Story by Jenny Balnaves (Visiting midwife from the Highland’s Foundation)

We arrived here, four midwives from Australia.

One, Nicole returning for the second time and the other three Deb, Mary and Jenny who were here for their 1st experience in PNG.  Our expectations were all different.  Nicole wanted to focus on neonatal nursing as her recent background is working in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Melbourne.  Deb and Jenny have been midwives for some years and Mary is a student midwife that has almost completed her training.  Mary’s focus was to complete her clinical experience in order to attain her qualification on return to Australia.

One major plan was to ensure the safe delivery of a container full of health equipment, mother / baby packs and other health necessities but unfortunately this did not arrive due to unforeseen problems.  what is in the container is meant for many of the outreach health clinics as well as Goroka Hospital and we hope that when it finally does arrive the staff here will work out Nicole’s plans and ensure all those goods meet their appropriate destinations.

We have encountered many different people and fortunately our contacts with PNG people have been without incident.  The people here are a gentle race and are beautiful in the way they respond to our greetings.  The labour ward is a constant hive of activity with women arriving in labour at any time of the day or night.  The full time team who work within the ward must feel great satisfaction in knowing their job is to ensure safe birthing for both mothers and babies.  The many “pikaninis” whose births we have witnessed will at some stage be reminded by their mothers that they were touched by white “meri’s” who came to work with the local staff.  Having come here has given us strong objectives for our next trip through the Highlands Foundation and we are immensely grateful for having had this experience.

We would very much like to thank Sonia, and Lucy for showing us their PNG way of life.  Sonia took us to her village one weekend and this gave us much insight into her “wantoks” world away from the hospital.   Through the Clinical outreach Group we visited Nupuru and Kainantu.  We saw conditions that are very basic, and the main impact for us was how the hard workers cope so well with so little.

There are still great inroads to be made in this environment as equipment is minimal, but through it all people work with a hope for the future.  With confirmed support from such groups as the Highlands Foundation there will be a future for all.

So many stories and so little time to say what we feel.

Tenkyu tru Goroka.

Lookim yu bihain.