Englannin kurssi on ohi joten viimeisen blogitekstin kirjoitamme Suomeksi. Tultiin Suomeen jo sunnuntaina, mutta kerromme vielä viimeisistä viikoistamme Sambiassa.

Harjoittelun viimeiset kaksi viikkoa oltiin synnytysosastolla ja pari päivää aliravitsemusyksikössä. Synnärillä oli yli 20 opiskelijaa kolmesta eri koulusta samaan aikaan meidän kanssa joten kunnollista opiskelijaohjausta oli vaikea saada. Kaikki olettivat että me osataan auttaa vauvoja maailmaan vaikka kukaan ei ollut kertonut mitä pitäisi tehdä. Meillä ei ollut myöskään teoriatietoa odottavan äidin ja vauvan hoidosta koska opiskellaan niitä asioita koulussa vasta ensi syksynä. Ensimmäiset synnytyksessä avustamiset tehtiin yhdessä paikallisten opiskelijoiden kanssa jotka auttoivat ja neuvoivat. Oli mukavaa nähdä kun uusia pieniä ihmisiä syntyi maailmaan. Molemmat saivat kätilöidä yhdet lapset maailmaan lähes omatoimisesti. Alkuun vähän jännitti mutta kaikki meni hyvin ja kätilö oli lähellä koko ajan valvomassa tilannetta. Tehtiin synnärillä myös yksi yövuoro jossa päästiin seuraamaan keisarinleikkausta. Se oli hyvä oppimiskokemus koska yövuorossa ei ollut muita opiskelijoita.

Kotona taas!

opiskelijoita. Surullisia hetkiäkin osastolla oli kun joskus vauvoja syntyi kuolleena tai kuoli heti syntymän jälkeen. Kaiken kaikkiaan harjoittelu synnytysosastolla oli mahtava kokemus jollaista ei meillä ole mahdollista Suomessa kokea.

Viimeiset pari päivää kävimme tutustumassa aliravitsemusyksikköön. Suurin osa Sambialaisista elää alle dollarilla päivässä, eli köyhiä perheitä on paljon. Tästä johtuen Sambiassa on paljon lapsia jotka kärsivät aliravitsemuksesta. Perheissä voi olla paljon lapsia jolloin kaikille ei riitä ruokaa ja yleensä nuorimmille lapsille jää vähiten. Aliravitsemuksen syynä voi olla myös liian yksipuolinen ruokavalio. Etenkin maaseudulla suurin osa naisista on kouluttamattomia. He menevät naimisiin ja saavat lapsia jo teini-ikäisenä joten heillä ei ole aina tarvittavaa tietoa kuinka lapsia pitäisi hoitaa. Sambiassa miehen tehtävä on elättää perhe ja jos miehellä ei ole töitä joutuu perhe turvautumaan sukulaisten apuun.

Osastolla lapset saattoivat olla muutamia viikkojakin ja etenivat vaihe vaiheelta 1. solusta, jossa oli kaikki ripulista kärsivät ja akuuteimmassa vaiheessa olevat lapset, viimeiseen 4. soluun, josta pääsivat sitten kotiutumaan. Äidit olivat osastolla koko ajan hoitamassa ja syöttämässä lapsia. Lapsille annettiin ravintoaineita sisältävää vellimäistä ruokaa syötettämällä tai nenämahaletkulla tai annettiin kiinteätä pähkinävalmistettä.

Kolme kuukautta meni loppujen lopuksi aika nopeasti ja kotia tultiin monta kokemusta rikkaampana. Ikävä jää uusia ystäviä, joihin tutustuimme Sambiassa sekä afrikkalaista elämänasennetta. Kiva oli tula Suomeenkin ja tavata kaikki tutut ihmiset. Joku päivä vielä palataan Sambiaan:) Tämä blogin päätämme nyt tähän. Seuraavaa reissua odotellessa. Kiitoksia mielenkiinnostanne!:)

On Mayday we went to Livingstone for a week. We stayed in Falty Towers which is a backpakers-hostel. It was cozy but food there wasn`t very good but was cheap, so it didn`t really bother us and there were lot of nice restaurants just outside.

On Sunday we went to see the Victoria falls world heritage side. The Falls' local name is Mosi-oa-Tunya which means the smoke that thunders and that is what it is like. We walk around the national park and we got totally soaked because it was like beeing in shower. After that we went abseiling which was very nice. Paula also did a gorge swing.

Next day in afternoon we went to sunset ”booze” cruise on river Zambezi. It took 2,5 hours and we could drink as much as we wanted. We also see couple animals :) After that we went to see how is Livingstone nightlife.

Tuesday morning we went quad biking and we had lot of fun! We got very muddy because last night it was raining. After that we went to the bridge to do some extreme activities. First we did a slide over the rapids, then we did 111m bungee jumps from the bridge. It was very scary but felt great, it felt like we got the wings for 30 seconds (or how Pippa says it was like being a human jojo). We think that the only mistake was to do it when we were hangower, because Pippa felt very sick after the jump.

