Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, so I was pretty bummed about missing out on everything at home. Thursday I actually felt the most homesick I have since my first week in Kenya. Luckily, I have some wonderful friends here in the MSID program, and we decided to get together over the weekend for an American- style Thanksgiving feast right here in Kenya.
My friend Amanda, who stays in Kisumu, has a fabulous host family that graciously offered to let us take over their house all day on Saturday for cooking and catching up with everybody. I was especially excited to get to see everybody since I stay so far away from the rest of the group. I love my internship and my family and couldn’t possibly be happier anywhere else, but it sure was nice to see some familiar faces and be able to talk about the challenges of working for a Kenyan organization.
A few people had arrived on Friday to get some initial prep work done. For example, the turkey we bough was alive when we received it, so there was that to take care of. By the time I got to Amanda’s house early Saturday afternoon, about ten people were already busy cooking, chopping, or running back and forth from the market for more food. Everybody had an assignment: mine was apple pie. At home it’s not too tough to throw together an apple pie, but it’s a completely different undertaking here in Kenya. There’s no real temperature control on the ovens, so I had to keep a very close eye on the pies as they were baking. Also, there was no pie pan, so I had to rig one up out of about a million layers of aluminum foil shaped roughly like a shallow bowl. Everybody else was also forced to improvise traditional recipes. There was no cream of mushroom soup, so for green been casserole we had to cook some mushrooms with milk. No canned pumpkin so we bought a fresh pumpkin at a market for pie- making.
At the end of a long day cooking, we had prepared a feast that we could really be proud of. We had all the requisite Thanksgiving foods: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, rolls, fruit salad, vegetable salad, pasta salad, green been casserole, apple pie and pumpkin pie. Everything had been made completely from scratch. Oh, and since a few of us brought Kenyan friends or coworkers to dinner, and we wanted to provide dinner for Amanda’s family in exchange for letting us use their house, we had a total of 30 people to feed. All afternoon we were worried about not having enough food, but in true Turkey Day spirit, we instead had a refrigerator full of leftovers. The Kenyans present admitted they loved the food, though they did wish we could have thrown some ugali in there. After dinner was over, we had several heaping towers of dishes to wash and only a few liters of water to do the job, since there was no running water at the time. Finally, everything was cleaned up and we were able to just hang out and catch up with each other.
Sunday morning before I had to catch a matatu back to Ugunja, we went to a market in Kisumu (the largest open air market in East Africa, in fact) for a little bit of shopping and just to take in the sights. You could buy just about anything there: second hand clothing from the US, khangas (lengths of African printed cloth), spices, smoked fish fresh from Lake Victoria, cooking utensils, bootlegged DVD’s, weird things I couldn’t even guess the purpose of. We walked around for a while but it was very hot and very crowded so we didn’t last too long. On the way out, I got stuck in a jam between a few Kenyans, separated form the rest of my group. Luckily for me, Lucy had warned me that this particular market was “swarming with crooks” so I checked my pockets right away after I detached myself from the crowd. Yep, cell phone gone. I yelled to my friend Emily to stop the men before the got too far away. We listed to the advise of our program advisors: if you catch a pickpocket, make a big scene. So we yelled, loudly, for him to return the phone. There was no way the guy would have listened to a group of mzungu girls, but we attracted the attention of a few Kenyans who eventually convinced the guy to give it up. He looked spiteful and threw my phone down to the ground. I was just relieved that everything worked out fine.
I headed to the matatu stage a few blocks for the market and found one heading for Ugunja. I don’t think I’ve done justice to matatus yet, so here’s a quick overview. A matatu is a popular form of public transit in Kenya. In Nairobi people use them mostly to get around the city, but in the rural areas you can use them to travel long distances between cities. They’re roughly similar to utility vans and are meant to seat 14 people, but there’s not enough profit with 14 passengers, so it’s usually closer to 20. The matatu I took from Kisumu to Ugunja had 24 passengers, two of which were adorable African children that sat on my lap, one on each leg, the entire ride and chatted away in Swahili while I nodded and threw in a “Sawa Sawa” once in a while. Every matatu has both a driver and a conductor. The drivers job is to drive, the conductors job is to collect fare and, whenever the matatu slows down to below 30 mph, throw open the sliding door and hang out the side of the matatu to try to convince more passengers to get on. I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve been hassled to get on a matatu heading the opposite direction from where I’m walking. They try to convince you that you don’t actually want to go to your intended destination, you want to go somewhere along their route. The conductor is also responsible for stacking people to maximize the number of passengers they can fit in. They get cranky whenever heavy people get in line because it cuts down on their income. Anyway, I waited about an hour for my matatu to fill up, then we were finally on the road headed for Ugunja. I noticed a small hole in the roof of the vehicle, right above my head. It didn’t bother my much until it started raining. Heavily. On my head. The kids on my lap got a kick out of that.
I alighted at Ugunja (Kenyans use a lot of very British expressions. You don’t stop or get off a bus, you alight) and found a piki piki to take me the rest of the way to Ukwala. I say I found a guy, but that’s giving myself too much credit. Instead, two dozen drivers swarmed around me the second I got off the matatu. I pointed to the tallest one, since he was easy to pick out, and told him to take me away. Since it had been raining, the road to Ukwala was washed out and it was a scary and muddy ride, but I made it home safely and before dark, all for the equivalent of $3 from Kisumu to Ukwala. I told Lucy about the pick pocketing episode and she said I would have been “doomed” if she hadn’t warned me. She also told me that smart women keep their phones and money tucked in their shirts so people can’t get to them. For the first time, I left the house for an overnight trip and when I got back she didn’t think I looked too thin. “I like this Thanksgiving of yours. You eat a lot and get fat, so you can be strong Africans”.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Life Lately
My favorite days at Matibabu are Wednesdays. This is because every Wednesday I join one of the other nurses in going to Nzoia, the other Matibabu clinic about twenty minutes away from Ukwala. I think I’ve mentioned these trips in an earlier post, but I wanted to give some more details about what I do at Nzoia. Also, the example of the Nzoia clinic is a very useful one for me to illustrate the differences between what a student volunteer is able to do at a clinic in the US as compared to rural Kenya.
The Matibabu clinic at Nzoia is much smaller than the Ukwala clinic and seems to have two full- time staff members: a pharmacist and a clinical practitioner. Similarly, the town of Nzoia is very small and has no electric power whatsoever, which means no refrigeration. So, you can’t keep things like food or sodas, or vaccines for that matter. Thus, or objective every Wednesday is to provide early childhood vaccinations to the kids of the Nzoia area as well as doing antenatal checkups on pregnant women.
