Stars and Swahili

After 24+ hours of relatively uneventful travel, I have arrived at home in Maseno. This was my first time flying through Dubai, but I didn't have time to actually go out in the city. It does have quite a fancy airport, of which the highlight-and slightly alarming surprise-was the heated toilet seats :). And of course I had to buy a little something so I could get change, as i am a lover of foreign coins. Since I had no major travel adventures or mishaps to regale you all with this time, I will jump right into news from Maseno.

(The kids working on homework)

The kiddos are doing well. Brian, who used to be baby-faced and delightfully pudgy, is now as tall as Daniel. Dimples are still intact though ;). They are all "big and fat" which is how we describe healthy children here (and adults too, much to the horror of American visitors:). We spent the evening after i arrived putting up glow in the dark stars all over the house, compliments of my wonderful and thoughtful mom, known here as "Mama Jescah" (meaning mama OF Jescah :). I don't think they really understood the whole glow in the dark thing, but they took their job of star placement very seriously. I was the distributor of the disproportionately tiny wad of stickum they give you, so it didn't all end up in Arnold's hair. There was a bit of squabbling when Naomy did not agree with the cluster formations that Daniel was making and could not convince him that they needed to be equally spaced over the wall, but overall it was a peaceful and fun affair. When we turned off the lights I heard a chourus of, "Ooooooohhhh". Nothing is more precious than the awe of children. Then Vinicent said, "It's just like heaven." I know, right.............

(Naomy and Arnold deep in discussion on star placement)

Zedekia arrived this morning with his grandmother. I've known him for the last several years, and knew his mother before she died in 2010. He's been with his grandmother ever since, but she has recently become to ill to care for him. He had some pretty severe nutritional and stimulation deficits during his first few yrs, and really doesn't speak yet, even though he's about 6 yrs old. He really hasn't been around other kids much, and has not started school yet. I had wanted to get him into school as quickly as possible to see if we can start to bridge the gap, but then we ran into a little glitch........Zed doesn't speak/understand swahili or English. Both languages are taught in school, and since he hasn't been, he only understands Luo, his tribal language. I also hired another part-time "house mom" to help Jacky and give Zed more individualized attention, and guess what she speaks?? Not Luo. But Jacky does, so we aren't totally up the creek. He is a smart kid and seems to be a fast learner, so I think he'll pick up Swahili quickly.

This is our little family, before the addition of Zedekia, whom will be photographed when he no longer appears afraid of my camera :).

In other news, I've been rounding in the hospital every morning with Gina, who is our chief resident from the University of Tennessee, who will be here until June. We also had Eric and Laura, another doctor and his wife, join us yesterday. They will be here for a month. The big news with their arrival is they brought their 2 yr old, Isabelle. Now we dont see a lot of mzungu babies here, so she has caused quite the stir. I took them on a little walking tour of the village yesterday, and a woman literally yelled out the window of a shop, "Please, can I touch your baby?!" Thankfully, Eric and Laura are pretty laid back, and allowed a gaggle of women to surround them and pat her blonde wisy hair and discuss the oddity of her big blue eyes. She's a doll, and has already made friends with Braven, our 2 yr old neighbor boy who can get into our house with the ease of a cat burglar, and likes climb on the bunk beds.

Stay tuned, more news and pics to come soon!

Jessie

 

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Rabbits and Re-purposed sheets

How time flies………let me tell you what we've been up to.

First, Vinicent and I finished the rabbit pen.  I had a rough idea in my head of how the pen would work, but did not feel the need to draw it out, make dimensions, or otherwise plan it very well.  As my mom can attest to in regards to the majority of my projects (especially those involving sewing) that doesn't typically work well for me.  So imagine my delight and surprise when this one did :)  I taught Vinicent how to measure the stakes so they would at least be equi-distant from each other, and Daniel was in charge of cutting the binding wire into equal pieces for attaching the chicken wire to the stakes.   The other children supervised and gave all kinds of helpful chattering advice in swahili.   I left a message for the hospital fundi (carpenter/workman) asking if I could borrow his saw to make the bottom of the stakes into points so they can be driven into the ground.  I had also planned to show Vinicent how to use a saw……….of course, assuming I was more skilled with a saw than he.   When I got home from the wards I found that Vinicent had already done it……and done a better job than I would have.  I guess 12 yr olds are a little more independent and capable here compared to what I'm used to :)  These kids humble me on a daily basis.

