Life in Kijabe

We are using a dial-up connection that is really slow (better than nothing!) so my posts are going to be hit or miss. We are really enjoying our time here and each day presents something very new. Here is some info about our life here and the lives of our new friends:





Weather: The best comparison for weather is Tahoe in July and August. It is hot during the day with a pretty intense sun...we are only about a 45 minute drive south of the equator and we are at a 7500 elevation. At night, it does cool down and it is very windy. Everything including Jas and I are covered in dust! Kenya is currently experiencing a drought but it did rain last night for about 5 minutes....I heard the Kenyans praise God today for the rain. It was muddy since all of the road are dirt, but by the time we went to work it was not too bad. I have gotten more sun than Jas and my schedule does not keep me inside all day.



Food: We were spoiled our first two nights here as we ate with the Newtons the first night and had lasagna, fruit salad, bread, etc. The second night we ate with the ICU doctor (trained to be med-peds but going with the flow here) and his wife who is a missionary and a Physical Therapist. She made a Moroccan chicken dish and the word on the street that I am a "selective eater" had reached her. She was so nice to have all of the parts of the meal separate for me without any spice. Last night was my first night to cook....argghhhh!!! I had walked to a section in the village where the women sell fruits and vegetables on the side of the road. I made a new friend, Edita, a nurse from Canada who has lived here for five years and she was kind enough to show me the ropes. We bought a little bit from each vendor so we could spread our money around....the women are so poor. So Jas and I had boiled potatoes and carrots with pasta and marinara sauce for dinner that we had bought in Nairobi. I know you are thinking, hmmm - not so bad and really it wasn't but where the food products have been is a little iffy. We both stood in the kitchen peeling the potatoes with the knife I brought to protect my mom and I at the orphanage:) and there was just this odd smell of poop coming from everything I had purchased. Jas was not too excited about boiled potatoes & carrots, but hey, we are going to boil anything that we eat!!! There is a cholera outbreak about 40 kilometers away from our village and Edita told me oh sure, you will probably get a little giardia while you are here. We are trying to take as many precautions as possible but it is still difficult. I have been boiling drinking water every night as our supplies now that we are in a remote area are limited. Hopefully, I will say my praises everytime I cook at home for having clean water to wash my food with!



The people: The people working at the hospital are very friendly and appreciative of the medical staff that come here to volunteer. The men especially seem to be more talkative than the women. The patients and families at the hospital to me seem very quiet and somber. You would not believe how much I stand out as I walk through the courtyards. There are families lying everywhere in the grass waiting to be seen or for the family members to be discharged. I have seen a lot of HIV, polio, and TB. The hospital is filled with local Kenyans as well as Somalians as there are I think only two anesthesiologists in that country. There are no anesthesiologists in Sudan. Several groups of people from these countries have traveled here for health care and there is a very large group of Muslims here as well. I was told that about 90% of the Somalian men are addicted to a drug that is very potent, comes in the form of a leaf, and the chew on it all day. It is some sort of amphetamine and causes them to be very aggressive...they were easy to spot as they were hovering at the reception desk and wanting to be seen asap.



The peds ward: Oh, the peds ward! It is overflowing with patients. They have about 65 patients and only 4-5 nurses at a time....the director did not believe that the nurse to patient ratio where I work is 1:4. They rely so much on the mothers to care for the children. Edita (nurse from Canada) does infection control, quality control, and performs chart audits twice a year. Tomorrow morning I am giving an inservice on history & assessment to the staff at the request of the peds director, but Edita really wants me to talk about just the importance of orienting the patient to the ward and documenting 2-3 sentences on the status of the patient which needs to be done on the day of admission. We reviewed some charts and she showed me that the minimum standards are not being performed. The nurses are in such a tough spot as they have too many patients, they are stretched so thin, and do not feel the need to chart according to Edita. It will be interesting to see their reaction to me tomorrow as I cannot relate very well to the environment that they are called to work in. One can see that the patient advocacy has been lost and I was told that 6am is when most of the deaths occur among the children as they have not been monitored through the night. The physicians seem to be the only ones that assess the patients and I it takes them awhile to even get to each patient. They need more funding for staff!



There are moments that I have to stop and think "wow, we are in Africa right now. " I had one of these moments on Tuesday as I walked by myself down the dirt road to the market in the village. It is so quiet here and to just look at the Kenyan people pass me by on the road, thinking how different I look from them but how cool it is to be a part of this culture for only a short time. It is truly a blessing to be here and I hope that it is only the beginning of many trips to Africa.