I’ve never tried, but I’m pretty sure in the US I couldn’t just walk up to a pharmacy with an empty cooler and say “Today, I think I’ll take eight doses of tetanus toxoid vaccines, a dozen measles, and hey, throw in twenty pentavalent while you’re at it”. As it turns out, that’s exactly what I do here in Kenya. It’s difficult to know how much of each vaccine we offer to take to Nzoia each week because the patient flow is unpredictable. My first week here, we saw two babies and one expectant mother. Today we had well over a dozen babies and several antenatal visits. One thing that struck me as really funny was that I (or anybody really) can walk right up to the refrigerator that’s shared between Matibabu and the government health center in Ukwala and grab whatever vaccines I need. On the other hand, we were about an hour late arriving to Nzoia last week because we needed to bring some extra child health cards, which were locked up in a cabinet that nobody could find a key to. The cards apparently required better security than the drugs.
At Nzoia, I do my best to make myself useful, but the language barrier issue comes into play once in a while. When I’m supposed to be weighing babies to make sure their growth is on track for their age and catch malnutrition early, I mostly have to point at the scale and say “hapa”, which means “here”. Not very eloquent. I was just starting to think all the Swahili I learned in Nairobi was useless in a practical setting. Most people don’t have daily conversations about things like “How old are you now? Where do you stay? What time would you like to go to the market? That price is far to high for those bananas.” However, this is exactly the vocabulary I need for the infant health visits- we need to record their age in months, their village or sub- district of residence, their birthday, all the sorts of things I am capable of asking. It’s almost insane how accomplished I feel having a successful conversation in Swahili!
I’ve found that I’m able to take on a number of clinical tasks that an undergraduate student probably wouldn’t be allowed to do back at home. I give injections, draw blood, help give stitches, just to name a few. At first this was really overwhelming and I was terrified of making a mistake, but I’ve become surprisingly confident in myself.
Other updates on life:
Lucy was near tears the other night. She thinks I have hookworm because “your appetite seems fine but you just aren’t adding enough weight”. I think that when I’m not around she secretly schemes to sneak extra calories in anywhere she can.
One of the lab technicians, Albert, is very good at his job. He can “find a vein” better than any phlebotomist I’ve ever seen, even on babies and elderly people. He’s extremely kind and compassionate with his patients. One elderly lady that’s a regular patient wanted to give Albert a token of gratitude for his contributions to her health. In the US this might be a short thank you note or a small donation to the healthcare center. In Kenya, you give a chicken. I was minding my own business taking midmorning tea in the “break room” of the lab when I heard a strangely familiar soft clucking coming from the corner. I pushed aside a box to see what the noise was, and a chicken flew out into my face. The best part of the story is that at the end of the day, Albert needed to find a way to get his new pet home. He decided the best course of action would be to transport her in a box. Unfortunately, there were no spare chicken- sized boxes at the clinic, so Albert had to cram her into one that was a bit too small. He then walked down the driveway of the clinic and toward his house, the box tucked under his arm shaking and squawking all the way.
The other day I proudly took the DVD of my rafting trip into the lab so all my colleagues could see just how brave and adventurous I am. It seems I got a DVD that didn’t copy right or something, because all of the narration sounds like it was done by the munchkins and it looks like we’re all wearing lime green and turquoise clothing and floating along in fuchsia rafts. Somehow, that really doesn’t detract from the main point of the video though.
There are no cockroaches at my house in Ukwala because our cat eats all of them. The cat is called Paka the Cat, Paka being the Swahili word for cat. There are these yellowish geckos that crawl all over the walls, which the cat also likes to chase. Recently, Lucy informed me that the cat is pregnant, and if I’m really, really lucky, she’ll come give birth in my room. She also told me that as soon as the cat realizes that I’m her friend, she’ll invite herself into my room all the time. I wasn’t too worried about ever seeing the cat in my room, as I am not exactly a cat person (anybody who knows me can verify this) so I didn’t think Paka would pick up too many friendship signals from me. Then the other night, I awoke to a scratching sound at my window. I was terrified since Lucy and I were talking about all the cattle- stealing bandits that have been on the loose around Ukwala lately. I quietly slunk out of bed, tip toed to the window, pulled back the curtain to find… Paka the Cat stuck in the window, half in my room and half out. I preferred the out option, so I did my best to gently guide her back outside. Paka was having none of that, and latched onto my skin with her claws. Every night since then I have had a loud, meowing roommate.
The Matibabu clinic at Nzoia is much smaller than the Ukwala clinic and seems to have two full- time staff members: a pharmacist and a clinical practitioner. Similarly, the town of Nzoia is very small and has no electric power whatsoever, which means no refrigeration. So, you can’t keep things like food or sodas, or vaccines for that matter. Thus, or objective every Wednesday is to provide early childhood vaccinations to the kids of the Nzoia area as well as doing antenatal checkups on pregnant women.
I’ve never tried, but I’m pretty sure in the US I couldn’t just walk up to a pharmacy with an empty cooler and say “Today, I think I’ll take eight doses of tetanus toxoid vaccines, a dozen measles, and hey, throw in twenty pentavalent while you’re at it”. As it turns out, that’s exactly what I do here in Kenya. It’s difficult to know how much of each vaccine we offer to take to Nzoia each week because the patient flow is unpredictable. My first week here, we saw two babies and one expectant mother. Today we had well over a dozen babies and several antenatal visits. One thing that struck me as really funny was that I (or anybody really) can walk right up to the refrigerator that’s shared between Matibabu and the government health center in Ukwala and grab whatever vaccines I need. On the other hand, we were about an hour late arriving to Nzoia last week because we needed to bring some extra child health cards, which were locked up in a cabinet that nobody could find a key to. The cards apparently required better security than the drugs.
At Nzoia, I do my best to make myself useful, but the language barrier issue comes into play once in a while. When I’m supposed to be weighing babies to make sure their growth is on track for their age and catch malnutrition early, I mostly have to point at the scale and say “hapa”, which means “here”. Not very eloquent. I was just starting to think all the Swahili I learned in Nairobi was useless in a practical setting. Most people don’t have daily conversations about things like “How old are you now? Where do you stay? What time would you like to go to the market? That price is far to high for those bananas.” However, this is exactly the vocabulary I need for the infant health visits- we need to record their age in months, their village or sub- district of residence, their birthday, all the sorts of things I am capable of asking. It’s almost insane how accomplished I feel having a successful conversation in Swahili!
I’ve found that I’m able to take on a number of clinical tasks that an undergraduate student probably wouldn’t be allowed to do back at home. I give injections, draw blood, help give stitches, just to name a few. At first this was really overwhelming and I was terrified of making a mistake, but I’ve become surprisingly confident in myself.
