Back Home

Hey everyone! As I have already eaten McDonald's, drove my car, washed clothes in a washing machine, and brushed my teeth with tap water, I am officially back in America. This will sadly be my last post.

Again, I am just so thankful for the whole experience that I have had in Africa. People here at school have already asked me about it and I'm amazed at how big of an experience it was every time that I talk about it or explain what I did over there. It's still a little hard for me to grasp the fact that I am not going to wake up tomorrow in Africa and be able to do this again. I really would like to go back again someday, hopefully when I have more knowledge and can actually help a lot more people. I have always known that I wanted to do things like this when I finally become a doctor, and this really strengthened that conviction. One person who actually cares over there can make a world of difference.

Looking back at the trip, there are so many things that I wish that I could have done. I wish I could have spent more time at the orphanage with the kids especially. However, I do realize that there is never a way to do everything because there is always more to do in cases like this. I'm very happy with how much experience in the health care field I received over there and how much life experience I gained. I feel like I'm not just a sheltered South Dakota kid anymore, that I actually have some life skills under my belt.

I'm working on getting all of my pictures onto my computer and then onto facebook, so be patient! I'll try and get them up by tomorrow.

Thank you to everyone for your love, prayers, and support for the last 3 weeks. I really couldn't have done this without the people helping me.

Last Day and Last Night

I don’t have very much to report for today. We slept in because we stayed awake pretty late last night (but we didn’t quite make the sunrise). Then we all sort of hung around the compound and this afternoon we all packed our bags. It was a really emotional time for me because I am really sad to be leaving right now.

There are so many things that I will miss from here. I will miss being able to do so much hands on work in the hospital. I will definitely miss the fact that we are truly making a difference here, caring when no one else really seems to care about these lives. I have learned so much here about the value of life. I have a much greater appreciation for doctors and our healthcare system. I know that it isn’t perfect, but at least doctors are still doing their jobs and caring for patients despite these problems. I have learned that the money a patient is paying for a service has no relation to the quality of service that patient should receive. Also, no patient who truly needs a service should ever be turned away because they can’t pay. I’ve seen too many injuries that will never properly heal because the patient couldn’t afford to get a bone set or to have surgery.

I have become much surer of myself working in a situation like this. I feel that I could go anywhere now and be able to perform the job that I needed to confidently. We all really learned how to take control of situations, even when we weren’t totally sure if we were doing the right thing. Healthcare is really all about using what you know and thinking of a logical solution. I also learned how to work well as part of a team. We all worked together and cooperated both in situations where we were helping a patient and situations where we had to compromise and take turns in certain areas of the hospital. We also learned to share our knowledge with one other so that we could all be more effective providers. I’ve learned so much more than these things, but it’s really impossible to put it all into words. I feel like I have grown up so much here. I’ve had to get beyond my personal feelings about a situation and just do what needs to be done. The lessons I’ve learned I think transfer to any part of my life, not just a job in healthcare and that is really what has been most valuable about this experience.

Tonight we went out to eat one last time as a group at a really nice seafood restaurant. I had the best fish that I have ever tasted, red snapper with a champagne sauce.

A couple of us girls went to the hospital one last time tonight. It was really bitter sweet because I felt like we were saying goodbye to everything. We did get to do a dressing or two and hang some IVs. There was also a lady with a really, really gruesome arm wound who had been in a car accident. That was pretty cool to see. Otherwise, we mostly took vitals and just hung around trying to be useful.

I will probably not update my blog anymore until I do a quick update when I make it back to Brookings. The plan for tomorrow is to finish packing and any other last minute details in the morning and then to leave for the airport around 12:30. Our flight leaves at 3:30 and hopefully, if all goes well, we should be in Minneapolis by about 1:30 on Sunday. I am excited to be home and to see everyone again! I’m not excited that we are starting school the next day, but I guess that’s how it goes. 

Last Day at the Hospital

The hospital today was more exciting than yesterday. Right away in the morning, I went up to Millennium Theater, which is where they perform all of the C-sections. They do a lot of C-sections each day because they prefer to do that over natural birth, since it reduces the risk of the baby contracting HIV if the mother has it. They also have less complications with C-sections. Anyways, preparing the mother for the C-section took about an hour, during which Angie and I were just sort of hanging out with the nurses. Once they started the actual procedure, it took about 5 minutes to put her under anesthesia and 10 minutes from the first cut to the baby’s cord being cut. It was so fast!! This was actually much more gruesome to watch than the natural birth, so I’ve decided to have my babies naturally. Yes, I realize this isn’t really up to me. It then took about a half hour to finish stitching the mother back up. The baby was a healthy baby girl and mommy and baby are both going good.

After the C-section, I went up to Major Theater to watch part of a cardio-thoracic surgery. The gentleman needed part of his esophagus removed because of cancer. The surgeons were trying to get to the esophagus from the belly, but were unsuccessful so they ended up just stitching everything back together and then trying to go in from the side. The spread and cracked ribs 5 and 6 and went in from there. We had to leave before the surgery was completely, but it was pretty cool to see. I’m very surprised how okay I am with surgery because I always thought I would be squeamish when it came to that stuff.

 

One thing that I don’t think I have mentioned yet is how weird they are about cell phones here. There is absolutely no inappropriate time to answer your cell phone. The surgeons answer in the middle of surgery, the doctors in the middle of an evaluation, the drivers in the middle of traffic, you name it. It must be really rude to let a call go to voicemail here.

Before we left for the day, we went down to Casualty to see what was all going on. It turns out that there was a lady in there who was a victim of the Tana River massacre. There are two tribes in that region that are fighting over land and water rights. One tribe attacked the other last week and burned down some houses. I think 5-10 people were killed. Then that tribe attacked this lady’s tribe yesterday morning. There were 100 armed warriors attacking this village. They killed 48 people, only 6 men and the rest were women and children. It is a remarkably sad story that these two tribes are so willing to kill each other. This lady in Casualty had lost her whole family in that attack. It was really a miracle that she was still alive. She had a deep gash in her head and a deep gash in her check, exposing her maxilla. It was crazy. Her jaw was so broke that her mouth wasn’t even under her nose any more. She also had a long, deep cut in her arm, wrist and palm. That cut had severed all of the tendons in her hand and exposed her ulna (her arm bone for those of you who don’t know you anatomy). It was by far the worst injuries I had seen yet at the hospital. They thought they were going to have to do extensive surgery, but I’m pretty sure they just reset her jaw and stitched her all up. It really is a miracle that she survived the attack with just that.

This was probably our last day at the hospital. We are going to try and get our sleeping patterns closer to what they will be at home by going to the hospital and working a night shift Friday night.

After the hospital, we ate lunch and then went to Old Town to complete our souvenir shopping. I probably spent more than I should have, but it all goes so quickly when it’s just a couple dollars at a time. That should be my last major expense though (how crazy is that?) so I’m telling myself that it’s okay. After all, I don’t know if I will ever make it back to Africa, and if I do, it may not be to this region.

