Saturday, October 4, 2008

It's a Baby Girl!

Tanzania spring has sprung and things have been heating up around here. I have been busy helping to prepare for the new volunteers coming in to teach here in Tanzania and best of all officially marking a full year living in Tanzania. 33 new volunteers arrived in the evening of September 19th in Dar es Salaam after 24+ hours of traveling and ready to start their two year journey teaching in Tanzania. They didn’t come empty handed they arrived with a ton of luggage and hundreds of question, and me and two other seasoned volunteers welcomed them in Dar es Salaam and stayed up answering their questions and reassuring them they made the right decision to come to East Africa to teach Math and Science. For me it was a great way to mark my first anniversary of arriving in country and a reminder of how clueless I was getting into this experience and now how I am transformed as a veteran volunteer here in Tanzania. I spent the next five days with the volunteers while they stayed in Dar es Salaam and then took their bus trip to Morogoro, their new home for the next three months and my home for the last year. I was around during their training sessions held by the staff to help interject personal experience and the point of view from a volunteer, my only request of the Peace Corps staff while there was “don’t scare the new volunteers!” I think I succeeded; no one has packed their bags and returned home yet. While in Morogoro I held training sessions on what to prepare for at the Homestay Families that they would be living with the next three months, a session on the town and community of Morogoro with a walk around of town in small groups. The session on Morogoro gave me a new sense of pride of my home community and a reminder of how beautiful it is around here. There is nothing like adding a boost to my moral by looking through the lenses of new enthusiastic volunteers. The training experience has helped in looking back and reflecting on how much I have accomplished in the last year; from my Swahili, cultural integration, working in a Tanzanian school, and just to be able to be comfortable in the community and to feel like ‘welcome to My town Morogoro’.
The overall experience of helping with the new volunteers has been great and a great way to surge forward to the next year. The only down side was the time away from my school Mzumbe, three days spent preparing for the new volunteers with the training staff and the five days with the volunteers. I have been able to get back to site and been busy at school as well.

My neighbor and best friend here at Mzumbe Remy Mpagama have been expecting his first child with his wife Mary. Last week was week 38 of her pregnancy and I had left her and the unborn baby with strict instruction to wait for labor until I was back from my training duties with the new volunteers, we had a good laugh. Two days after returning back to Mzumbe I was over at their home enjoying dinner and Mary was having pains and felt that the time was to be very soon. That night at one in the evening Remy and his wife went to the dispensary at the Mzumbe University where they were referred to the regional hospital in Morogoro and were given a lift with the university’s ambulance. At five in the morning Remy came and knocked on my window and informed me that Mary was at the hospital and the baby was coming. I got dressed quickly and Remy and I jumped on a daladala into town. On the way there we got in accident, our daladala and another daladala got to close to each other at an intersection and hit/scraped each other as we passed. After the drivers got out and decided they were both at fault and no major damages, we were back on our way. Our first stop in town was to the bank so Remy could have money to pay for the hospital bills. But the bank employees had been on strike for the last two days and this was the first day they had been open that week so as we arrived the line for the bank was 50 meters long. Remy’s uncle met us there and held a spot in line as we went to the hospital to check up on Mary. Mary was having complication and it was hard to get a doctor to come and look at here for a diagnosis. I have two South Korean friends who are volunteers at the hospital one a nurse, and another is a doctor. I was able to get a hold of them and with in ten minutes they were both there helping Mary and finding out what was going on, and finding the doctor that was suppose to be helping. They were great! I felt guilty getting special treatment for Remy and Mary just because of whom I knew and being a foreigner, but it’s good to have friends in high places especially when getting treated at a public hospital in Africa. We found out she was having an enema and lost a lot of blood and needed a blood transfusion before she could give birth. There is not blood bank at the hospital and the nearest Red Cross blood bank could take a while to get the blood we needed. Next best thing to a blood bank is a school full of students who would love a free ride to town and a free lunch. Four students with O+ blood and a teacher escort made their way to the hospital. When they arrived and the technician who was taking blood asked if they had eaten that day, none of them had eaten a thing. So I ran with them down the street and bought them some food and they scarefed down the food and it was back to the hospital to give blood. The blood was taken and the transfusion started in a matter of an hour, I am not a blood expert but I can’t imagine too many test were conducted in that time before the blood transfusion was given. Mary was doing well but her contractions were not serious yet, so Remy and I went back to the bank to wait in line. After the bank we communicated with Mary to make sure things were well, and decided to go have some lunch. It was the first time he had eaten since the previous night and still hadn’t slept. We went back to the hospital and waited, men typically aren’t allowed in the pregnancy ward so Remy and I waited outside and a fellow female teacher kept running out side to give us updates every half-hour. At 7:30 PM September 24 Beatris Mpagam was born, 3 kg and healthy. It was a relief both mom and baby were healthy and we celebrated outside and Remy was on the phone calling everybody he knew. It was one of the longest days of my life, I was grateful to be there with my friend and a chance to experience the hospital system here.
It was great to see how our community at Mzumbe Secondary School came together to welcome a new addition to our family here. Not only the students for their blood but all the teachers who stopped by at the hospital that day, the phone calls, and arriving back home that night in a taxi honking the horn and people running to the car to congratulate Remy. Seeing how a community/tribe here rallies together for such an occasion was a great experience and provided a deeper understanding of how every community member owns situation of other community members and a great sense of unity.

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