Other updates on life:
Lucy was near tears the other night. She thinks I have hookworm because “your appetite seems fine but you just aren’t adding enough weight”. I think that when I’m not around she secretly schemes to sneak extra calories in anywhere she can.
One of the lab technicians, Albert, is very good at his job. He can “find a vein” better than any phlebotomist I’ve ever seen, even on babies and elderly people. He’s extremely kind and compassionate with his patients. One elderly lady that’s a regular patient wanted to give Albert a token of gratitude for his contributions to her health. In the US this might be a short thank you note or a small donation to the healthcare center. In Kenya, you give a chicken. I was minding my own business taking midmorning tea in the “break room” of the lab when I heard a strangely familiar soft clucking coming from the corner. I pushed aside a box to see what the noise was, and a chicken flew out into my face. The best part of the story is that at the end of the day, Albert needed to find a way to get his new pet home. He decided the best course of action would be to transport her in a box. Unfortunately, there were no spare chicken- sized boxes at the clinic, so Albert had to cram her into one that was a bit too small. He then walked down the driveway of the clinic and toward his house, the box tucked under his arm shaking and squawking all the way.
The other day I proudly took the DVD of my rafting trip into the lab so all my colleagues could see just how brave and adventurous I am. It seems I got a DVD that didn’t copy right or something, because all of the narration sounds like it was done by the munchkins and it looks like we’re all wearing lime green and turquoise clothing and floating along in fuchsia rafts. Somehow, that really doesn’t detract from the main point of the video though.
There are no cockroaches at my house in Ukwala because our cat eats all of them. The cat is called Paka the Cat, Paka being the Swahili word for cat. There are these yellowish geckos that crawl all over the walls, which the cat also likes to chase. Recently, Lucy informed me that the cat is pregnant, and if I’m really, really lucky, she’ll come give birth in my room. She also told me that as soon as the cat realizes that I’m her friend, she’ll invite herself into my room all the time. I wasn’t too worried about ever seeing the cat in my room, as I am not exactly a cat person (anybody who knows me can verify this) so I didn’t think Paka would pick up too many friendship signals from me. Then the other night, I awoke to a scratching sound at my window. I was terrified since Lucy and I were talking about all the cattle- stealing bandits that have been on the loose around Ukwala lately. I quietly slunk out of bed, tip toed to the window, pulled back the curtain to find… Paka the Cat stuck in the window, half in my room and half out. I preferred the out option, so I did my best to gently guide her back outside. Paka was having none of that, and latched onto my skin with her claws. Every night since then I have had a loud, meowing roommate.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Nile Crocodile
This weekend 12 of us from the MSID program went to Jinja, Uganda to do some Grade 5 whitewater rafting on the Nile. It was quite a weekend to say the very least.
We were to cross the Kenya- Uganda border at a town called Busia. My little village of Ukwala is actually far closer to Busia than Kisumu is, so we agreed that I would just meet everybody else in Busia and we would cross the border and continue on to Jinja together from there. A few people even came from Nairobi and the Mt Kenya area; they had to take an overnight bus from Nairobi to Kisumu on Thursday night. For once I actually had the shortest journey of the group: it’s only an hour from Ukwala to Busia.
Thursday night Lucy shared with me the anxiety she was feeling because they might not feed me in Uganda, or worse, they might not serve tea. I told her I was pretty sure that Ugandans do eat, and if it happened that they don’t, I am a very proficient scavenger. Not completely convinced, Lucy had me eat extra dinner and take extra tea so I could survive the weekend.
On Friday, I was pleased to discover that my friend Albert, a lab technician at Matibabu, happened to have business in Busia that afternoon anyway, so he said he’d escort me into town and make sure I met up with my friends. Albert and I left the clinic around noon, took motorbikes to the town of Sega, about a fifteen minute ride. We could have gone through Ugunja, the other city not too far from Ukwala that I mentioned in my last post, but Albert wanted me to see another bit of the area surrounding Ukwala.
I should mention that I’ve learned a lot about hiring motorbikes since my trip to Kakamega last weekend. For instance, Lucy told me that you have to negotiate both the price and speed of the ride before you hop on. She said most drivers like to speed so they can complete more trips in a given day, and they assume young people like to drive fast anyway. I do not like to drive fast because I enjoy my health and safety more than the two minutes saved by speeding. Oh, and this week at the clinic we had a patient come in from a head- on motorbike collision. I helped dress the wounds and give stitches on the guys’ face and the experience was gruesome enough to make me take extra caution around the motorbikes. Also, Albert told me how much he pays for a ride to a variety of common destinations, so now I can tell if I’m being overcharged.
So, after Sega, Albert and I got on a matatu for the remaining half hour journey to Busia. Busia is a busy town that is half on the Kenyan side of the border and half on the Ugandan. Since my friends weren’t going to arrive for a few hours, we got lunch and walked around town for a while. The University of Indiana doing some HIV research in that area and has a lab stationed in Busia. Albert wanted to take me for a tour of the lab, which he assured me was the fanciest and most technical I’d every see. Well, I’ll admit that I’ve had the privilege of working in nicer labs than the one in Busia, but it quite a bit better equipped than Matibabu’s lab. The lab director was very friendly and told me to come back anytime I wanted to visit. Albert was absolutely amazed with the lab’s use of computerized patient records and the concept of assigning a unique identifying number to each patient: Matibabu records all lab tests in a ruled notebook. After we finished touring the lab, it started to rain pretty heavily, so Albert and I took refuge in a cyber café until the storm passed. When the rain let up we were walking back to the main road and a matatu full of a dozen mzungus flew past us. My mzungus!! I walked down to where their matatu had dropped them off, we bought our visas and crossed the border without any remarkable difficulty; finally, we were in Uganda.
My first impression of Uganda was that it’s very pink. The major cellular provider there is called Zain, a company that selected shockingly bright fuchsia for it’s logo color. There were buildings painted bright pink lining the streets of the Uganda side of Busia. Also, almost all of the bicycle drivers were wearing short-sleeved button up pink shirts (in a lot of towns you can hire a bike to drive you around just as you can hire a motorbike, but the bikes are usually for trips within, not between, towns). We couldn’t really figure out why all the bicyclists would have decided to identify themselves with pink shirts. The leading hypothesis was that some nonprofit organization had lot of extra pink bowling shirts to get rid of, so they packed them up and shipped them to eastern Uganda.