Tonight we are all hanging out as a going-away party. We are hoping to make it until sunrise and then watch the sunrise on the beach, but we’ll have to see how that goes. I can’t believe this is one of my last nights here! This time really has gone by incredibly fast. I’m so thankful for this experience. It has taught me so much, but I won’t get into that right now. I’ll save it for my last blog.

Henna Day!

Today, we started at the hospital in maternity. We got to watch another live birth. It was a lot less shocking today, and actually pretty amazing to see. It’s a lot of waiting in that ward and the actual birth only ever takes a couple of minutes. We also tried to go see a C-section, but they told us to come back tomorrow. Hopefully I get to see one before the week is done! I also spent some time in Minor, where I cleaned and dressed wounds and got to remove my first sutures. That was a little intimidating, but everything went okay. There really wasn’t anything too exciting happening today, except that we had to do a dressing change on a prisoner. When we do anything on a prisoner, there are always several armed guards in the room at the same time. It’s a little scary because these are not small hand guns, they are big automatic weapons.

The room that they give birth in. It's not big on comfort and there are no monitors.

Yesterday, I had the genius idea that we should all get henna tattoos before we left here. We talked to one of the doctors who had a bunch of henna on her and she recommended a lady (her aunt) who lived close to the hospital that we could go to. So, this afternoon, 8 of us went and got our henna tattoos. They are very intricate and beautiful. We talked to the lady about her culture, she’s Hindu, and when they usually get tattoos. She told us they do it once a year on a special holiday that was last Friday and then the girls do it for their wedding day. The brides are usually pretty much covered in henna for their weddings. I think that is a very pretty tradition.  Her daughter was also around and very cute. She brought home a kitten today that she found, so her mom wasn’t very happy but she loved it.

 

Tonight we are just hanging out at Café Mocha again. Everything is winding down this week and we are trying to find enough time to do everything.

I’m sorry, but that’s really all I have for today!

Safari, Part 2 and A Camel

The second day of the safari, last Saturday, we went out about 8 in the morning and stayed out on the game reserve until about 3:30. It was really awesome to spend the whole day out there. Everything was so beautiful out there. We got to see a lot of the same things that we did the first day, especially the zebras and wildebeests. We also got to see some more giraffes and elephants, some hyenas and warthogs (Pumba!). The best part of the day was when we found our first lions, a male and a female. It happens to be mating season for them, so we actually got to see them mate. We were all a little shocked to see that. They were so beautiful though, even though we didn’t get very close to them. We also caught a glimpse of a lioness hunting, but she went away from us as soon as the vans started getting close so we couldn’t watch for very long. We also saw a cheetah, which was really awesome. Again, we couldn’t get very close. We also found vultures, some more deer, and a rhino! It is apparently very, very rare to find a rhino, but Jenna ended up spotting one. The only animal of the Big 5 (rhino, lion, water buffalo, elephant and leopard) that we didn’t see was the leopard. It is also very rare to see leopards so we didn’t feel too bad about missing out on that. At one point, our van ended up getting stuck in the mud in the bottom of a crick. It was quite the ordeal to try and get it unstuck.

That afternoon after we got back from the park, we went into a Maasai village. This was really shocking to see. There were about 15 homes, set in a circle, with a fence around it. Every night, they bring their cows and goats home from grazing and put them in the middle of the circle so that they can protect them. The men take turns patrolling around the fence, watching for wild animals mostly. The homes were made of cow dung, mud, grass, and sticks. Each woman is required to make her own house and it usually takes about 4 months for them to do that. They took us into their homes and showed us how they live. They keep their baby animals inside the house. They also talked to us about how they live. They are polygamists and each man has about 4 wives. The men still have to pay to marry a girl and they pay about 10 cows. However, if they can jump the highest or if they kill a lion, they only have to pay 5 cows. Each age group of men has to kill one lion. It’s really strange. Also, jumping is a big thing to them, which I don’t understand. They also jumped and danced for us and sang songs in their language. The boys joined in with the men’s dance and the girls joined in the women’s dance. The boy’s dance was a lot harder than ours. They were both songs of welcome. It was shocking to hear how they live. They are nomadic people and move about every 9 years, because that is the longest that the houses will stand.

After we left the village, we just went back to the camp, ate, and went to bed early. We woke up about 5:30 the next morning because we wanted to get out to the park to watch the sunrise. It was very, very beautiful to watch the sunrise. I unfortunately couldn’t get very good pictures of it. We were trying to take pictures and then our driver told us we had to hurry because we had to get to the lions. We quickly sat back down and sped off. We got to the place where the lion was and pulled into the circle of vans around this lion. It was absolutely shocking how close the lioness was to us. She was probably 15 feet away from our van, eating a wildebeest. It was amazing how comfortable she was with the amount of people that were around. She just ignored us and did her own thing. We watched that for a long time and then just spent a lot of time driving around the park, looking for leopards or other animals and enjoying the views. We left the reserve at about 8:30 am and spent an hour at the camp getting breakfast and our stuff packed up. Then we were on the road again, that terrible awful road. Our driver then informed us that we had to lie for him and say that we had only been at Maasai Mara for 1 night so that he didn’t get in trouble and fined for driving on the grass when we found the rhino. It was actually a little frightening when we got questioned by some officials, but they were nice and apparently believed us so everything worked out fine. They take the grass on those game reserves very seriously. We got back to Nairobi around 3.

That night in Nairobi, we decided to go out to a restaurant called Carnivore. It was a very expensive, nice restaurant that is famous for what they do. We had a flag in the middle of our table and as soon as we sat down they started serving us every kind of meat that is legal to eat. We had pork ribs, ostrich meatballs, just ostrich meat, crocodile meat, ox testicles, frog legs, grilled chicken, just pork meat, beef meat, pork sausages, just turkey, and prime rib. When I say “just __ meat” that means that they had a giant slab of meat skewered on a sword that they set on your place and sawed you off a piece of the meat with a giant knife. It was really awesome and so filling! Everything was delicious and it was so hard to give up and stop eating. They literally kept bringing you meat until you surrendered and put the flag in the middle of the table down. Needless to say, we were all miserable when that was over. We just went back to the hostel and hung out again that night. We ended up really liking that place, which is funny because we were so appalled when we first saw it.

Just a side note, none of us ever has any idea what day it is here because time seems to pass so differently. Our weeks blend with our weekends and none of us can believe that we have been here over two weeks and that our trip will be over soon. That fact really hit us on the bus ride home when we were trying to plan our week so that we can get everything done that we want to. I’m going to be really sad to leave Kenya, especially knowing that I may not ever make it back here. However, I’m also pretty homesick at this point, and I am excited to be back home. I miss a lot of things that I really took for granted in the US. I also am missing everyone there an awful lot. Those are two very conflicting emotions that I am trying to deal with at this point.

