Two weeks left !

Our journey is about to end, only two weeks left. The autumn is coming and the weather is getting colder here, so we don’t mind to come back home and start the summertime in Finland!

The training experience has given us a lot of things that we can use in everyday life but also in nursing care. Now we understand more what multi-cultural nursing really mean and we can face patience from different culture with more courage. And we think that we also have a better change to work abroad in the future if we want to. The local attitude towards life has also given us something to think about; relax and enjoy your life more. What comes to our skills in the English language, they have improved a lot. Now we can use English with more courage and cope with even more difficult conversations. 


We have understood during the attachment that Finland is very good place to study. At the Rujeko Clinic we had an opportunity to meet two girls who were also studying to become a nurse. They were very amazed that we can do our practical placements in another side of the world. In Zimbabwe the nurses have trouble finding a job after graduation. The studying is free, but after the graduation they need to work a year for free, to cover the costs for the government. That doesn’t sound so good to us...

 Most of the nurses that we met were very nice and hard workers. They didn’t have much information about hygiene that we have. They were always washing their hands and not using anything to dry them. Also they used double cloves and the same disposable aprons for whole day, with the patience and on the tea brake, which was pretty disgusting. Speaking of brakes, the nurses had one tea brake that lasted 30 minutes and the lunch break was an hour, a little bit longer that we have used in Finland. But the nurses here have lot of responsibility and they really like they job and taking care of the patience.

 What we will miss the most, of course the weather and the super-fresh fruits, are the children. They are always so cheerful and happy. We have realized the importance of volunteer work and how you can make smile to someone’s face even by small things.

Visiting at the Rujeko Clinic

We have had an opportunity to visit in the local clinic next to our Activity Center where we are normally working. Clinic is called Rujeko clinic and it is responsible of taking care of all the people in Dzivarasekwa, so there is lot of  patients in different ages during the day. It is a quite small and includes three wards which are:

-maternity 

-baby

-outpatient ward 

We spent one day in each ward during the three weeks.

The clinic is run by nurses and they have lot of responsibility because there is only one doctor working in outpatient ward once a week and that’s why nurses prescribe and give all kind of medicine for example opiods to patients. We had to applied for permission (because you must have a lisence to work) from the city of Harare to only visiting and touring at the clinic but like the Sister in Charge said "you will learn by doing" so our visits there were more working than touring.

Our first time at the clinic was in the maternity ward. Pregnant women come there for examinations and get to know how far the pregnancy is and is there everything okay with the baby. We were calculating their due date, taking their blood pressure and weights. After that were doing examinations for mothers tummies to know the babys position and for example find babys back to listen the heart beat.  

Women also come there for delivery and if there is something wrong with the delivery they can stay couple days at the post natal ward for observation. Nurses and midwifes are assisting the labor and there is no doctor at all in that ward. There are about ten labors in a day and most of the local women are still delivering at their home. Most women in labor were very young and there were no father-to-be around. 

After visiting in the maternity ward we went to see the baby-clinic ward. New born babies come to the clinic once a month so that nurses can see are they developing normally. First we were examining two week old babies. We took weight, height, checked the reflects, eyes, skin, navel and looked if there is anything not normal. Most of the kids received extra nutrition from the clinic because they were suffering malnutrition. The nurses introduced us the local immune schedule and we were also giving the vaccines to the children, like polio and measles. 

Our last visit was in the out patient ward. First we checked the equipments for in case of an emergency, like oxygen, adrenalin and laryngoscope. Many of those important equipments were unavailable. After that we were following the nurse when she was taking the patients in. Most of the patients were very sick, having a fever, cough and pain in their body. Nurses sent only the urgent cases to bigger hospital. Usually the nurse prescribe the same package of medicine for every patience; paracetamol, ciprofloxacin, amoxcyllin and vitamins. Afternoon we spent in the HIV testing and counselling clinic. About 20 people come for the test every day, five of them are usually positive. Part of them were older men and also young couples came to do the test together. Before testing they got counselling of HIV and Aids. The pre-test-counselling was information about disease, treatment and what happens if the test is positive. The counselor was especially telling that if you got HIV it doesnt mean that you are going to have Aids. And also, after if the test is negative, you still need to go testing every three months. 

The visits in the clinic, especially in the HIV- counselling, were very interested. It was also good to know what kind of work nurses are doing here in Zimbabwe.      

Sistahood-club

Every other Thursday we have held lectures for girls about health and issues related to young woman's growth and life. The club is called the "Sistahood-club" and the slogan is "My health is my wealth". The local girl who is studying social work is helping us with the group. We have two groups. One for the girls who are 10-12 years old and an other for the 12-16 years old girls. With younger girls we had talked about hormonal changes, hygiene, periods, children rights and sexual abuse. For older girls the topics have been dating, contraception, hiv and aids and sexually transmitted diseases. In one group we have about twenty girls and lessons have been a one-hour length.

The topics are important but also not so easy to discuss with girls who are in that age. In this culture young girls don't have an opportunity to talk these things with their parents or in schools so these kind of groups are very important to them. We are trying to create a relaxed atmosphere in the groups that they will feel comfortable to open up and have confidence to express their own opinions. The only thing that has been taught in the school is HIV and the girls have lot of information about that. It is also typical for the culture that girls go married and have children in teenage. Thats why girls should not be encouraged to have sexual relationship too early, but rather talk about importance of education before starting a family.