We found a matatu to take all 12 of us to the campsite of the Nile River Explorers, the company we booked our rafting trip with. During the drive we got to see some of Uganda. Everything was very green and lush, and the roads were far better than the ones in Kenya. Also, we noticed that a lot fewer people have gates and fences surrounding their homes. In Kenya, even in the rural areas, it’s common to see a metal or cement fence completely surrounding a property. There’s usually broken shards of glass embedded in the cement on the top surface of such a wall to prevent potential thieves from jumping over the wall. There were also a lot more of the quintessential mud huts with thatched grass roofs than in Kenya, at least in the parts of Kenya that are right along the major highway. These mud huts came complete with small naked children running around and screaming hello to the mzungus while women wrapped in lengths of cloth with traditional African prints cooked over fires in front of the homes. We could see gorgeous rolling hills and mountains during the whole trip.
It took longer than expected to get to the campsite because there was some confusion about its exact location. The guide that we’d booked the trip with called a few times to ask where we were, but that’s a really difficult question to answer when you’re in unfamiliar terrain in the dark. We finally arrived, starving and exhausted. We threw our bags into the dorm- style bunkhouses and headed over to the restaurant for a quick dinner and a look at the Nile before bed. We all agreed that this was one of the most “touristy” places we’d stayed at: almost all of the guests hanging around in the restaurant were American or European, and the restaurant served dishes sure to please a Western palate rather than traditional East African foods, but we couldn’t help but appreciate how awesome everything was. We were situated on an overlook just above the river, in the middle of the jungle. We all retired to bed pretty early since we had to get up early the next morning for an adventure- packed day.
In the morning, we were loaded onto a big open- sided truck to transport us to the source of the White Nile, where we would begin our day. As we waited for our driver to show up, we all signed away our lives on their accident waiver. “This is probably not covered by your travel insurance” one guide warned us. We met a few other Americans that were volunteering at a nearby clinic, so we chatted with them during the ride. We arrived at the Nile River Explorers home base, were served a nice breakfast of fruits, boiled eggs, and chapattis, and then were given some basic introductory and safety tips, then we suited up in lifejackets and helmets. We had to get back on the truck to drive a little farther to the start point, and finally, after two and a half months (or maybe 19 years) of waiting, I was ready to raft the Nile.
I was placed in a raft with a few other MSID kids and this nice Egyptian guy we met at camp that morning. Our guide, a South African named Kirk, got us in the water and told us a little bit about what to expect from our 30 km trip down the river. He said we’d go over four Grade 5 rapids and a lot of Grades 4 and 3 (the highest grade in whitewater rafting is 6, but most guides don’t even attempt those rapids) and we practiced flipping the raft and crawling back in so we’d be ready for when the currents flipped us. Then, we were off.
I have to say that this day probably ranks in the top five of my life. It’s difficult to explain how exciting rafting on the Nile is, but I’ll do my best. On the first big rapid, my group flipped. I was stuck under water for what felt like a really long time, but the company had about two safety kayakers per raft, so they spread out to pull the seven of us out of the water and get us back to our raft. There was one rapid, called Bujagali Falls, that Kirk warned us we were absolutely not supposed to flip over in. The area was shallow and rocky, and he assured us we wouldn’t like it if we had to swim it outside the boat. Luckily, he was a great guide, so we were able to paddle to steer ourselves clear of the danger zone and flop down the falls with successfully. During the stretches of calm water after a big rapid, we were able to jump out of the boats and swim around for a while. Oh, except in the areas where the big crocs hang out. In those places, they suggested that we stay close to the boat if we wanted to swim. We all decided to just stay put in the raft during those stretches. We didn’t’ see any hippos or crocodiles, the two most dangerous animals in the Nile, but we saw a lot of birds. We were served a lunch of fruit and biscuits from the lead safety boat while we floated down one of the calmer stretches.
The last rapid, the grand finale of the day, was called “The Bad Place”. By this point Kirk had ditched us to go work the video camera in one of the kayaks, so another kayaker named Bernard took over our raft. Bernard admitted that he hadn’t guided a raft since August and that he wasn’t sure our paddling was strong enough to avoid the Bad Place. This rapid was not too bad if you stay out of the surging wave in the middle, but doing so requires a pretty strong crew. Well, we approach the Bad Place hoping for the best, and in a way that’s what we got. Bernard was right, we were not strong enough to avoid the Bad Place. Instead, we got sucked right it. We were trapped in a strong wave for a LONG time- the boat didn’t flip but it was stuck, it couldn’t move forward or backward. Instead, it shook us all around, so bodies and parts of the raft were flying everywhere. At one point I looked up and saw some Ugandan kids on a cliff above the river pointing and laughing at us. Finally people started to fall off of the boat; Bernard pushed anybody that didn’t fall. We were sucked down very deep for a very long time, but the rescue kayakers collected us all when we finally surfaced. As we moved onto dry land, members of other rafts came up and told us they were “very scared” for us. Our other friends from MSID, who had been in a different raft, said they got really nervous when they tried to count to make sure we all came back up. The good news is, the video crew decided that was the best wipeout of the day and we made the highlights reel in the movie they produced and showed back at camp that night. I bought the DVD, so you can all see it when I get back.
After the rafting was over, we went back to camp for a barbeque and celebration. It had been a very good, but very exhausting day, so most of us were in bed reasonably early again. Today we just packed up and traveled back home. I’m tired but it was fantastic to see Lucy again. She missed me and has to fill me in on the Storm Over Paradise episode I missed on Friday night, so I better get going.
We were to cross the Kenya- Uganda border at a town called Busia. My little village of Ukwala is actually far closer to Busia than Kisumu is, so we agreed that I would just meet everybody else in Busia and we would cross the border and continue on to Jinja together from there. A few people even came from Nairobi and the Mt Kenya area; they had to take an overnight bus from Nairobi to Kisumu on Thursday night. For once I actually had the shortest journey of the group: it’s only an hour from Ukwala to Busia.
Thursday night Lucy shared with me the anxiety she was feeling because they might not feed me in Uganda, or worse, they might not serve tea. I told her I was pretty sure that Ugandans do eat, and if it happened that they don’t, I am a very proficient scavenger. Not completely convinced, Lucy had me eat extra dinner and take extra tea so I could survive the weekend.
On Friday, I was pleased to discover that my friend Albert, a lab technician at Matibabu, happened to have business in Busia that afternoon anyway, so he said he’d escort me into town and make sure I met up with my friends. Albert and I left the clinic around noon, took motorbikes to the town of Sega, about a fifteen minute ride. We could have gone through Ugunja, the other city not too far from Ukwala that I mentioned in my last post, but Albert wanted me to see another bit of the area surrounding Ukwala.