The next morning, Monday, we again loaded onto a bus and spent 8 horrible hours driving back to Mombasa. This was especially horrible for me because I really didn’t feel good on Monday. We got back to the compound at about 6:30 last night and went to Café Mocha to use the free wifi. On our way there, we were very confused because there were at least 5 times as many people out as there usually is after dark. We asked our driver and he told us that Sunday was the last day of Ramadon, the Muslim holy month, and so almost every Muslim was out last night celebrating. It was pretty to see them all out and dressed up because most of the women had sparkles or shimmery outfits on (I’m not sure what their tradition dress is called, but that is what they were in).

So finally, today. Today at the hospital Angie, Jenna, Megan and I went to the Maternity ward right away because we hadn’t really been there yet. When we first got there, we walked around with the doctors checking on the women who were in labor and who had just given birth. One women has PPH (post partum hemorrhaging) and had to be taken up to surgery. Another woman was anemic when she had given birth and so was just getting blood until her hemoglobin counts were back up to normal. The last woman in the ward was in labor. She was dilated to 8 cm when we got there. She was an HIV positive mother and so they were taking extra precautions with the birth. We got to watch her deliver (slightly disturbing, I’m glad it will be awhile until I have to go through that myself) and they took a lot of care not to get any of the mother’s blood on the baby. It was a healthy boy! They will do an HIV test at 3 weeks to test if the baby is HIV positive or negative. That part of being in the maternity ward was pretty cool. However, I was also very sad and disturbed to be there because in the room where the babies go after they are born, there were just two dead babies, wrapped in totally in cloth with tape on the cloth with the babies’ information on them. It was so absolutely terrible to see that they just leave those babies in there, on a shelf, for however long. The two babies there today had died yesterday morning. It almost made me sick to see that. Anyways, after that we went to Minor and did some dressing changes. Nothing too exciting happened there. I also went into Casualty and followed along with a doctor there. He let me do some physical examinations and try to diagnose people. It was really cool to be put in that situation. I didn’t really know much, but he helped me along.

After the hospital, we spent the afternoon on the beach. It was a really nice day and the beach was beautiful. I am hopeful that I am at least as tan as I started out here, but I don’t think I’m any darker. It’s funny to me that I am even writing that, as it is such an unimportant fact to anyone who is reading this. Anyways, it was a very relaxing afternoon.

Oh, and I rode a camel. Fun fact. It was awesome!! Now I can cross that off of my bucket list. J

Tonight, we went and hung out at Cafesserie, another café that we like to spend our evenings at. It also has free wifi, which seems to be a must for us.

That’s all for now. Have a good night!

Safari, Part 1

Hello again! So much has happened in the last 5 days that it is going to be hard to remember it all and to get it all down, but I’ll try my best.

We started off Thursday morning by loading onto a big charter bus to take us to Nairobi. It was an 8 hour drive and honestly, a little scary since our driver drove really fast and swerved in and out of traffic a lot. It was really cool to be able to see a lot of the country side. It was mostly grasslands, but there was a surprising number of hills and mountains too. There were a lot of little, very poor looking towns along the way. The roads were not very good, but were all paved. By the time we got to our place in Nairobi, it was about six. The place we stayed at was not what I was expecting. I thought we were staying in a hotel, first of all, but it was a hostel. It was just a shock at first to realize there would be 8 of us sleeping in a room smaller than my bedroom at home. The gender shared, open concept bathroom took a bit of getting used to also. However, it was clean and a lot nicer than I thought it was at first. We all we starving at this point and so we went to a recommended Italian restaurant in town. We were definitely underdressed in our jeans and sweats. The food was really good though, and it was a really fancy place to eat for not very much money. After that, we went back to the hostel and hung around the bar that they had there. It was a really fun time hanging out with everyone. However, they did have a guard dog at the hostel (there was a sign saying not to pet the dog), but one of the guys (Lee) ended  up ignoring the sign, trying to pet the dog, and got bit. That was a bit of an ordeal, but the dog apparently had its shots, so everything was okay.

The next morning, we loaded into our Safari vans and started the drive to Maasai Mara, the Safari park. The first 2 ½ hours were good because the road was pretty smooth. However, for the next 2 hours after that, we were on the worst gravel road I had ever been on times at least 3. It was awful. We were also going fairly fast down the road which made it a lot worse. By the time we got to our camp, we were all very grateful to get out of that van. The camp we stayed in had some permanent tents and some cabins. Alexa, Chelsea, Angie and I stayed together in one of the cabins. It wasn’t the cleanest or most modern place, but it did have warm showers so we were happy. The electricity was only on from 5:30 am to 7 am and from 6:30 pm to 10 pm. That took some getting used to. We arrived at the camp around 4 and after dropping our stuff, immediately went out on an afternoon drive in the park. We were so excited!! The first animals we saw were zebras. We were all in awe of them and so excited to see them in the wild. However, our fascination with the zebras sadly soon wore off because there were thousands and thousands of them everywhere. You couldn’t drive anywhere in the park and not see a zebra or a wildebeest. There were also thousands and thousands of wildebeests around. However, we loved them all the first day. We were all so happy to be out there and kept relating everything we saw to The Lion King, which was really fun. We even broke out a song or two from the soundtrack. J The first day, we also saw giraffes, elephants, water buffalo, impalas, and gazelles. It was very cool. However, I have to admit, I did not really know what a safari would be like. I had vision in my mind of the animals always being around and always in action, when reality was that we often drove for almost an hour with very little to see and the animals we did see were usually just grazing or hanging out (except for the lions).

We headed in from the safari about 6:30 that night and it was really cold outside by that point. We were not expecting the temperatures to drop as much as they did, and so quickly! We ate supper at the camp (it was the usual noodles, beef stew but there was also butter bread and a good soup). We were all very tired after the long day so we headed to bed pretty early.

Well, that's all I have time for tonight. I'll update about the rest of the trip and my day at the hospital tomorrow night!

