Mangyan Village

Today was our last day of classes. It was a busy one. In the morning we practiced managed delivery of a placenta then in the afternoon we had a short class on suturing. After that Pastor Todo and his wife drove us to a visit a village of mountain peoples known as the Mangyan, I'm not sure that I spelled that right but it is pronounce like onion but with an M in front. While we were there we did a survey for Vicki. She wanted to know how many of the women had delivered with a skilled birth attendant and/or received any postpartum care. We split into groups of 3 with an interpreter and walked around the village asking our questions. Of the 5 women that my group interviewed with total of 17 children only two of those children had been delivered with a midwife. All of the others were delivered with grandmothers, mothers, husbands or even some alone.
Thankfully most of the children in the village were receiving an education since there was a elementary school that had been built there. We even talked to one young girl who told us that she had been able to go to high school and is studying to be a nurses aid.
I was surprised at how young the women appeared. I talked to one who I would have guessed to be somewhere around 13. She was already a mother of 3. Ir is normal in an area where malnutrition is common for individuals to be very small for their age.
At the end of our trek we went to meet a 99 year old grandmother who was a traditional birth attendant. She was very beautiful and gracious to us.
For dinner we will be heading to the Italian place again to eat homemade ravioli. Yum!! This has been a beautiful end to my first week in the Philippines.