I should mention that I’ve learned a lot about hiring motorbikes since my trip to Kakamega last weekend. For instance, Lucy told me that you have to negotiate both the price and speed of the ride before you hop on. She said most drivers like to speed so they can complete more trips in a given day, and they assume young people like to drive fast anyway. I do not like to drive fast because I enjoy my health and safety more than the two minutes saved by speeding. Oh, and this week at the clinic we had a patient come in from a head- on motorbike collision. I helped dress the wounds and give stitches on the guys’ face and the experience was gruesome enough to make me take extra caution around the motorbikes. Also, Albert told me how much he pays for a ride to a variety of common destinations, so now I can tell if I’m being overcharged.
So, after Sega, Albert and I got on a matatu for the remaining half hour journey to Busia. Busia is a busy town that is half on the Kenyan side of the border and half on the Ugandan. Since my friends weren’t going to arrive for a few hours, we got lunch and walked around town for a while. The University of Indiana doing some HIV research in that area and has a lab stationed in Busia. Albert wanted to take me for a tour of the lab, which he assured me was the fanciest and most technical I’d every see. Well, I’ll admit that I’ve had the privilege of working in nicer labs than the one in Busia, but it quite a bit better equipped than Matibabu’s lab. The lab director was very friendly and told me to come back anytime I wanted to visit. Albert was absolutely amazed with the lab’s use of computerized patient records and the concept of assigning a unique identifying number to each patient: Matibabu records all lab tests in a ruled notebook. After we finished touring the lab, it started to rain pretty heavily, so Albert and I took refuge in a cyber café until the storm passed. When the rain let up we were walking back to the main road and a matatu full of a dozen mzungus flew past us. My mzungus!! I walked down to where their matatu had dropped them off, we bought our visas and crossed the border without any remarkable difficulty; finally, we were in Uganda.
My first impression of Uganda was that it’s very pink. The major cellular provider there is called Zain, a company that selected shockingly bright fuchsia for it’s logo color. There were buildings painted bright pink lining the streets of the Uganda side of Busia. Also, almost all of the bicycle drivers were wearing short-sleeved button up pink shirts (in a lot of towns you can hire a bike to drive you around just as you can hire a motorbike, but the bikes are usually for trips within, not between, towns). We couldn’t really figure out why all the bicyclists would have decided to identify themselves with pink shirts. The leading hypothesis was that some nonprofit organization had lot of extra pink bowling shirts to get rid of, so they packed them up and shipped them to eastern Uganda.
We found a matatu to take all 12 of us to the campsite of the Nile River Explorers, the company we booked our rafting trip with. During the drive we got to see some of Uganda. Everything was very green and lush, and the roads were far better than the ones in Kenya. Also, we noticed that a lot fewer people have gates and fences surrounding their homes. In Kenya, even in the rural areas, it’s common to see a metal or cement fence completely surrounding a property. There’s usually broken shards of glass embedded in the cement on the top surface of such a wall to prevent potential thieves from jumping over the wall. There were also a lot more of the quintessential mud huts with thatched grass roofs than in Kenya, at least in the parts of Kenya that are right along the major highway. These mud huts came complete with small naked children running around and screaming hello to the mzungus while women wrapped in lengths of cloth with traditional African prints cooked over fires in front of the homes. We could see gorgeous rolling hills and mountains during the whole trip.
It took longer than expected to get to the campsite because there was some confusion about its exact location. The guide that we’d booked the trip with called a few times to ask where we were, but that’s a really difficult question to answer when you’re in unfamiliar terrain in the dark. We finally arrived, starving and exhausted. We threw our bags into the dorm- style bunkhouses and headed over to the restaurant for a quick dinner and a look at the Nile before bed. We all agreed that this was one of the most “touristy” places we’d stayed at: almost all of the guests hanging around in the restaurant were American or European, and the restaurant served dishes sure to please a Western palate rather than traditional East African foods, but we couldn’t help but appreciate how awesome everything was. We were situated on an overlook just above the river, in the middle of the jungle. We all retired to bed pretty early since we had to get up early the next morning for an adventure- packed day.
In the morning, we were loaded onto a big open- sided truck to transport us to the source of the White Nile, where we would begin our day. As we waited for our driver to show up, we all signed away our lives on their accident waiver. “This is probably not covered by your travel insurance” one guide warned us. We met a few other Americans that were volunteering at a nearby clinic, so we chatted with them during the ride. We arrived at the Nile River Explorers home base, were served a nice breakfast of fruits, boiled eggs, and chapattis, and then were given some basic introductory and safety tips, then we suited up in lifejackets and helmets. We had to get back on the truck to drive a little farther to the start point, and finally, after two and a half months (or maybe 19 years) of waiting, I was ready to raft the Nile.
I was placed in a raft with a few other MSID kids and this nice Egyptian guy we met at camp that morning. Our guide, a South African named Kirk, got us in the water and told us a little bit about what to expect from our 30 km trip down the river. He said we’d go over four Grade 5 rapids and a lot of Grades 4 and 3 (the highest grade in whitewater rafting is 6, but most guides don’t even attempt those rapids) and we practiced flipping the raft and crawling back in so we’d be ready for when the currents flipped us. Then, we were off.
I have to say that this day probably ranks in the top five of my life. It’s difficult to explain how exciting rafting on the Nile is, but I’ll do my best. On the first big rapid, my group flipped. I was stuck under water for what felt like a really long time, but the company had about two safety kayakers per raft, so they spread out to pull the seven of us out of the water and get us back to our raft. There was one rapid, called Bujagali Falls, that Kirk warned us we were absolutely not supposed to flip over in. The area was shallow and rocky, and he assured us we wouldn’t like it if we had to swim it outside the boat. Luckily, he was a great guide, so we were able to paddle to steer ourselves clear of the danger zone and flop down the falls with successfully. During the stretches of calm water after a big rapid, we were able to jump out of the boats and swim around for a while. Oh, except in the areas where the big crocs hang out. In those places, they suggested that we stay close to the boat if we wanted to swim. We all decided to just stay put in the raft during those stretches. We didn’t’ see any hippos or crocodiles, the two most dangerous animals in the Nile, but we saw a lot of birds. We were served a lunch of fruit and biscuits from the lead safety boat while we floated down one of the calmer stretches.