Surgery Today

Chelsea, Angie and I went straight up to Major Theater (surgery) this morning. We changed our scrubs, put on the big rubber boots that you have to wear into the surgery rooms, hairnets and masks. We were a sight to see. We could pick whether we wanted to see an osteopathic surgery, a gynecological surgery, an ophthalmology surgery or a general surgery. We decided to sit in on an osteopathic surgery. After waiting for awhile for the doctors to get started, they brought the man in. They put him under anesthesia and put in a breathing tube. He was there because he had been walking on the side of the road and got hit by a matatu (the sketchy public transport vans).  Because he didn’t have enough money for the surgery, he waited for several weeks before scheduling this surgery. All of his external wounds had already healed. He had broken his left femur, left tibia and fibula, and right tibia and fibula. Just looking at his legs you could tell how bad the breaks were. The bones had already started healing together wrong by the time he got scheduled for surgery, so the surgeon had to break all of the bones again with a bone saw. The whole operation was really bloody and gory, for lack of better words. However, it was also fascinating to see. Again, I have lots of pictures if anyone wants to see them, but I won’t put them up there. It took 3 and a half hours for them the repair the femur alone. They ended up screwing a plate to the bone to help it heal correctly. I had never watched a surgery before, not here or back home, so it was a really interesting experience for me. I wasn’t sure I would be able to handle all of the blood and cutting, but it’s surprisingly easy (even just watching) to forget the context and just to focus in on the job at hand. It sounds so bad, but it makes things a lot easier if you sort of forget that you are working on a living, breathing person. I’m not sure if I’m explaining this correctly, but what I’m trying to say is that you sort of detach yourself from the patient and just focus on the situation. I was surprised at the tools they used. I’m not sure if it’s just here, or if it is in orthopedic surgeries everywhere, but the surgical tools honestly just looked a lot like shop tools. You had your specialty saw, your screwdriver, your screws, hammers, and plates that look very normal. They also used a lot of clamps and things that looked like wrenches. They started on the tibia and fibula repair, but we ended up leaving before they started that because it was close to the time when our driver was going to pick us up. We also went down to Minor for just a second and saw a guy whose hand was getting stitched up after an accident.

We just hung out by the pool here this afternoon, trying to get a tan (and sadly, possibly failing). It’s still shocking to me that the sun is stronger and hotter in South Dakota than it is here where we are so close to the equator.

Tonight, it’s time to pack for the safari! I’m getting really excited about that trip tomorrow. However, it is nearly impossible to pack for this as we have to fit everything for 5 days into a backpack. We also need to bring snacks and water. Needless to say, we will have to carefully pick what we need to pack. It should be really cool to see all of the animals. I’ll try to take as many pictures and videos as possible! Until Monday… J

Orphanage and Movie Night

Today we went to the orphanage nearby for the first time. It was about a 5 minute walk to get there and it was a shocking 5 minutes. Our compound is in a pretty nice area with other nice, fenced in compounds around it. In just that 5 minute walk, a lot changed. It went from houses with fences to houses made of mud or scrap tin. There was garbage everywhere and kids scrounging through that garbage, looking for anything salvageable. It was so terrible, and the conditions were unimaginable. The Rebby Junior School was sitting right in the midst of this. It is a school for orphans, or children with one parent or 2 parents that can’t support them. The children get educated there for free and spend most of their days there. Some of the kids sleep there, but the kids who can go back to their parents. The school has walls made of mud and sticks. There is no windows and very little air movement within the area, so it was very hot. The kids were so happy though! They were adorable and very happy to see us. We were there for about 3 hours and they did skits and sang songs for us. They also did some group dances with us and we showed them some dances for them to do with us, like the chicken dance, YMCA, hockey pockey and the Macarena. It was a lot of fun. I think their favorite part of the morning was taking pictures though. They love to get their picture taken and then they stole our camera’s and were taking pictures with them.

Joel, the guy from the UK who was here 2 weeks before us, is doing a 6 week program here. After visiting the orphanage the first time, he decided to set up a website asking for donations to help rebuild the orphanage with actual cement walls and floors. It didn’t take him long to raise the money (it only took about $1000) and to purchase supplies. Work will start sometime this week and we will probably all be helping at some point. It is really inspiring that he did all of this mostly by himself and it will make such a difference to these kids.

I haven’t really wrote in here yet how thankful to God I am that I was born in the US, but I think about that every single day, especially today. We are so blessed that we don’t have to live like this, that even our poor live 100 times better than this (I will admit, this is an assumption as I have not really visited many slums in the States). This orphanage was a Christian orphanage too, and just to hear them singing songs of praise to God was really amazing. These kids aren’t angry about what they don’t have, just happy about what they do. It just really puts things in perspective for me. We complain so much about things that just really don’t matter in the scheme of things. We don’t have to worry day by day if we will have enough food or if we will have any sort of roof over our heads or if we will die from some very curable disease because we don’t have enough money to pay for medication. I know that I will still find myself complaining about someone putting pickles on my McDonald’s burger when I get home, but I have a feeling I will be thinking twice before I actually get upset about things not going my way.

One thing that I haven’t mentioned about Kenya is the fact that everyone here loves Obama. Everyone who hears we are from the US says something about Obama and how much they love him and how he is from Kenya. The hospital that we work at, Coast Province General, even claims that they have Obama’s birth certificate. They don’t know enough about our laws to realize that this is a bad thing, not a good thing. They think that all Americans must automatically love Obama too, which is funny to us since that is not the case.

After the morning of dancing and singing, some of the kids walked back with us to the compound for the swimming lessons. I didn’t actually help with these, except for from the sidelines, but it was really funny to watch. Most of them could swim a little, but they had a hard time doing the back floats or other things. They mostly just wanted to swim in the pool with us I think. After this, I went to take a nap because I was exhausted from the heat and dancing of the morning.

I’m getting really excited for the safari this weekend. We will leave early Thursday morning, spend the night in Nairobi, 2 half days and one whole day on the safari, another night in Nairobi and back to the compound by Monday night. Before Mia left, she told us a lot about the safari and it sounds so amazing to see. They saw all of the big 5 except for the Rhinos and they saw lions multiple times. She also saw these animals really close up. I’m excited to bring home pictures of this! Yes, videos too hopefully.

Tonight we went to the movie theater. It was absolutely amazing how different the theater is than the rest of Mombasa. It was easily the nicest and biggest theater I’ve ever been to. We all forgot that we were even in Kenya for those couple hours. We went to see The Dark Night Rises. I had already seen this movie, but it was just as good the second time. The only strange thing about the theater is that before every movie, they ask everyone to stand up as they play the Kenyan national anthem. It seems so random to me! Anyways, all in all it was a good experience and a good break from this life where we are constantly thinking about how different things are here. It was a very American experience with pop and popcorn and a good movie. Well tomorrow, we go back to the hospital. I’m hoping to get to watch some surgeries.

First Procedure!

I ended up going to the hospital this morning and so I’ll go to the orphanage later this week. I was in Minor all morning and I actually got to do a lot of things. Thanks to the wonderful advice from my Dad and Luke, I found a way to wear the sterile latex gloves by wearing my latex-free gloves underneath. It worked like a charm! There were a couple of people in who needed dressing changes and I got to help with that and with changing some catheters. Then, a man came in who was badly beat up from a motorbike accident. There are a lot of motorcycles here and they are even a form of public transportation (you can jump on the back of one and go wherever you need to for only about 80 cents). I have yet to see anyone wearing a helmet on these, which is absolutely stunning considering how people drive here. So, not surprisingly, we get a lot of men who have been in accidents at the hospital. This man needed stitches on the side and top of his head. Angie and I watched the doctor do the first couple on the side of his face then she was able to do the last couple. This was her first time suturing. Then it was my turn to try and do the stitches on top of his head. I got everything ready and started stitching, but the skin on the top of his head was so thick that I couldn’t get the needle to go through and I was hesitant to push any harder than I was for fear that I would hurt him further (even though the area was numbed). So, I tried a couple separate times before the doctor took back over. He said that it was some of the toughest skin he had done and it was a real struggle for even him to do the stitches. It was probably not a good one to start on for my first try, but at least I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to do it next time, or on my own if I really needed to. We then finished cleaning the man up and dressing most of his wounds. At this point, we run out of sterile gauze (which is what we clean and dress everything with) and there didn’t seem to be any in the whole hospital, which was very frustrating. The nurses didn’t really care and even said to Chelsea, “You just need to accept that there is none and stop looking.” They were perfectly fine with sending away patients that needed help getting cleaned up or stitched. They just said that they told the patients to just come back tomorrow. This was frustrating for us to see and so we ended up leaving pretty shortly after.