The picture from the wall of primary school

Our typical day

Usually we wake up at 6.20 a.m. The couple who's house we are living have two dogs and we start our day by taking the dogs for a run. After jogging and swimming in the pool we have breakfast which usually includes  fresh fruits like mangoes, papayas and pineapples, toasts, eggs, yogurt and coffee.

Then we have some work to do on the computer related to society's issues. About 9 a.m we leave by car to Dzivarasekwa which is 30 km from our house. Once a week we are attending to weekly meeting with local workers and other volunteers. Now there are three other Finnish volunteer who are also sharing the house with us. When we are concentrating on children's healthcare in the society they are more involved freetime activities like piano and extra maths lessons. In the weekly meeting each of us gives a report about things that have happened during the week, in English of course. After weekly meeting we go to the activity centre to see the children who usually come there before or after their schoolday. On this day we started to do "health cards" for children which includes height, weight, allergies, and information about their possible diseases. It's a big project because there is 400 orphans and they have no previous information anywhere about their health and the most of them don't even have birth certificates. It's very hard to interview the little ones because they don't understand English and because they are so young they can't tell us their medical history by themselves. 

After lunch at the center we were visiting this lady who sells and donates chickens, eggs and potatoes to children's of society. This day she wanted to donated twenty chickens to shelter where part of children are living. 

In the afternoon we helped the other Finnish volunteers to give maths extra lessons for primary children. Especially maths is the most difficult subject for kids because maths is taught in English rather than their mother language shona. About 4 p.m we heading back to home where we have usually some works to do like move the information about healthcards to the computer. So about 5 p.m our workday is over and rest of the evening we are spending time with other girls and just relaxing for example watching a movie or going to sauna ! :) 

sadza and kapenta

Traditional food in Zimbabwe is sadza which is like white porridge made of corn. We think that it has no taste at all. But the kids seem to really like it. With sadza there is usually served some kind of meat, vegetables or very small fishes which they call kapenta. People use only their hands to eat, no spoons or forks. But we think that eating by hands is quite unhygienic and slow way to eat, so usually we ask them spoons. Dining is important part of the day for children and they spend lot of time to praying before starting to eat and they are not in hurry when it comes to time to eat. People here don't like to eat vegetables without cooking them, they think that it is weird to eat fresh salad like we do.
Children are not used to eat lot of sweets and they are very thankful when they receive for example white bread with peanut butter. Sometimes we give them some candies and they are very happy even to get one lollipop..

sadza with kapenta

Annoying things..

After three weeks, we have noticed many things in the local culture which are very different to compare what we are used to in Finland.  The first thing is time. In Finland we have used to live with clocks and calenders and plan our daily schedule by using them. Now we have understood the meaning of "zimbabwean time" which has nothing to do with finnish time.. For example if we have a meeting with local people at 2 p.m, usually after one hour we are still waiting and after calling them their usual answer is "I'll be there in five minutes" which means that we still have to wait at least half an hour. We have never heard words "Sorry I am late" after that.. This happens everywhere, for example we were visiting in the local clinic and they said that workday starts at 7.30. Of course we were there fifteen minutes earlier, but it was 8.30 when all the nurses were present and ready to listen the morning report. But we just have to deal with the fact that they are always late..

All toilets are not the same level as in Finland

The other issue which is annoying us is the trafic. The roads are in very bad condition because of the rain season but still people are driving like crazy. There are no signs or any marks on the road and you never know in which road you are driving. For tourist it is little bit difficult to drive here especially if you are not used to drive the left-hand traffic. In Zimbabwe the bus service is different than in Finland. Here the so-called buses are called "kombi" which are just ordinary vans owned by self-employed persons and of course they want to get the van as full as possible. The kombies are usually the ones who cause most of the traffic accident in Zimbabwe. So you can imagine that we were a bit scared when we were sitting inside the kombi for the first time.
Because of the bad economic situation you should have the exact change when you go to supermarket because they don't have small changes to give back. So they give you candies and lollipops instead of small changes. But is not any problem for us.. ;) 

Hospital visits

When our supervisor Ritva was visiting here we had an opportunity to visit in Chitungwiza Central Hospital which is one of the biggest hospital in Harare. This public hospital was quite different compared to Finland's hospitals. Hospital rooms were messy and there were lot of patients in the one room. There was about 400 place for patients but the number of staff was very low because of the bad salary. For example one of the doctor earns only 300 dollars a month which is about 240 euros.After touring around the hospital we were able to go to theatre. At the operating room we were able to follow four different operations, one of them was section and the woman gave birth to triplets! That was wonderfull experience to see and all of the children were healthy and happy. Aseptic in the theatre was not same level than in Finland. There were no hand sanitizer and the place for handwashing was very ancient too. The clothing of the staff were very worn and seem unhygienic. We were pretty shocked when we saw a butterfly flying above the operating table..

After visiting in the public sector we went to one of the private hospital of Harare. The difference between these two hospital was quite huge. The rooms were more modern, there was more space for patients and even the staff seemed more friendly and satisfied with their jobs. Nurses took care for the patients better than previous hospital where the patients waited many hours at the corridor, half naked in their uncomfortable looking beds, without nobody saying a word to them.