The last rapid, the grand finale of the day, was called “The Bad Place”. By this point Kirk had ditched us to go work the video camera in one of the kayaks, so another kayaker named Bernard took over our raft. Bernard admitted that he hadn’t guided a raft since August and that he wasn’t sure our paddling was strong enough to avoid the Bad Place. This rapid was not too bad if you stay out of the surging wave in the middle, but doing so requires a pretty strong crew. Well, we approach the Bad Place hoping for the best, and in a way that’s what we got. Bernard was right, we were not strong enough to avoid the Bad Place. Instead, we got sucked right it. We were trapped in a strong wave for a LONG time- the boat didn’t flip but it was stuck, it couldn’t move forward or backward. Instead, it shook us all around, so bodies and parts of the raft were flying everywhere. At one point I looked up and saw some Ugandan kids on a cliff above the river pointing and laughing at us. Finally people started to fall off of the boat; Bernard pushed anybody that didn’t fall. We were sucked down very deep for a very long time, but the rescue kayakers collected us all when we finally surfaced. As we moved onto dry land, members of other rafts came up and told us they were “very scared” for us. Our other friends from MSID, who had been in a different raft, said they got really nervous when they tried to count to make sure we all came back up. The good news is, the video crew decided that was the best wipeout of the day and we made the highlights reel in the movie they produced and showed back at camp that night. I bought the DVD, so you can all see it when I get back.
After the rafting was over, we went back to camp for a barbeque and celebration. It had been a very good, but very exhausting day, so most of us were in bed reasonably early again. Today we just packed up and traveled back home. I’m tired but it was fantastic to see Lucy again. She missed me and has to fill me in on the Storm Over Paradise episode I missed on Friday night, so I better get going.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
It's a jungle out there
This weekend I decided to make the journey into the big city of Kisumu to visit a few of my friends that stay there. We had decided to do a day trip on Saturday to Kakamega Forest, a little sliver that remains from the rainforest that used to cover most of central and eastern Africa. We wanted to get an early start on Saturday so we decided it was best for me to go into town on Friday night. I was really concerned about getting to Kisumu, because everybody I asked was always very vague about the most efficient way to get to town. I did understand that I would have to take a motorbike from Ukwala to Ugunja, a town about 45 minutes from where I live, then from Ugunja I could get a matatu to Kisumu. Lucy warned me to excuse myself from the clinic early because she didn't want me traveling after dark, even though this part of Kenya is far safer than Nairobi. Luckily for me, a few guys from the clinic happened to be going into town anyway, so I got a free ride. They even dropped me off right at the supermarket where my friend was planning to meet me. I made a quick stop in the grocery store to stock up on supplies, since dietary staples like peanut butter and chocolate can't be bought in Ukwala, then met up with Marta, the lovely lady kind enough to share her home with me for the evening, as well as the "other Emily" on the trip and our friend Joe. The for of us squeezed into a tuktuk to get to the part of town where Marta and Joe live. For those of you not familiar with tuktuks, they are (supposed to be) three- passenger taxis that are sort of like enclosed motorized tricycles. Since that description probably wasn't satisfactory, I've included a picture.
This is a tuktuk. They're probably in my top three favorite forms of transportation these days, although if the roads are bumpy, which they all are, it can be a pretty unsettling ride.
We went to a swanky restaurant called Kiboko Bay, which was a definite mzungu hotspot, to watch the sun set over Lake Victoria. Oh, and we also got to watch a few locals bathing in the lake, which is a very common occurrence. As soon as it started getting dark, Marta and I went to her house to drop my stuff off and have dinner and watch Tormenta en el Paraiso with her family. As it turns out, all Kenyans outside of Nairobi are wild about that show. Marta joked that the best way to end the ethnic tensions and bring Kenya together would be to elect a Mexican president in 2o12. But I'm coming to realize that as much as everybody watches that show, very few people recognize that it's originally a Spanish-language soap opera. My mom, for example, firmly believes that it is set in Norway. You know, because there are so many tropical beaches in Norway. As a side note, most people here think I'm from either Germany or Swaziland. Anyway, after Storm Over Paradise, we went back to Joe's house to have tea because his mom got really offended that we only stopped by to say hello before, so we felt we owed her a nice long visit. Then we went back to Kiboko Bay to hang out in a group for a while. From this point on, my weekend got too wild to simply describe the succession of events that transpired, and I've always felt like I might have a hidden knack for creative writing, so I'm going to relate the rest of my weekend adventures to some popular films.
The Jumangi Experience: We got to Kiboko Bay and were just sitting down at a table when a security guard approached us. "You want to see a hippo?" he asked. Well, since I don't live right on the lake in Ukwala, I figured he was perhaps mildly crazy, but everybody else followed him. Sure enough, a hippo had wandered out of the lake and was casually munching on the grass by the guest houses behind the restaurant. Fun fact: the hippo is actually Africa's most deadly animal. They squash a lot of tourists every year, and they have huge teeth, so if they feel threatened they just snap the spine of whatever's bothering them. Needless to stay, we kept our distance. A few other mzungus were clustered around watching the hippo lumber around. Since it's pretty rare to see a hippo at a restaurant in the US, this was entertaining for well over a half hour. At one point it started running. You would not believe how fast hippos can run if they want to. The mzungus all scattered but came right back when the danger had passed. Eventually the hippo got bored and splashed back into the lake, so we chatted for a bit with some friendly Germans we had met, then turned in for an early night. Marta and I took another tuktuk back to her house, which was great until the driver got sassy and charged us 50 shillings above the price we had agreed upon when we got in.
The Fern Gully Experience: The next morning we got up really early and hired a fleet of motorbikes to take five of us into town. I was on the back of a motorbike that was carrying me, Marta, and the driver, and I felt a little wobbly as we zoomed down the bumpy streets, but we all arrived safely. We made a quick stop to get picnic lunch provisions, then found a matatu that would take us to a town near the entrance to Kakamega Forest, about a 45 minute drive for Ksh 150 ($2) per person. From that point we found more motorbikes to take us the rest of the way to the entrance. Once we got to the park, we tried to use our alien resident ID cards to get a lower rate for the entrance fee, but as usual, we failed. We're supposed to get the price Kenyans pay for museums, theaters, parks, etc with these cards but so far all they're good for is laughing at how terrible our pictures are on them. Oh, and I guess they make a pretty great souvenir. According to our guidebook, there was supposed to be a really scenic 7 km hike that lead to a waterfall, but apparently the Lonely Planet people don't check with the places they write about very often, because Park Ranger Moses told us that trail has been "impassable" since 1995. So instead we spent the morning hiking independently through the non-marked trails of the rainforest (Kenyans do not believe in maps), and I'll say that we saw some pretty great sights. We were wandering aimlessly, however, and decided to head back to the main office around lunch time to eat our picnic and start out on a new trail.
This is a tuktuk. They're probably in my top three favorite forms of transportation these days, although if the roads are bumpy, which they all are, it can be a pretty unsettling ride.