So, when we got back home, Chelsea, Alexa and I decided to do laundry. This was a Much bigger ordeal than we thought it would be. It takes so long to wash everything by hand! About 3 items in, we started sorting our clothes into things we really needed washed, and things we could live without getting washed. It was still a lot of stuff to wash though. Then, we had to hang everything on the line to dry. I’ve never been more grateful for washing machines and dryers back home! We then relaxed out by the pool for awhile. A lot of us read in our down time, and I’ve already gone through 3 books

The food here is something that I could do without. Every night, its white rice or pasta and some sort of stew with chicken or mystery meat over the top. A lot of time there is potatoes in the stew. I’m very sick of starches. I looked at a break-down of the Kenyan diet in a newspaper here and it said that 77% of their diet is carbohydrates. I can really believe that. The meat is definitely not the farm grown quality that we are used to. It’s all edible, but it’s just a little bland and we are all getting sick of not having much variety.

Tonight we are hanging out at Café Mocha again. It’s definitely one of our favorite places to relax. Quite a few people are going to the hospital tonight, but since it gets overwhelming for the patients when there are so many of us (and because there isn't anything to do when there are a ton of us there), I'm taking my turn and sitting this night out. Tomorrow I'll get to hang out with the kids again! That is definitely my favorite part so far.

Sunday Funday

It was another lazy day today. We spent the first part of the afternoon at the beach. We were much more careful not to get scammed this time. I tried to get some videos of the beach and the guys who were wind-boarding. We can’t do anything here without someone trying to get money out of us. I’ll be so thankful to be back in the States where that doesn’t happen. Today was Mia’s last day, so that was really sad. It made me really homesick to see her packing everything up. I miss everyone back home a lot! I’m also not ashamed to say that I miss the modern conveniences of home. It’ll be nice to be able to take a warm shower again (the choices here are either scalding your skin off or ice cold). I also miss really random things, like Subway and driving and not getting honked or stared at. I’ve adjusted to things here, but that doesn’t mean I have to love the way things are. It also makes me sad to see Mia leave, first of all because we’ll miss her and second of all because that means that we only have two weeks left. It’s crazy how fast the first week has gone! Then we only have 3 days this week and our safari and then it’s the final week. I can’t wrap my mind around that.

Tomorrow we have the choice to go to either the orphanage or the hospital. I’m not sure which I’ll go to, but then the groups will switch for Tuesday.  We’ll also give swimming lessons to some children from the orphanage on Tuesday at the pool here on the compound.

Lazy Day

Today was a very relaxing, lazy day. We slept in until about noon since we got in pretty late last night and then we got ready and went to Old Town, a very touristy location with a bunch of little shops with handmade items. I bought some things to bring home, and looked at a whole bunch more. I’ll have to go back at another time to shop some more now that I know what is all there. They work really hard to sell you things, but usually they will bargain with you. It’s a really hard thing to bargain for everything here when no one bargains for anything back home. People here will definitely try and get as much money out of you as possible. A group of us (not my group) actually got scammed while they were there by a guy who told them he was security and was going to take them around to the shops. At the end of walking around, he said that they needed to pay him for taking them on tour of the place. They did, but not nearly what he asked. They weren’t very happy about it. When people like that came up to us, we made it very clear that we would not need a tour guide. Anyways, it was certainly an experience to go shopping here.

We had a barbeque tonight and it was really good to finally have American food (and not have to pay extra for it). Then we all came to Café Mocha to use the free wifi and to get ice cream in celebration of Mia’s last night. We are all super tired, so I don’t think we’ll stay here very late. Its good to be able to relax like this on these days.

I swear that I will get more pictures up soon!

Day with the Kids

I’m sorry that I didn’t get my post from yesterday up until today. I typed it up yesterday but the internet wasn’t working so I couldn’t post it.
This morning we went to a school for needy children (not an orphanage like I thought). It was really terrible conditions still but the children were so dang cute!!It was a lot of fun. We gave out toothbrushes and toothpaste and then showed them how to brush their teeth. Some of the children told us that they did brush their teeth, but the lady in charge told us that they just were trying to brush with sticks. It was so sad to here that, and to see one teething little boy chewing on a rusty nail. We also demonstrated good hand washing and gave them a bunch of little packets of soap. Right away when we got there, all the children sang cute little songs for us. One of them was even in English! Don’t worry, I got a video of that. They latched on to us right away and always wanted to be holding our hands or hanging on us. A couple of the little ones let us hold them and carry them around for awhile. They were just so happy to have someone play with them and they kept smiling at us the whole time. Some of the parents were there too and they were happy to see us. They all wanted us to take pictures with their kids on our cameras. It was funny. During one group picture, a little baby behind me grabbed my hair and pulled and everyone thought that was pretty entertaining. We also gave them all suckers with whistles. They loved those so much. It was mass chaos for awhile with all of them blowing their whistles at once. They were really sad when we had to leave and said bye and waved after us for a long time. I wanted to take so many of them home with me!

Some of the kids at the school that we went to. So adorable!

It was really nice to have a break from the hospital, especially since it was such a fun break and for a good cause. We hung around the compound for the afternoon, and I took a much needed nap. We decided that we are going to go out tonight because its Mia’s last weekend here, which is sad. It’s been really nice to have her here to help us learn the ropes and everything. She’s also really nice and we’ll miss her. Have a good night!

