Childbirth practices in Ghana

COUNTRY: Ghana
PROGRAM: UniBreak
PROJECT: Community Health Work
WRITTEN BY: Becky Nelson

Ghana week 3. Hello again! This week we all continued on in our placements and felt a lot more confident in our roles.

Alex and I were able to witness a couple natural births, Caesarean sections and hernia repairs in our week at theatre and the maternity ward. We were able to learn a lot about the health care system, and witnessed many things that made us think and reflect - particularly on the cultural differences regarding childbirth and just in patient care in general.

Mel was able to buy a laptop (with another coming) this week for her class with the money she raised before coming, which has been a source of great excitement and promise for her kids.

Gee Ling and Evelein, at the orphanage, organised for all the kids (who were old enough) to head out to the beach on Wednesday afternoon. Alex, angus and myself were able to help out and keep an eye on the kids, plus be an extra source of excitement! They all loved their time there, the tro tro ride was filled with 30 of us (normally the max, and squishy capacity is 15) along with the chants and songs of very happy children!



On Thursday, a bunch of the crew went out to see the biggest tree in west Africa, which is relatively close to Swedru (Alex and I were busy waiting for a natural birth!).

On Friday, we all had a very early start, where we caught a bus at 4am to head out on a 7hour journey to Kumasi! We had a new member to the crew - a lovely girl from Sweden, who is at the orphanage for 2 weeks and we lost one, with Cam deciding to head to Accra instead. The first 2 hours of our journey was ridiculously bumpy and jolty, with this huge and packed coach going off-road. The back seat was a particularly crazy ride, with Mel, Alex and myself frequently becoming airborne! Finally, we hit some what smoother road, and made it to our hotel in Kumasi at around 11am.

We spend Friday at the cultural centre, getting some more good bargains at the markets there, and were even able to watch a lot of the crafts being made. One of our friends that we had made the first weekend, kath, met up with us and joined us for the weekend - she is an honorary member of the crew! We had a nice relaxing afternoon/evening exploring and having dinner in town.

Saturday brought about a breakfast on the street adventure, eating some delicious 'egg on bread'. We then headed out to the largest markets in west Africa and split into two groups to get around - it was crazily packed, but such a sight to see!!

Sunday, we headed out for another egg sandwich experience and began the first of our goodbyes with kath, who was flying out later that evening. We then headed over to the bus terminal and paid the extra $1 for the VVIP ("very very important personality") bus for the way back. We had to wait 2 hours for this one to fill up (things here go on capacity, not schedules!).

But it was only a 4 hour return trip back to Swedru, and no crazy road, although Alex had a small child propped on her much of the way!! In the night a bunch of us met up for dinner again, to farewell Evelein, who was leaving on Monday! We've all grown much closer together over the time here and saying goodbye, not knowing when the next time we'll meet up is an interesting feeling - some sadness, but also a touch of adventure, knowing one day down the track, maybe a catch up will occur.

Well, we now head into our last week here in Ghana (except Mel), we will be seeing you soon for Christmas!