We went to a swanky restaurant called Kiboko Bay, which was a definite mzungu hotspot, to watch the sun set over Lake Victoria. Oh, and we also got to watch a few locals bathing in the lake, which is a very common occurrence. As soon as it started getting dark, Marta and I went to her house to drop my stuff off and have dinner and watch Tormenta en el Paraiso with her family. As it turns out, all Kenyans outside of Nairobi are wild about that show. Marta joked that the best way to end the ethnic tensions and bring Kenya together would be to elect a Mexican president in 2o12. But I'm coming to realize that as much as everybody watches that show, very few people recognize that it's originally a Spanish-language soap opera. My mom, for example, firmly believes that it is set in Norway. You know, because there are so many tropical beaches in Norway. As a side note, most people here think I'm from either Germany or Swaziland. Anyway, after Storm Over Paradise, we went back to Joe's house to have tea because his mom got really offended that we only stopped by to say hello before, so we felt we owed her a nice long visit. Then we went back to Kiboko Bay to hang out in a group for a while. From this point on, my weekend got too wild to simply describe the succession of events that transpired, and I've always felt like I might have a hidden knack for creative writing, so I'm going to relate the rest of my weekend adventures to some popular films.
The Jumangi Experience: We got to Kiboko Bay and were just sitting down at a table when a security guard approached us. "You want to see a hippo?" he asked. Well, since I don't live right on the lake in Ukwala, I figured he was perhaps mildly crazy, but everybody else followed him. Sure enough, a hippo had wandered out of the lake and was casually munching on the grass by the guest houses behind the restaurant. Fun fact: the hippo is actually Africa's most deadly animal. They squash a lot of tourists every year, and they have huge teeth, so if they feel threatened they just snap the spine of whatever's bothering them. Needless to stay, we kept our distance. A few other mzungus were clustered around watching the hippo lumber around. Since it's pretty rare to see a hippo at a restaurant in the US, this was entertaining for well over a half hour. At one point it started running. You would not believe how fast hippos can run if they want to. The mzungus all scattered but came right back when the danger had passed. Eventually the hippo got bored and splashed back into the lake, so we chatted for a bit with some friendly Germans we had met, then turned in for an early night. Marta and I took another tuktuk back to her house, which was great until the driver got sassy and charged us 50 shillings above the price we had agreed upon when we got in.
The Fern Gully Experience: The next morning we got up really early and hired a fleet of motorbikes to take five of us into town. I was on the back of a motorbike that was carrying me, Marta, and the driver, and I felt a little wobbly as we zoomed down the bumpy streets, but we all arrived safely. We made a quick stop to get picnic lunch provisions, then found a matatu that would take us to a town near the entrance to Kakamega Forest, about a 45 minute drive for Ksh 150 ($2) per person. From that point we found more motorbikes to take us the rest of the way to the entrance. Once we got to the park, we tried to use our alien resident ID cards to get a lower rate for the entrance fee, but as usual, we failed. We're supposed to get the price Kenyans pay for museums, theaters, parks, etc with these cards but so far all they're good for is laughing at how terrible our pictures are on them. Oh, and I guess they make a pretty great souvenir. According to our guidebook, there was supposed to be a really scenic 7 km hike that lead to a waterfall, but apparently the Lonely Planet people don't check with the places they write about very often, because Park Ranger Moses told us that trail has been "impassable" since 1995. So instead we spent the morning hiking independently through the non-marked trails of the rainforest (Kenyans do not believe in maps), and I'll say that we saw some pretty great sights. We were wandering aimlessly, however, and decided to head back to the main office around lunch time to eat our picnic and start out on a new trail.
There are supposed to be about 400 species of butterflies in Kakamega Forest, but we didn't see nearly that many. This one is pretty, though.
In the afternoon we decided not to be such cheap students and hire a guide to walk around with us. Moses took us out for another hike. As it turns out, Moses is highly skilled at various bird calls, so he had the whole forest singing for us. He showed us a lot of different plants that are being exploited for medicinal use, and which plants would cause rashes and such if you touched them. We also so a TON of monkeys. It was so cool seeing the monkeys swinging around on vines and jumping between the trees. They were acting like monkeys are supposed too; it was way cooler seeing them in the wild than at any zoo or sanctuary.
There are seven species of primates in the forest, but no chimps. This is one of many, many monkeys I saw in the jungle. They're very playful. Also in the rainforest were a number of nice tropical flowers. 
One of the trees Moses showed us was the strangler fig, which I also saw a lot of in the Everglades when I went there last spring. They attach themselves to other trees, then slowly grow around the host tree until it dies from lack of nutrients. What's left is usually a big hollow strangler fig tree that will act as a reservoir for water or a habitat for a variety of different animals. We climbed right in to one of the strangler fig trees to pose for a picture
The Motorcycle Diaries Experience: At about 3:3o our tour of the rainforest had come to an end. The rest of the group was heading back to Kisumu, but I needed to return to Ukwala. I was very nervous about the journey home, since nobody had any idea how to get from Kakamega to Ukwala. This seems like a good point to mention that in rural Kenya, geographical proximity has very little effect on how you get from Point A to Point B. I found a motorbike man that was willing to get me from the forest to the town of Kakamega, about a 30 minute ride. From there he helped me find a matatu that would get me a little bit closer to home, and set me off on my own. For those of you that know me at all, you realize that this was difficult for me because I like to know exactly what's going to happen, at exactly what time. So here I was, in one unfamiliar area, boarding a matatu bound for another unfamiliar area. I had no idea what to do after I got off the matatu, but I guess I accepted the fact that I'd have to piece my journey home together bit by bit, one stop at a time. Here's how my day finally concluded:
- Piki piki (the local word for a motorbike) from Kakmega forest to Kakmega town, a 30 minute ride
- Matatu from Kakamega to Mumias, another 45 minutes. The matatu conductor looked at me when I got on, asked me to marry him, and told me "I love you too much". The locals all thought this was very funny, but at this point I was still really anxious about navigating my way through rural Kenya and getting home before dark, so the humor was lost on me. Oh, and he didn't love me enough to charge me the same rate as all the Kenyans. I'm getting really sick of paying "mzungu price" for everything, even if the price I pay would still be considered low in the US. I guess everything's relative
- From Mumias, a kind gentleman that had been on the matatu with me told me it would probably be best to get a piki piki to Mungatsi. At this point, I still had no idea what I'd do once I got there, but I was learning to relax a little bit. I took his advice, thanked him profusely, and found another piki piki, this ride lasting about 40 minutes. From Mungatsi I found more motorbikes and explained that I was trying to get to Ukwala. Nobody was willing to drive me that far, but one man said he'd take me to Ugunja. Ugunja!! I know that city! Now I was really happy and able to just enjoy riding on the back of a motorcycle through the most rural and scenic parts of Kenya, because I knew I was close to home and I knew what to do from Ugunja. During that leg of the journey, which took another half hour or so, we drove through agricultural lands where people would be out ploughing their fields, harvesting sugarcane, cutting up wood to make charcoal, or washing their laundry in small streams. We went through a lot of hills and valleys on an extremely bumpy road. The driver asked me at one point if I'd like to drive the bike, but I politely declined. I'm not that adventurous yet. This particular driver had little concern for our lives though, because every time he'd see a fellow piki piki driver, he'd challenge them to a race. We were going 80 kph on a motorcycle that sounded like it was about to fall apart anyway, on a rocky dirt road. A few times we were completely airborne and I had the sort of "life flashing before your eyes" moment you always hear about.