Thursday at the Hospital

We ended up just taking the night off last night and hanging out around the compound. I went out and bought a new camera so that I can start making up for the pictures that I lost. It was really nice to take a break from everything and just chill. It helps so much to be able to talk to everyone else about the hospital. Everyone here shares the same frustrations with the Kenyan medical system and how reluctant everyone seems to be to help the patients or to help us help the patients. I know that it is hard for people who aren’t here to be able to understand how awful this situation is, so it helps to be able to talk things through with people who are experiencing this too. I will say it is crazy how used to this very different place I am already. I’m still affected by all the bad things that go on, but I could see myself being here long term. There is just so much need that we can partially help eliminate. We all can already tell that it is going to be really hard to come back home and to see how much excess we have while people here literally have nothing. The people who are below the “poverty” line have no idea how good they have it to still be able to have running water, shoes, and food for their family.
Today at the hospital I got to be in Minor for the whole morning. It was really interesting and cool because I got to do a lot of the hands on stuff. I put my first catheter in today! Okay, so technically I wasn’t successful, but that’s only because the patient had blockage and so would need surgery to put one in. I think it still counts. I also cleaned and dressed several really gruesome looking wounds. I took pictures for those who want to see, but I don’t think I’ll put them on here because they really do look disturbing. One lady who came in had injured her arm and leg in a bus accident about 3 weeks about. Literally, her arm wound was about an inch deep and the whole top of her arm was gone. She doesn’t remember exactly what happened in the accident, which is probably a blessing. Anyways, she has been coming every day or every other day to the hospital to get it cleaned and dressed and so Joel and Mia are very attached to her. I can see why, as I already really like her after just one day. She was so happy and spoke very good English. She’s also a little bit of a drama queen, which is really funny. The first thing she said to us was her name and “I’m warning you, I’m a screamer.” She was very impressed with herself because she didn’t end up screaming as we cleaned it (which is very painful because we have to make sure it’s bleeding a little again). She also showed us how the women here wrap themselves in their sarongs.  It was very cool to be able to hang out with her a little bit. It’s very cool when we get patients like her who only want us students to work on her. She and other people specifically ask when we will be there and work their schedules around so that they can make it to the hospital at those times. It makes us feel very good about what we are doing. Also, we cleaned up a little seven year old boy who was very brave. We went out and bought candy so that we could make the kids a little less scared of being there, so he got a sucker before and after getting re-bandaged. I also spent a little time again in Casualty, but not very much because I’m still frustrated by that part of the hospital.
I took a nap this afternoon and just hung out until we decided to go back to the hospital at 9. We stayed until about 1. Things were actually pretty calm in Casualty so we could actually help handle things and learn how to do certain things. I got a couple of people IV fluids and took vital signs. I also mainly made sure the doctor who was there went over and actually examined the patients there, many of which had been waiting for hours and hours. One elderly gentleman had been unresponsive for 3 days when they finally brought him in. 3 days without being able to eat or drink. We immediately started him on fluids. He was just getting over both malaria and typhoid. The doctor ordered ultrasounds and decided that the patient most likely had liver cancer, as well as possible TB. It’s really scary how many diseases we are exposed to here that we would never be in the US. There is no infection control to speak of, and very little sterile procedure. They often just let things stay bloody or leave blood on the floor for hours before someone cleans it up (and I’m not sure if they even use a good disinfectant). We also had a hemophiliac patient who was bleeding from a mouth wound. The doctor was actually pretty good tonight and was very eager to teach us things. At one point, he handed Angie and I x-rays of a man’s head that had been in an accident and told us to go interpret him and let him know what we saw. That would have been cool to do, if either of us had ever had any sort of training or experience with that sort of thing, but we didn’t. We actually guessed right with fluid around the brain.
That was mostly it for tonight. Tomorrow, I’m going with to an orphanage here to hand out supplies for the orphans like toothbrushes and toothpaste. One student here has an organization (IamAid.org) that actually raises money and brings medical supplies over here and he is running this too. It’s very cool. It should be a fun and hopefully easy-going day.

Wednesday Afternoon Update

I would first like to apologize to anyone who was worried last night after my post. I was exhausted and emotionally drained and wasn’t thinking clearly about how others might interpret my last statements.

I’ll start at about 8:30 pm when we got back to the hospital. At night, the only parts of the hospital that are open to new patients are Minor Theater and Casualty. We started off in Minor. A young boy of about 12 came in with a bad cut on his foot. I actually got to clean and dress the wound. It was a little gruesome looking, but it didn’t actually bother me to do this. Before the boy came in, the group of us had been hanging out in the staff area and I set my camera down on the table in there. While we were busy cleaning up this boy, some people who were there with him walked through that room and I’m assuming that is where my camera disappeared to. This was really upsetting at the time, because I really hated losing my pictures and it just seemed like another thing that has gone wrong here for me. It just seems like it’s one thing after another. Also, I was very disappointed to learn at this point that I won’t actually be able to give people stitches or to help with surgeries like some people have because the sterile surgical gloves that they have for this are latex and there are no latex-free ones. For those of you who don’t know, I have a latex allergy which I don’t really notice in the US because most things are latex-free. Here, however, it seems to be a much bigger deal, unfortunately. So I was already slightly depressed at this point in the night and the night had really just started.

Just a warning, this next part is quite depressing and you may want to skip over this part.

Then Joel, who had been in casualty, came into Minor and told us that they needed help in Casualty badly and so we all rushed over there. Casualty is supposed to be an emergency room. However, it was absolutely stunning and terribly frustrating because we soon learned that the doctors and nurses working there had no sense of urgency at all for these people. People were literally bleeding out, and those who could help were just sitting down, hanging out, or strolling from patient to patient. A little boy just died on a table all alone, without a doctor even going over to see what was wrong. A tiny baby, maybe 1 month old, was just lying on a table, struggling to breathe, with no one even sparing her a glance. So, naturally, we burst in there and started running around trying to help these people by getting them oxygen or IV fluids or anything at all to help. The nurses and doctors wouldn’t even help us unless we literally dragged them over to a patient. We got oxygen set up for the little baby girl, trying to help her breathe and put an O₂ stat on her to monitor the level of oxygen in her blood (it should be 100% for healthy people). I held the baby to give her a nebulizer treatment and as I was holding her, her oxygen levels just started dropping. At first, we just watched, hoping the neb would start working and helping her breathe easier. However, as they kept dropping, we became more and more frantic, trying to get someone over to us to help. This whole time, I’m holding this tiny baby, and she’s staring into my eyes until she starts closing her eyelids slowly and I can just tell that she’s going to die. I tried my hardest to get her to keep her eyes open and awake, as her oxygen dropped into the single digits. Finally, we give up on the neb and put oxygen back on her, but the oxygen levels continued to stay very low. The baby had closed her eyes. Luckily, we finally were frantic enough that we finally pulled someone over to the baby. I had to leave at this point, because I thought for sure they would just take off her oxygen and declare her dead. But when I laid her back down on the table, she miraculously started to breathe a little better and her oxygen got up to acceptable levels. This should be a happy ending, but most likely that baby never got any more help and eventually let go of life in that terrible room. At this point, the doctors told us we had to leave because we were “upsetting the patients.” It’s so terribly frustrating that these doctors don’t value any of these people’s lives enough to exert an effort at all to save them. I can understand and accept death, when everything possible has been done to help. But I can’t understand neglecting to help these people at all. I don’t know how many people die in there everyday from simple neglect, but it’s too many. Two more babies died just this morning, which was again probably preventable. It’s so sad, I can’t handle it. I was very shaken up over this last night and just couldn’t pull it completely together after holding that baby and knowing she almost died, and maybe still did, just because no one felt like helping her.