The next day we put the girls to work as well adding the finishing touches, which, of course, involved duct tape.   The rabbits seem to be enjoy their new fenced-in freedom, and made short work of the grass.   We now have a fully functioning, and completely portable, rabbit enclosure.  Not too shabby for a mzungu girl and a 12 yr old boy.

(Pictured behind the rabbit fence is the animal house, where the rabbits and chickens go at night).

On another note, I enjoyed a long awaited victory: Back when I was first moving the kids into the children's home, I had a frustrating incident involving sheets.  I bought 8 sets of sheets (pink for the girls, blue for the boys) and was very pleased with myself, both with my matchy-cutesy efforts as well as the good deal I got.  That is-until I got them all washed and on the beds……..it was then I realized there were about 6 inches shorter than the mattresses on both ends.  What?!  

"Oh," Jacky had said, "You got boarding school sheets."  That got a blank stare from me. 

 "You know, they're for students," she said, as if it were an explanation.  Okay……….Why students don't require the full length of bed covering is still a mystery to me, but long story short-I've had a trunk full of worthless sheets for over a year.  Every time I go in the back room to get something off the shelves, I see it there, taunting me.  Reminding me of my cultural ignorance and wasted funds.  Grrr……

So imagine my delight during my annual inventory, when I found we needed new curtains in several rooms and 6 pillowcases needed replacing.  Ah ha!  The sheets will be redeemed.  I asked Jacky to get her sewing machine threaded up, and I showed her my project.   Some of them could be hung lengthwise as double curtains, others cut in half and made into pillowcases.  Well.  That just sent Jacky into a fit of giggles.  When she finally composed herself, she said, "I've never known a mzungu (white person) who made things, instead of just buying them.  You are such a clever girl, Jessie."  Makes me wonder about the other Americans she has encountered in her lifetime………...

I don't know if hanging a curtain-sized piece of fabric in a window and calling it a curtain is necessarily "clever", but when the expectations have been set low,  it's easy to impress :)  

We now have new curtains and pillowcases in the rotary house and the children's home-and more importantly-my useless sheets have been redeemed :)  

Thank you Lord, for the small things.  

Jessie :) 

Stargazing and School Visits

I feel like my time here is going by so fast. 4 weeks is simply not enough time to get all the work done and do all the exploring/adventuring I need/want to do. Alas......I shall do what I can. So the girls and I have been working hard and playing hard. We took a short impromptu overnight trip to the Kakamega rainforest. Poor Jess had a delayed flight, so she arrived about 18 hours before the trip. Not much time for jetlag recovery, but she has proven to be a trooper :). Two of our coworkers and new friends, Ben and Sam, also joined us.

Somehow I talked them into waking up at 4:30 in the morning and I led them on a little sunrise hike to a lovely spot above the tree line where you can see the whole forest. This group was apparently in better shape than my previous groups, and we made it up to the top well before the sunrise, and got to watch the stars for a while. Thankfully we had ample snacks to hold us over :)

Waiting for the sunrise.......

A few days later I took them on another gorgeous and grueling hike to the top of the mountain behind my house, to Emmatsi Primary School. We gave an off-the-cuff address to the entire school of +400 kids, since they were all waiting for us, and our presumed words of wisdom :). After that we pulled all the class 7 and 8 girls out and taught them all about (giggle, giggle) pads, periods, and things of that nature. The female teachers were also there and also received pads. They will be available to the girls to answer questions and talk more if they have questions in the future. (Take a look at toolittlechildren.org to learn more about our cloth, reusable maxi-pad project).

The girls were particularly fond of the pads with the frog print backing-Nice work Rio Verde ladies!

