Skype is truly an amazing service and I am so thankful that I have access to it, that I get to see friends and family in real time and that I get to see their kids grow up and in a sense still be part of their lives. This week I talked to some friends in Australia that I haven't talked to except to email since I left in July. I was lucky enough to visit them just before I left for DRC, particularly because they had just had a baby. And this is one of the reasons Skype is such a beautiful thing. I was able to see their gorgeous little girl, a happy healthy baby. I sang for her and made faces and she laughed and smiled and was just generally adorable. Such a blessing.
Last week I was in Kamwenge visiting some friends I've made. We have two Australia HOPE International schools in Kamwenge district and by an amazing coincidence a South Aussie couple have started Maranatha Health which has built a Maternal and Child Health Clinic in Kamwenge town and are starting to do some community development work in villages around the area. This means that our schools have access to medical clinics and the opportunity to become more educated about health and what the community can to do be involved in improving health outcomes for their area.
I had a lovely visit and stayed overnight with them. And I got to see the clinic in action. It has become somewhat of a referral hospital as they have access to oxygen and can give blood transfusions. But as you can also probably imagine, they have limited resources and are not set up for every and all medical emergencies. Which, along with the severity of some of the cases they see can be devastating. There was a little baby on oxygen that died while I was there. There was a young girl brought in with severe burns from hot porridge who will most likely lose her entire leg. I heard from them about their struggles, the ups and downs of running such a clinic and I feel blessed to know them and to be able to partner with them in some small way.
But back to Australia. My friend there is also pretty amazing and one project she is currently involved in is packing and sending birthing kits from Birthing Kit Foundation to countries where there are a high number of maternal and infant deaths and the majority of women give birth at home, often without any assistance. Each kit contains a few items and these are sent and given out, usually to a Traditional Birth Attendant, along with some training on their use. The items found in the kit? A scalpel blade. Three twenty-four centimetre pieces of string. A piece of plastic, one metre by one metre. Two gloves. Five ten centimetre by ten centimetre pieces of gauze. A small piece of soap, cut from a larger cake.
My friend told me about receiving all these supplies to pack and remembering her own recent experiences with giving birth. She specifically remembered being wrapped in a warm blanket straight from the blanket warmer immediately after giving birth and commenting to the nurse that there was a piece of equipment that was just for that. The nurse commented that they wanted to give the absolutely best experience to new mothers that they could. My friend said she remembered how luxurious that felt, to be wrapped in a warm blanket. As she looked through the supplies that she and other volunteers would be packing, she said that moment came back to her and she wondered as she looked at three small pieces of string, that somewhere in the world they would be more than a mother expected as she gave birth.
Health care is so different here and it's provision is haphazard and generally reliant on money. Things that we take for granted about our health system are luxuries here. But luxuries that contribute to length and quality of life. Luxuries that people can't afford.
Luxuries like three small pieces of string.
Have a blessed week
bron
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