Hello Folks! It's Friday evening and class is dismissed!! This week was a a pendulum of extremely long days of non-stop scanning and then a day of constant rain with no patients and no power for the machines. We all rolled with it, as you must do here, and today was the final evaluation for the class. Everyone was given a 30 nminute time slot to scan, given the opportunity to talk about what they were seeing, and answered some questions. After their 30n minutes was up, I gave them some suggestions for improvement, made a distinct point to tell them about the progress they made, and especially how much I enjoyed having them in class. Hugs and kind words were abundant and then they took off, in an effort to travel home before nightfall and more rain. Last night I prepared bags of supplies to send with them; towels, ultrasound guide posters, probe cleaner, etc... I was up early to clean up the classroom and break down all but one of the scanning stations. Evaluations started at 9:15am and finished at 2:30pm. Yesterday, I handed out their certificates of course completion and a group photo, and you can see for yourselves how proud they all were!

I've spent almost every day with these wonderful young women, for the past four weeks, and I will miss them so much! This has been a very successful training session for many reasons. Max has been a perfect addition to the program, the curriculum has been fine tuned, and the training is well aligned with the needs of the midwives. Rachel and I are so pleased and looking forward to eventually expanding the training into Kenya, as an addition to her program for Midwife model of care. I will spend the weekend packing up belongings, separating what will stay behind and which few items I will take back home with me, and cleaning up the hut. The blue towels and yarn, along with other supplies, were packed in duffle bags and one large suitcase. I brought a carryon roller bag and a smaller bag to fit under my seat on the place and now verything will fit inside my large suitcase, so I will only have a small bag, much easier to navigate with multiple plane changes. Regarding my new position, Mariella and I attempted an introduction phonecall, but the storm and lack of network intervened. Over the next few weeks, we will have multiple phone interviews with the various health facilities that are part of the Maternal Health cohort and I will start to get some clarification on my responsibilities. I promise to keep you posted! I'm going to wrap it up for the night and hope for a small window of network so I can publish and send. :) Thanks for listening! Much love, Jo/MB