Calapan

Birth Clinic here in Calapan

Me and Jen, one of the Filipino midwives. She's also due in Sept.

My kitchen, except the cupboards are chocolate brown now thanks to Jen's husband!

Wow my place is a mess!

My house is the one with the red roof.

Wow its been a long time since I've updated this blog! So...... where to start...... I'm living in a new place now, Calapan, it's still on the island of Oriental Mindoro. It's about 2 hours from Puerto Galera, where I was before. Mercy In Action has started a new birth clinic here in partnership with an organization called Ruel Foundation. Ruel Foundation rescues abandoned children and malnourished children. There are currently 10 children living at the Ruel House. These kids need love so bad so whenever I have time I go and hold them. Ruel also coordinates operations for children with deformities. Baby Louie, with the bilateral cleft lip, is waiting for surgery when the next team of people come here, hopefully this October. If you wanna know more about Ruel, check out there site at:

www.ruelfoundation.com

So the clinic here is Calapan just officially opened a few weeks ago and we are starting to get really busy. In this area, 70% of the women deliver their babies at home because they cannot afford medical care. The doctors we've met here have all been very supportive of our clinic. One even said he would send us any poor women that he knows of! The Philippines has one of the worst maternal death rates and the government is getting flack for not doing more about it. One woman dies here every 2 hours!!!! It is so important to have good relationships with the other government health workers. One of the doctors stopped by Theresa's house last week and we had such a good chat with him. We were even able to talk to him about some of the new evidence based practices that we do and he was very amazed!

Theresa and Jason are running the clinic here in Calapan. They are an amazing Canadian family. Theresa is in the same program as I am for midwifery. We're trying to help each other study, but so far we've been so busy with the clinic that we haven't had much time! We have a birth on average, about every other day now. But I did hand in my first official assignment last night!! Most of my time has been spent training the Filipino midwives here and the 2 new students. When you teach, you just learn so much more! So its been good, I'm learning lots! Its just not the same as where I'm at in my studies!

I have my own little apartment here in Calapan. I got my friend's husband to paint it for me. It was kinda ugly and stinky when I first moved in, but its getting better now. I have 2 bedrooms, so if anyone wants to come here for a visit!!! Hint hint hint!! LOL

But actually, I might be back for a bit soon. My grandpa has been diagnosed with cancer and I really want to see him before he dies! There's a few things that I am trying to work around. Jen, one of the midwives here is having a baby the beginning of September. Also Jason and Theresa will be going back to Canada for a few months at the end of September and it would be helpful if I was here to help with the clinic while they are gone. Its hard to be so far away from family and those you love, especially when you don't know how much time you might have left with them!

So, hopefully that gives you a bit of an idea of where I'm at right now. Thanks for the continued support and encouragements! Lots of Love!! <3>