This is a beautiful story about midwife, Sudy Storm and her grand daughter Kassy. Sudy is a southern Oregon midwife who spends three to six months of the year working in Sierra Leone. She also attends Southern Oregon University where she is working on her BS in Anthropology. Along with her work as a midwife, Sudy, or Satta, as she is called in Sierra Leone, is helping women there form farming co-ops to feed their families and earn a living.

The Littlest Midwife

by Sudy Storm

© 2009 Midwifery Today, Inc. All rights reserved.

[Editor's note: This article first appeared in Midwifery Today Issue 90, Summer 2009.]

The day my 10-year-old granddaughter told me she was going on my next trip to Sierra Leone I looked into her eyes and knew it was time to take her. Kassy had already told me she wanted to be a midwife, and she knows more about female anatomy and reproduction than most girls her age. She is full of questions and I am bursting with answers......

...The Paramount Chief of the Jawei Chiefdom, Chief Kallon, gave Kassy her Mende tribal name, Kadiatu. She is called Kadi by our African family and friends. She didn't take long to settle into the routine of village life. We do prenatal appointments on Fridays; and of course she was by my side asking questions and at times even giving the answers. One day during our prenatal appointments she disappeared. I went looking and found her in the treatment room working with the Chief Dispenser, Mr. Sulaiman Koroma, her new African Papa (grandfather). They were standing side by side listening with a stethoscope to the labored breathing of a child. He was patient with Kadi and also seemed to recognize in her something beyond her 10 years.

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