We met with the male teachers before our talk with the girls, and we pleasantly surprised at their ability to talk about menstration and their desire to help their female students. What gems. I didn't know they also had a secondary school (high school), so I will be returning to the mountaintop on my next trip to distribute more ;)

My doctors thoroughly enjoyed the 45 min hike up winding, unmarked mountain paths between log cabin-sized boulders to get up to the school. For some reason, these narrow, unnamed trails are forever etched in my memory, while I often need google maps to get around Durham, despite the fact I've lived there over 6 years. Funny how the mind works sometimes......
Xoxo,
Jessie

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The Battle of the Bank

Life has been clipping along here at a steady pace and I realized I haven't updated my avid readers in awhile (that's you Mom;). It has been a 3 week struggle to get my online banking password. I opened an account here last year to reduce the cost of transferring the monthly budget, and realized when I got home I needed an online PIN. Well, contrary to its name, it cannot be emailed-at least not until you've filled out the paper request form. So I patiently waited 7 months while western union continued to make a king's ransom off my transfer fees. So I filled out the form and was told I would recieve it within 24 hours. I did not. Went back to the bank. Filled out the CORRECT form. Still did not recieve. Went back to the bank to ask more questions. Waited. Didn't recieve. Went back again. Didn't recieve. Went to Kisumu branch(farther away and bigger) and found out my branch isn't authorized to issue codes. Started over. Spent 3 quality hours with branch manager and customer service. Was told I would get an email in 24 hours. No such email. Returned to Kisumu. Repeat last 3 sentences. Then.........hallelujah-I got it! After the jubilant moment of signing in......I found out they require you-after securely signing in-to request another code that's texted to your phone to verify its you. Your Kenyan phone. AKA-not accessible from US. I spent a defeated moment with my face down on the table. As I lay there-cheek to placemat-I decided it was time for a short break from this. This epic battle of Bank vs. Jescah will recommence Monday morning.........stay tuned.
Last weekend I got to have a lovely Sunday afternoon off and spent it at the house of my dear friend, Lynet. After the hike to get there, I was honored to find a kuku (chicken) feast laid out. We had a shady outdoor picnic that ended with a delightful food coma and some quality sun-basking.

Vinicent and I are busy constructing a portable rabbit shelter so his bunnies don't have to stay cooped up in their dark little house all day. We trekked the 20 min to the hardware duka and selected our wood pieces, chicken wire, nails and binding wire. We will also be repurposing an old mosquito net. The shopkeeper was skeptical of our plans, but it all makes sense in my head, so what could go wrong, right? I'll let you know how it turns out.

In other news, my doctors have all arrived. Dr. Hardison and his wife. Jess (from Duke) and Sarah and Suzanne (U of Tenn). We are having all sorts of fun.

Suzanne meets the rabbits.

Vinicent, Daniel, and Sarah doing a little evening studying. We'll be honest-the adults have been reading the children's books as much as we've been reading Harrison's Internal Medicine. I've learned all out pre and post-sinusoidal blood flow thought the liver AND how the Rift Valley was formed (thanks National Geographic for kids;).
Now that Jess has carried over the other half of my supply of cloth maxi-pads we are getting ready to distribute them to schools. I met with a new school last week, Ebulako Primary, and they are very excited to get involved in the Pad Project. I have also been busy arranging for the group of nursing students, who are coming in March, to bring pads and teaching to several new schools-as the lovely ladies back home are producing pads faster than I can bring them over. YAY! It's a problem I am happy to deal with ;) Keep up the good work!
Love love,
Jessie

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Earrings for Eddah

We had quite the milestone this weekend in our little corner of the world. Drumroll please.............Eddah got her ears pierced :). She said she was the ONLY girl in school who didn't have her ears pierced. Pole sana. Ahhhh.......so this is what my mom felt like :). I'm not a complete pushover though-Vinicent decided he wanted one if his ears pierced, but I put the kibosh on that pretty quickly. I carried ice in my purse and we walked fast to get to the little row of shops before it all melted. And thank goodness we iced her ear lobes, because on the first pierce she had a gun malfunction and the earring got stuck halfway in the gun and halfway in her ear. Poor baby. I was quite expecting her to pull the "I'm not doing that again" card, but she didn't say a word and nodded yes when we asked her if she wanted to try again. Apparently the beauty-knows-no-pain phenomena is worldwide :) Our saga had a happy ending when she left with 2 fully pierced-through ears and a huge smile.