Today was better and I guess I’ve accepted that I can’t change everyone’s attitudes in this place, but I still can’t accept senseless deaths. I don’t know if I will be able to handle going back into Casualty for the remainder of this trip, but I guess we’ll just have to see. I spent this morning in the Family Care Clinic, which mostly focuses on giving treatment and monitoring children with HIV. I was with a very good doctor here and she was very informative. She told me a lot about the disease, and maternal transmission of it. She said that about 60% of babies will get it from their mom’s if the mom is HIV positive and doesn’t take the proper preventative medication while she is pregnant. Also, if the baby doesn’t get HIV from the mom during pregnancy or childbirth, the baby can also get it from breastfeeding from the mom. However, most babies born without HIV don’t get it from breastfeeding and breastfeeding is often the only option that mother’s have for feeding the baby because formula is so expensive. Formula costs about $500 for 6 months and most people’s income is only about $350 a year. The baby of an HIV positive mother gets tested for HIV at 6 weeks, 9 months, and 18 months. If the baby is negative at 18 months, they have officially not gotten it through maternal transmission. Most of the children who came in were just getting their blood drawn for a CD4 counts. They get this done every 1 to 3 months, depending on how good or bad their counts are. The higher the CD4, the better. It was a very interesting and informative subject for me, since I am doing my Independent study project at SDSU on HIV in Africa. I’m hoping to spend some more time with this doctor before my time in Africa is done. The good thing about this hospital is that all of their HIV testing and counseling and medication is free to everyone. It’s a wonderful thing that I’m sure has saved many people’s lives or has given them a chance at normal life. The doctor told me that the biggest thing that needs to happen to reduce maternal transmission is education and empowerment of the women in Africa. She said many family’s don’t want a pregnant women to go to the doctor for any prenatal care. They have a large distrust of doctors, which I kind of understand after seeing the emergency room. Many women won’t go against the family’s wishes and go get the proper testing and medication. There is also a large stigma yet in the country against those who are diagnosed with HIV, so many women just don’t want to know whether or not they have it. The doctors at this clinic do not tell the children that they have HIV until the children are at least teenagers and able to handle this news. It seems shocking to me, but that is how they have found things work better here. After the HIV clinic, I went to Minor where I helped clean and dress some more wounds. One guy who was about 25 threw the biggest fit I have ever seen over getting his wound cleaned. We numbed it and everything and he was still freaking out. I finally let him hold my hands and I swear that he squeezed them so hard that it hurt me more than cleaning the wound hurt him. After that we called it a day at the hospital.

We went out for lunch again because there really isn’t anything to eat at the compound for lunch. The lunch meats and bread that they have for sandwiches is much different than what we have at home and not in the good way, so most of us don’t want to eat it. However, it is getting expensive to eat out like this, even if things are cheaper than in America. We are just hanging out now in the afternoon and are still deciding whether or not we want to go back to the hospital for an evening shift tonight.

Today is the first cloudy day we have had in Africa. It’s actually kind of misting outside, but it feels good. There are a lot of little things that are different here than back home so I’m going to try and mention them throughout my blog. One little different is the outlets. Not only are they a different voltage, but you have to flip a switch to actually turn the outlet on. I forgot a bunch of times before I remembered this. The milk comes in little sealed bags which they don’t store in the fridge until they open it. It’s also whole milk, which I don’t particularly enjoy (I’m more of a skim person). The food all just tastes a little different than you’d expect, even if the brands are the same as they are back home. For example, the Mountain Dew here doesn’t taste at all normal. It tastes like a citrusy juice. Also, they don’t really use hand soap here at all. Not even in the hospital. In fact, no one ever washes their hands, or uses hand sanitizer, or even wears gloves with the patients except for us. It’s so different than the completely sterile technique used at most hospitals back home. Another thing that is much different than South Dakota is the amount of people that are always out, just on the sides of the streets walking or sitting or just hanging out. It’s thick, like it maybe would be along a major parade route in Sioux Falls. I’m not sure if these people can’t find work, or are on breaks from work, or if that is their work.
Anyways, we went to the hospital again right away this morning. There was a riot last night in one of the market places, so a bunch of streets were blocked off. That made for crazy traffic. The trip to the hospital which usually takes about 15 minutes took about an hour and a half. So we got there much later than we wanted to, but luckily we still made it in time to go on rounds with the doctors up in Pediatrics. This was way better than yesterday because we got to hear about every patient up there, interact with the kids and babies, and listen to how the diagnose and treat the patients. It was basically like intense job shadowing since we didn’t get to do any hands on, but it was still very informative. Most of the children in the ward suffer from malaria, meningitis, pneumonia, malnutrition, or some combination of those. Since they have very few diagnostic tools, many of the children are just treated for everything at once. Many of the children there also have HIV, which no one even really mentions because it is so common here. We will probably be spending some time in the HIV clinic tomorrow morning. (One really great thing about this hospital is that they give free HIV diagnosing, medication, and counseling.) One baby today was suffering from liver failure, probably because of some form of hepatitis. They may be able to treat her, but she probably won’t have a very long life. One baby was 6 weeks old and hadn’t gained any weight since he was born. He was the tiniest thing I have ever seen and was also sick with a lung infection. He couldn’t cry, could only cough. It was so sad to see these babies. Most of the children who are being treated for malnutrition were actually admitted to the hospital for other things and just have to be treated for malnutrition after their illness has cleared up. Another baby had lamella erthyrosis. This is a severe genetic skin condition. They said it was very rare, but treatable if the mother just gave the home treatments like she is supposed to. This mother hadn’t done that and the baby looked very.. deformed, for lack of a better word. I really hope that the mother continues the treatments right after this stay in the hospital. There were also a couple kids in there with complications from sickle cell anemia. One little girl had a stroke because of this. We also saw some kids with cerebral palsy, which was very sad because I know they won’t have the kind of lives here that they could have had in the US. It was so strange to see them treating these kids when a lot of times they don’t have a clear idea of what is wrong. There were several children that they told us really needed help that can only be given at the private hospital, but they couldn’t afford it so this hospital was just trying to help relieve the child of the symptoms of the disease. There was also a couple adorable little babies and toddlers that were very happy and smiley at us. They were the kids who were almost cured of their illness and would be going home soon.
After going along with rounds in pediatrics, we went down to the maternity ward. This place was a lot newer than the pediatric ward, and a lot nicer and cleaner. However, there was still very few monitors and no type of pain medication for the mothers giving birth. Most of the women end up getting C-sections. A couple of the girls with me have gotten to see these C-sections, and one even got to assist with one. I am hoping I will get to see one before I leave. We then went over to Minor theater (one of the best places for us to get actual experience, and therefore the most popular and busiest places) and we watched Mia change a dressing on a man. It was crazy because he actually had a nail still sticking out of this thumb that he will be getting surgically removed on Tuesday. He also had kind of a crazy looking hand wound that she re-dressed (which means she took off the only gauze, scrubbed the wound clean with iodine and gauze until it started bleeding again, added new gauze and wrapped it back up). That wrapped up our excitement for the day.
We went to eat at Café Mocha, which is also close to the market. There really isn’t much food around the compound for lunch, even though we were told there would be. Then we took a small nap because we planned on going back to the hospital from 9 to 1 in the morning for some more experience.
I'm sorry, but I just can't write about tonight yet. However, the best thing that happened was that my camera got stolen.