- When we got to Ugunja, I found a final piki piki to take me to Ukwala and watched the sun begin to set as we zoomed through familiar territory toward home. I walked in the door a little before 7, covered in dirt and my whole face was red from windburn. Lucy took one look at me and said "So you've been on a piki piki now"
So, three hours, 700 shillings, and four marriage proposals later I was home safe with my wonderful family in Ukwala. Lucy said it looked like Marta's family didn't feed me enough and made me have extra food at dinner and extra tea before bed. I was exhausted from a long day but I think I learned a lot. For example, the back of a motorbike might just be the best way to see rural Kenya. Travel in this part of the world can be tricky, but it's best to take everything one piki piki ride at a time and you should make it home fine in the end.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Mzungu, how are you?
Life’s been pretty great here in Ukwala. Volunteering at Matibabu is going even better than I had expected- the staff is wonderful and so fun to work with. Here are a few updates for you, both on my life and Kenya in general:
- I thought my mom in Nairobi was determined to make me gain weight, but Lucy has taken the challenge to a whole new level . She made me weigh myself at the clinic so she can track her progress week by week. She also has a gradual scale for me to catch up to the amount of food she wants me to be eating daily. The first week I was here, she let me drink just one cup of tea, three times a day. We’re up to a cup and a half per teatime now, and I think next week she plans to go all out and get me up to six cups a day. That’s’ a lot of chai!!
- I washed my laundry the Kenyan way for the first time on Sunday. This involves filling several tubs with water (rain water collected throughout the week, no wasting the running water) and heading out to the back yard. A few tubs get powdered detergent added to the water, but some stay clean for rinsing. Then you bend over and scrub the clothes by hand. According to Lucy, this is “very easy” but my back was sore for hours. Lucy also decided that“ the problem with you people is you’re afraid to bend over” since we don’t have to do so to do our laundry, and they also use brooms and mops that are about a foot tall, so you have to do some bending to clean the house, too. O, there’s not a whole lot of skin left on my fingers, it got scrubbed off along with all the dirt from my clothes. I did laundry for about an hour and washed a pair of pants, two skirts, a few shirts, socks, sheets, and towels. Lucy did laundry for six hours and washed all of her family’s clothing, sheets, towels, and the upholstery covers from the six gazillion couches in the living room. She told me I did a good job for an American and that I’d be allowed to stay in Kenya, but I felt pretty pathetic comparing my efforts to hers.
- Also on the topic of Lucy (sorry but she’s the greatest and most interesting lady ever), she got the one thing she wanted more than anything else in the entire world the other day: a refrigerator. She sat me down and explained to me that now she can store leftover food for even a few days. I told her I was in fact familiar with the concept of refrigeration, but I think I wasn’t awestruck enough for her taste at the luxury of a new refrigerator. Unfortunately, the fridge is bad news for me because usually she makes a really amazing fruit salad for dessert (picture the sweetest pineapple, mangoes, avocadoes, bananas, and oranges coming together in your mouth. It‘s heaven), and since there’s no way to preserve the extras, I have to eat about six servings- no complaints. Now that we have a way to store things I may have to cut back a little bit
- There’s a shocking amount of malaria here. In the lab we often run a few dozen rapid tests per day, mostly for children under five years, and the vast majority of them are positive. People here are so accustomed to it though. I asked Lucy if she’d ever had malaria, and she laughed and thought for a while, and said “maybe twenty times or so” in all seriousness. The Matibabu staff will even drop by for a complementary test if they’re feeling a little under the weather. Oh, and it turns out in addition to resistance to the malaria drugs, a lot of mosquitoes are becoming resistant to the insecticide used to treat the bed nets (which very few Kenyans sleep under anyway), so a number of public officials are calling to reintroduce DDT to manage the issue. I really, really hope there’s another option.
- Today, I went to the other Matibabu clinic in Nzoia, about a twenty minute drive from Ukwala, to help with the immunizations for little kids there- somebody comes from the Ukwala clinic every Wednesday. The Nzoia clinic is a lot smaller, has only a few staff members, and isn’t as well stocked, so Martha (one of the nurses )and I weighed and measured and vaccinated babies under one year old all day today. A LOT of mothers brought their babies in- for 20 shillings (about a quarter), they got a dose of oral polio vaccine, vitamin A supplements, and any other vaccinations they were due for. The really difficult thing was that a lot of mothers had a hard time scraping even the Ksh 20 together, and a lot of the babies got a tick mark next to the “malnourished” line on their infant health cards. On the brighter side, a lot of the moms and kids were also really happy to be getting the care that they were, and I played my small part in lifting a few spirits today. After kids got injections and were crying in pain, the nurse or their mom would just point to me and say “Look, a mzungu” and the kid always promptly stopped crying in shock.
- Kenya is very, very mad at the Obama administration for suspending the US visa of a top Kenyan government official. I don’t know if that made news in the US at all, but it’s a huge deal here.
- Lucy and her friend Scholastica (great name, I know) have been trying to teach me some Luo language. They say it’s to help me communicate better with the locals, which is certainly true to some extent, but lately I’ve gotten the feeling that they just like to laugh at my terrible pronunciation. Like I said, I really brighten everybody’s day around here
Every night at 8:00 Lucy and I watch Tormenta en el Paraiso, which is obviously one of the telenovelas that I mentioned in an earlier post. It’s got to be in the top five most unnecessarily dramatic shows ever, but Lucy loves it and I love her. Also, it’s great to watch her bicker with John about the show. He thinks it’s a waste of her time to watch, never mind that it’s the one hour of the entire day where she gets to just relax, and he says it makes her a bad wife because we don’t eat until nine because she’s watching her show. Again, disregarding the fact that John doesn’t join us at the dinner table, he eats about a half hour later in front of the TV - There was a really bad nation-wide power outage last Sunday night. We had to eat by candlelight at my house, but on the news the next day there was a story about how hospitals across the country were suddenly stuck performing emergency surgeries and caring for premature babies by the light of a few cell phones. Yikes!
So, I'm just living the life here. Everything's wonderful and the time is flying by.
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