You are Welcome

After one week at the hospital, I think it is safe to say my life is no longer in immediate danger. There are no elephants around to trample me or Masaai children running around with machetes while our car is stuck in a river. My average day looks something like this:

   5:45- the church bells ring so loud it sometimes rattles the house, but I often sleep through them somehow

   7:13- my alarm goes off, so I hastily make my bed and put my stuffed animal parrot, Rafiki, on my pillow before tucking in my mosquito net

   7:30- eat some toast with honey on it for breakfast, sometimes with a little Kenyan tea

   8:00- morning meeting with the doctors at the hospital beginning with a prayer; oftentimes we say the Our Father but I seriously struggle to say it as fast as they do

   8:15- morning rounds in the Maternity, Pediatric, Surgical, or Medical ward

   11:30- home for lunch, which usually consists of potatoes and some sort of mystery meat that my stomach is    not very fond of

   I am then free to do whatever I want all afternoon, so my Canadian pals and I would usually watch Grey's Anatomy and head to the market to get kit kats, Obama lollipops, and huge jugs of water. Each night, I put my ear plugs in and tuck my mosquito net around me around 10 pm.

I cannot believe I have only spent one week at the hospital because I have already learned so much! The head doctor, Dr. Agullo, along with the other doctors are so eager to teach us everything about each patient we visit during rounds. I quickly learned that most children in the hospital have malaria, as apparent by their pale eyelids and high fever. One child, Brian, had his hand mangled in a sugar processor, but surprisingly broke no bones in the hand. He now attends physical therapy with Gabe, one of the coolest men I have ever met. Yesterday, Gabe had no patients all morning so we talked for over an hour about his family, my family, and the concerns that the Kenyan people face. Gabe informed me that the hospital is filled to about 1/4 of capacity now because people do not have the money to afford treatment until the harvest season arrives in June. He also spoke about the great number of children in the rural areas with polio, whose parents cannot afford treatment so they lock the children in a room--this is one of Gabe's greatest concerns. He treats many fractures, as well, from motorcycle accidents because, as I said before, the driving around here is beyond dangerous and the roads are not paved.

One day, I was able to observe two surgeries for which we dressed in over-sized "sterile" scrubs and huge rain boots. In the first surgery Dr. Agullo removed the placenta from a woman who had a miscarriage but the placenta remained inside her causing aches and fever. In the other surgery, Dr. Agullo removed a golfball-sized growth from the intestine of a woman and sent it to labs to be tested for cancer. The surgical techniques are very different here because they do not have the necessary tools and patients often wake up during surgery.

During rounds in the surgical ward the following day, I visited a patient named Monica whose toes were amputated but she still walks around on her foot slowing the healing process. She is such a nice, chatty woman but speaks only Swahili, so we struggled to communicate a bit. Another younger girl named Veronica with epilepsy suffered serious burns after falling into the fire while cooking. We also visited a man who may need an appendectomy and an older man who had a hernia. Dr. Mobunga lead these rounds and was so informative about the logistics of each injury and the treatment plans. Rounds in the maternity ward included visiting patients who had recently given birth by C-section and those who had gynecological problems. Medical ward rounds were the most frightening to me because most patients had tuberculosis (which is spread through the air) and meningitis. 

Our adventures to the market are quite possibly the most adventurous things I have done in my life. It begins with walking all the way down the hill to town while avoiding motorcycles, donkeys, and puddles/streams. As we pass the primary and secondary schools, children start following us and yelling "How are you!!" and "Mzungu!!" which means white person. They then start playing this game where they try to see how close they can get to us without us noticing which leads to excessive laughter from the peanut gallery. As we approach the market, we have to walk by the smelliest chicken coup to ever exist and I usually gag. After retrieving 5 to 10 liters of water each, we must make the trek back up the hill to our residence. This is when the "carrying things on my head" talent that many Kenyan women have could seriously come in handy. One day, a boy noticed how much I was struggling and offered to carry my 10 Liters of water to the residence, but I was far too determined to do it myself, which lead to much laughter from the girls following behind him.

Each day as I meet another doctor or nurse and introduce myself (they do not really know how to pronounce Blaire over here), the Kenyan responds with the phrase "you are welcome" or in Kenyan "karibu." While it may seem that the people are simply welcoming me to their country, they actually mean something very different. Kenyans truly value each visitor they encounter and make an effort to accept them into the culture here. Karibu is used to express how happy they are to have me here, and I have been accepted into the Kenyan family. With a simple handshake (which Kenyans LOVE), I am no longer a stranger to the community, but a valued member. This is just one example of how genuinely friendly and happy the Kenyan people are each and every day--they have huge hearts and love to share compassion with everyone they meet. I am very excited to learn more about the culture and develop relationships with the children in Pediatrics next week!