay for private institutions I failed to go for tertiary education but I still had the desire to achieve my goals.
I started work at Pirimiti Community Hospital as Records Assistant where I reported to the Director of the hospital and Mrs. G. Makonyola, trustee of Maternity Worldwide, who encouraged me to achieve my goal and linked me to this organisation, that is why am here today singing this song.
Having succeeded at the interviews at Trinity Collage of Nursing and Midwifery in Nsanje district, I indeed proved that these people really are concerned with my future as Maternity Worldwide started funding the school fess for me to become a midwife.
I thank Maternity Worldwide on the great thing you are doing, I am a student whom you are funding for nursing and midwifery course in Malawi, I really appreciate your duty. Having been briefed on some of the ways on how you get the aid to pay for my training, I really appreciate it and may God continue blessing you.”
If you would like to host a Muffins for Midwives event to help raise money to train people like Robert to become midwives please click here for more information.
Update from Robert – May 2014
“School and Examination Procedures
We started school on 6th January 2014; we are 41 in total in our class and learning seven courses for the first semester. I like the course and am enjoying the environment though it is the hottest environment in Malawi, but I easily adapted to it because I want to achieve my goal. I also want to thank two mothers I met at Pirimiti Hospital because they encouraged me to follow the right professional that helps to save lives of people.
The examination procedures are that we write continuous assessment that contributes 40% of the last exam. We have already written this exam and the following are the grades I have scored; Basic sciences 84%, Fundamentals of nursing 74%, Communicable and neglected diseases 76%, Communication in nursing 88%, Principals and practices of nursing 80, Community health nursing 56% and Surgical and trauma nursing, (not yet results).
I am trying to work hard so that I will eliminate the poor grades made. At Easter holiday I went to Pirimiti and and met with, Dr. Zahara and Mrs. G. Makonyola, we had a good day that day.
My normal day
I wake up at 4:00 AM, have a prayer and then take a shower, prepare myself for the day classes. I leave for studies up to 7:00 when we have breakfast and then 7:30 classes to 10:00 for tea break, 10:30 – 12:00 another class, and then 2 hours for lunch. From 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM for another class, we also break up to 4:15 then last class up to 5:00 PM. We go for super for about one hour, after that have my studies up to 10:30 then go to the hostel and have some minutes for reading then, I sleep.
Challenges
Most of the assignment given, they just say go and check which needs more sources of information and most of the resources in our library are old, computer lab is having only 6 computers which are functioning against about 200 students in total of all classes, so my first challenge is a computer. If I can have a personal computer I can minimize some of the failures. That is my priority challenge, other challenges like stationary I can at least manage, otherwise everything is just ok and once again thank you for the great thing you are doing.”
If you have a spare laptop which you would like to donate to Robert to help with his studies please email [email protected], we would be very grateful and could take it to him in June!
