Interesting things this week. . .

 We finished this week with some fun.  We had one implant insertion on Thursday that one of the postnatal (postpartum) nurses did with me and I talked two officers through two IUD insertions on Friday.  So much fun!!  Here, they use the Jadelle and Sinorod which are 2-rod implants so I even got to put one rod in and then he did the other.  We were so grateful to Marie Stopes and the nurse midwife who took care of us there. 

We came back to Hotel Intra-Africa to take the postcourse test and to hand out certificates.  I was soooo proud. . . the pretest average for the test was 57% and the average on Friday was 84%!!!!  They had prayed on Monday for God to open their minds and fill them with knowledge and they were heard.

 After passing out certificates, the class gave Pamela and I gifts. . . a mat for Pamela to do her meditation and traditional Bari cups to hang milk and drink tea for me (I'm holding them in the picture). 

I'm so excited for them to go on and continue learning family planning and to start counseling patients.  One of our participants is a nurse midwife who speaks on Miraya Radio in Juba several times a week.  She beautifully placed one of the IUDs on Friday and was sooo happy, she can't wait to talk about the importance of family planning on the radio and how easy IUD insertions are!!

After a long week of training, Pamela and I celebrated last night by going to dinner at Lula, an Ethiopian restaurant.  We have enjoyed trying different places together and the conversation is always interesting with Pamela.  Whether it is about her family in Kenya, being a midwife in Nairobi at Kenyatta Teaching Hospital (120 deliveries a day!!!!) or just talking about life.  Last night we enjoyed a glass of wine and relaxed while another thunderstorm hit Juba.  Lula is a large hut with pretty wooden tables and open sides so we experienced some gentle spray from the storm while we had dinner.  Lula has nice music playing and also has two flat screens to watch football or rugby.  Last night they showed some of the swimming championships in Shanghai so I asked Pamela if she swam.  She said, "Well I learned to swim with hippos so I don't think I can swim in a pool."  What??  In Kenya her father would place her on a hippo and when the water got deep she would slide off and would learn to swim.  Incredible. . . I also learned at dinner last night that one of our participants comes from Abeyi royalty (one of the Sudanese regions you may have read about--where all the oil is).  Her father is a King there and he has 40 wives!!!!  She is one of around 200 children!!!  Pamela thinks he had some help from friends creating that many children--I think so too.

I hear interesting things here all the time--stories, but also just phrases.  Even though everyone speaks English here, its amazing how different communication can be from the same language.  Today, Pamela and I had lunch at a Sudanese place eating kisra (a type of Sudanese flatbread), ungali (Kenyan cooked dough), vegetables and soup.  It was all delicious and Pamela wanted me to try some more of her vegetable dish.  I told her I was getting full and she told me, "my dear, today is not the day you will grow fat."  I stopped at the Somali market across the street this afternoon to get a soda and saw my new Somali friends there.  I'm wearing a long black cotton dress and the father who works the register told me, "You look very nice today with that dress.  You are white and the dress is black so it makes you look very shiny."  I find my heart smiling today.