We also went for a helicopter flight over the falls. The falls looked fantastic from helicopter. Last afternoon we also went to walk with lions.

Allover we had great time in Livingstone and it was shame that we had to come back already on thursday. We had some proplems with visas so we had to go the immigration office on Friday. But it's all sorted out now and we dont have worry about anything here anymore.

And aswers to your questions:

The best experiences here have been the trip to Livingstone, quad biking and a bungee jump.

We haven't been anywhere else than Malawi and we are not planning other trips outside the country because we haven't had enough time.

Next two weeks we'll be in labour ward and we'll tell about it next time.

We were two weeks in neonatal intesive care unit (NICU). There was much very small premature babies, smallest ones weihgted only a half kilo. This was the first ward where they use a alcohol rub a lot. They had lot of hospital equipments like incubators, infusion pump and rescution tables but some of thems were broken and they didn`t have spare parts to fix them. They couldn`t also use infusion pumps at all because they didn`t have proper giving sets.

The first morning wasn`t very nice, because one baby stop breathing and nurses tried to save him but he didn`t survive. It was very hard to see a little baby dying and we almost cryed. Overall it was very nice to work with tiny little babies, they were so cute. We would have wanted to take one pocket size baby with us to Finland. :) There were babies whose mother were died and one baby who was dumped and we were like the foster moms to them for two weeks.

The hospital didn`t provide nappies or clothes for the babies. If parents didn`t have money to buy them or the mom wasn`t there to taking care of the baby, babies were just wrabbed in the blanked without clothes and a nappy. Mothers came to the ward every two or three hours to feed and take care of the babies and we took care of the babies whose mothers were sick or died. Fathers weren't allowed to come to the ward. We learnt to cupfeed babies because they don't recommend to use feeding bottles because of the hygienic reasons.

There were lot of hiv-positive babies because hiv-mothers have much bigger change to have prematured babies. Everyday at least one baby died. Most of the babies didn't have good change to survive.

Next we are going to labour ward. We have only two weeks left of our practical placement here and soon we will be coming back home.:)

Two weeks has gone very quigly and haven`t had time to write our blog before. After coming back from Malawi we vent to the cancer diseses hospital. It was very nice to notice that cancer diseases hospital was very modern, clean and the nurses there knew what they were doing. Tutoring there was much better than at UTH. Hospital was built in 2007 and it`s only cancer diseases hospital in Zambia. Before that Zambians had to go to South-Africa or somewhere else to get the radiation. Hospital is only for outpatients and the patients who are referred from other hopitals come to see the doctor who plans the treatment for the cancer and then the patients start to come to the hospital to get the treatment like chemotherapy, brachytherapy and radiation. If we had known that the hospital was so good we would have stayed there longer than week, but we had planned to go to Kafue next week.

We went toKafue, which is village near Lusaka, with group of locan nursings students. Pippa stayed in centre of Kafue with half of the group and she was working at Nangonwe klinic. They vaccinated babies, weight babies and they attented materity training classes and for one day they went to rural area to same things for those who are not able to come to the clinic. Paula went to Shanyaya with rest of the group to work at very small rural clinic. There was only one nurse and midwife working there and no doctors at all. Nurse screened all the patients and prescriped medicen. Most of the patients had malaria or diarrhea. On Friday nurse didn't show up so student were working there own their own.

We were staying with local student so all week we only eat sambian food for example nsima, potato and pumpkin leaves, kapentas which are small dried fishes, catepillars, fried chicken and beef and very salty boiled wegetables. There we a lot of huge cockroaches and lizards. And in the place Paula was staying there weren't running water in the house they had to carry the water from the well.The outdoor toilet was only hole in the ground and the ”shower” was a hay hut. Most the people in that village lived without electricity in the clave huts.

On Saturday Pippa and Anja came to Paula and rest of the croup up from Shanyanya and the children there went crazy when they saw three white girsl. They wanted us to take photos of them and touch our hair and skin. It's not very common to see whites in the very rural area. We think that they were really cute.

Somebody asked about the language proplems. I think that at the beginning we had more language proplems than we have now. The most difficult thing here is to speak professional english. Our medical vocabulary isn't that good but it's getting better and we have learned a lot. On the freetime it's much easier to speak English and also speaking with people who we know well is easier because the accent here is quite strong and sometimes when we meet new people it takes little while to get use to her/his accent.

We miss home but because we have bee very busy here so we have't had time to think home so much. Sometimes hits very bad but luckily we have phones and we go to the internet cafe couple times a week. At the beginning it was worse than it's now. We have already been here 7 weeks and it has gone quickly so know that we will be back home soon anyway.

Now we have finnished our practical placement in long term care. This week we started working at neonatal ICU more about that next week.