First Day in the Hospital

Some random tidbits to start off here. I thought the sun would be really hot here and would like burn us instantly. I was way wrong. One girl was out all day in the sun at the beach, without any sunscreen, and didn’t get burned at all. Most of us didn’t even get tan lines through the sunscreen we did have on. So, it seems like it is actually a lot less intense here than back home. Our compound is really nice, and even though there is no air conditioning in the main part of the house, it is always really pleasant, not hot. Most of the bedrooms have air conditioning, and my room actually got too cold last night so we had to shut it off. We have our own bathroom in our cottage and there is one in the main house. There is the main house and 3 cottages. We have a private pool, but I think it is a lot less clean than most pools back home. We have to do laundry by hand and hang it on a line to dry. The water does smell funny though, and it’s hard to take a shower and be focusing on keeping your mouth and eyes from getting any water in them. They speak Swahili here, and I’ve started picking up a few words. Most patients at the hospital don’t speak English, so it’s useful to communicate to them. Most of the doctors do speak English, though.


The living area at our compound.



Our front yard. I love the plants here!

The view as you walk down to the beach.

That brings me to today. Today was our first day working at the hospital. Honestly, it was a little disappointing, I’m sad to say. First of all, we left the compound about 8:30 and it took 2 hours at the hospital to get processed so that we could go work in the wards. My group is Chelsea, Alexa, Angie and I. We were supposed to go to Minor Theater, which is where we get to actually give and take out stitches, redress wounds, and put in and take out catheters, but the group of boys got to it first, so we ended up going to the Pediatric Ward. Dr. Abdul is kind of in charge of us at the hospital and he took us all around to our wards. Once we got to the ward, we just kind of spent a lot of time introducing ourselves and being shuffled from doctor to doctor to interns. They should us around the different parts of the ward. There is an acute care section, an isolation section, and a neo-natal section. We spent most of our time in the acute care which was subdivided into 6 sections: 4 sections for treating acute diseases (mostly severe pneumonia, malaria, meningitis, and anemia) and 2 sections for treating malnutrition. Every baby that comes to the ward is first checked for malaria and HIV, so that doctors can treat accordingly. There was about 12 cribs per section, but some sections had just there tall flat tables with like boxes sectioned off for the babies. I was so amazed how they just let the kids lie there, most of them without even the sides of the crib fully up. The whole ward had a terrible smell and there are no monitors at all. There is one oxygen concentrator with like 12 tubes plugged into it administering oxygen. I’m not going to lie, I quickly figured out that I am not as tough as I thought I was. It made me sick. It is also so hot in the wards that you just sit there and sweat. The hospital is an open air hospital, so there is no air conditioning at all. Only the fancy rooms or offices have fans. They just rely on the breeze moving through to cool it, but there is not enough of a breeze to be effective. Most of the interns that we were supposed to be following didn’t really even explain what they were doing, so we were kind of lost the whole time. We just sort of wandered around the ward. One thing that we did get to see was an intern try and take blood. They just tie rubber gloves around the arms to use as tourniquets, because they have none. The intern just stuck the needle in to the baby, didn’t hit a vain, and just kept moving the needle around trying to get blood. The baby was screaming bloody murder. It took so long for him to even get a few drops of blood. I got really light headed, and I think I almost fainted. The combination of it just really got to me, and I have never got light headed like that in my life. I thought that I wasn’t a squeamish person, because I have seen some pretty gross stuff in the nursing home where I work. Apparently I was wrong. We left the acute wing, checked out the isolation wing (which really isn’t even isolation because no one wears masks and all the patients are still together in one large room), and left the ward. We went to find everyone and then took a tuk tuk to a place near the market (which is very close to our compound).

They don't really like us to take pictures with the patients in them, so here are some of those beds that the babies lay in.

The baby cribs for the older babies. The sides usually aren't up, even when they are in it.

Some wheelchairs. All that they have... its so sad.

A view outside of some of the wards.

It was really nice to eat out for lunch, because we actually got to order American food like cheeseburgers and fries or pizza. You guys have no idea how much you crave that when you just know that it isn’t easily accessible. The people here were really friendly, just like most of them around town have been. We asked for ketchup, which apparently they don’t keep on hand because the waiter actually ran down to the market and bought a couple bottles of ketchup for us, and didn’t even charge us for them. I got charged for a little packet of ketchup at the McDonald’s in Germany at the airport. It just shows how different things are here.
I should put in a disclaimer here that I realize that not all people here are nice. There are certain forms of public transportation that we have to avoid because they are notorious for robbing their riders. At the hospital, we also learned about patients who come in with “mob justice” which basically means they were beaten or knifed almost to death for committing some crime against someone. We also hear stories about women who have been attacked for no reason at all, so we are still being very careful here. We don’t really leave the compound at night, except if we are going to an “upscale” public place. We definitely don’t walk anywhere when we leave at night, because that is the most dangerous. It's also completely sad to me how little everyone has around here and how much trash there is just laying around the city. I very completely overwhelmed today when I saw some kids digging around in a dumpster looking for food. They literally have nothing.

On a different note, we just hung out for awhile then in the afternoon. I finally got to go to the market because I finally got money today. I bought the essentials: more hand sanitizer, granola bars, and a power adaptor. We then went back to the hospital after supper (which was actually really good tonight). I wrote the morning part of this blog in the afternoon down time, so I was really not feeling very good about this whole experience, but after spending the night at the hospital, I do feel a little more upbeat about it. I honestly didn’t want to go back again tonight, but I forced myself to and I’m glad I did. We went with Mia and Joel (a British medical student who has been here for two weeks and has a sense of humor about everything) so they could show us the ropes a little more. We tried to spend time in Minor Theater, but actually no patients came in who needed help, so we just hung out and talked. They did let us practice putting IVs into them, so that was cool. I feel like I could do that in a situation now where I needed to. They also talked to us about how we have to focus on the fact that without this cheap hospital in Mombasa, many of these patients wouldn’t receive medical care at all and how we are a big part of providing the best care that we can. That is a wonderful way of looking at things and I think it will really help me tomorrow. It was awful sad at the hospital tonight though because there were a lot of patients in Casualty (their type of emergency room) and many of them were not receiving the care that they needed in a timely manner. I don’t think that I will be spending a lot of time in there because I’m not sure I can handle the stress of that situation on top of everything else we are learning.

Putting my first IV into Joel. He was a good patient. :)

This was kind of a long post, but it was a long day with not much free time. I’m pretty tired after the emotional rollercoaster. Goodnight!