On a moonlit evening in March 2013, Laura Stachel met with a midwife in Malawi named Fanny Chathyoka. An obstetrician specializing in public health, Stachel had traveled from her home in Berkeley, California, to the southeast African country with the goal of helping improve rural maternal health clinics—including the one that Chathyoka ran. It was nearing 8 p.m. and the first thing Stachel noticed was that Chathyoka’s clinic had no electricity. When Stachel asked Chathyoka how she planned to attend to expectant mothers that night, the midwife pulled out her cell phone, perched it on a counter across the room, and turned it on.



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