News Archive

When David Stanley's close friend died a week before he left for Africa, the trip become much more than a volunteering experience.

Associate Professor Stanley , who teaches nursing in the School of Population Health, set off to teach midwifery in Zimbabwe for Australian Volunteers Abroad.

"But it became an opportunity to find myself, to confront grief and loneliness," he said. "It was a great opportunity for introspection without the distractions of television and other aspect of modern life that we tend to hide behind."

Professor Stanley stayed two-and-a-half years, ending up working as an anaesthetic nurse at Murambinda Mission Hospital. "Their nurse died of AIDS, so I stayed on to help out," he said. "AIDS was ripping their community apart."

Taking nursing students from UWA and other nursing schools which are members of the Global Health Alliance WA to Tanzania for the past two years has brought back his African experiences in the 1990s.

So he's written them down, in The Pangolin Diary , a memoir named after an African anteater which is traditionally presented to the chief of a tribe as a symbol of respect.

The book offers reflections and insights by an Australian male midwife working in remote rural Zimbabwe in the early 1990s, as AIDS and TB spread their shadows across the continent.

There are funny stories and sad ones, offering a range of perspectives on midwifery, health care and life in the African nation.

Professor Stanley has written academic books and children's books. The Pangolin Diary is available online through his website, by emailing him and also through Amazon.com .