Other than that, life is as usual here. I start every day waking up before my alarm, which is such a luxury I never have in my other life. After my morning tea and toast, I do ward rounds (see each patient in the male, female, pediatrics, and maternity wards). Then I help with whatever medical procedures need to be done, like debridements, dressing changes, and triage. One of the most needed skills here is organization, strangely enough. This week I have finally gained access to the locked and mysterious "supply room". There is a room off one of the operating theaters that is stacked high with bags and boxes covered in varying layers of dust and neglect. It is where all the donations are tossed that no one knows what to do with. I have found great dressing supplies, worthless equipment that won't work here, and everything in between. Did you know they used to make syringes out of glass?!............yup-even found some of those ;). The sorting, labeling, and throwing away will surely keep me busy for several more afternoons.

The amount of fun little boys can have (and how dirty they get) with a handful of rocks and a pile of dirt will never cease to amaze and delight me :) This is Arnold and Brian outside the house.

This is my view from the sunset rock........

I don't think the boys enjoyed the sunset as much as watching my less-than-graceful-mzungu-in-a-skirt dismount from the rock. Those boys rival Spider-Man both in their ability to scale great heights and their sticky hands.

What a sweet day it has been.

Jessie

 

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Bouquets and Bedsores

I am starting to feel like myself again, now that I am recovered from the worst jet lag I have ever experienced. I was feeling functional enough until I got to the Nairobi airport at 7 am. Customs took me a good 2 hours because I made friends with a lovely Scottish lady names Clare and her two precious children, Emma and Harry (pronounced 'Arry). She was traveling alone with the children(brave lady) and I had some time to kill, so we partnered up. Between the two of us we got two huge luggage trolleys, a stroller, 2 sweaty, tired children, and two even-more tired adults, through customs and visas. After I sent them on their way I had 3 more hours until my last little flight......and I hit the wall. Hit it and slide down it, turned to a pile of mush at the bottom. I somehow managed to drag myself onto the flight. The attendant had to wake me up to tell me to put my seatbelt on ;). Again, dragged myself off the plane, stumbled into waiting ambulance, in and out of consciousness back to Maseno (and that should be impressive to those of you who know the road). Just when I was starting to question my judgement to undertake such a ridiculous journey.......there were my children, waiting on the porch in their new Christmas outfits. And this was waiting for me on my bedroom door:

Now I am quite enjoying myself and managing to stay busy. I came home after a particularly long day this week to find this lovely site waiting for me. I had told them I love flowers, and now every unfortunate bush in the general vicinity of our house has been completely ravaged by small, determined hands.

Arranging flowers in my strangely-limp-mzungu hair has also become a favorite activity. I like to spend a few minutes in my favorite chair on the porch right when i get home as the sun is setting. Thats when they descend on me :) Naomi gently puts the blossoms around my face, while Arnold likes to securely matte the greenery and twig bits to the back of my head.......To each his own, I suppose.

On the clinical front I am keeping busy and learning quite a lot. There are some new Daktaris here that I really like. I can now confidently diagnose gangrene from 5 feet away with just my nose. I am currently treating a woman with the wort pressure sores I have ever seen.....and probably ever will. When I first saw them, it was only the last 7 years of learning to control my gag and gasp reflex that kept me quiet. I do love the challenge of a good wound though-the possibility for fresh new skin, the different ways to care for it to keep it clean, uninfected, and healing. I now see her everyday, and feel like I have met her whole family and know them by name. She's paralyzed for the waist down, so she needs to be repositioned frequently. Her aunt is a teacher, and runs home on her breaks between lessons to reposition and clean her since they couldn't find anyone to help at home that could manage her medical needs. Wow. And you thought home health in the US was hard to come by....... I am training two of her aunts to do the dressings at home, so she can get back to her life.

I spent the better part of today helping in the theatre (operating room), between c-sections and wound debridements. I've also had two palliative care cases, which are pretty rare here, so I've gotten to use what little expertise I have.

We had a patient that was pregnant with twins and had pre-eclampsia (dangerously high blood pressure). Apparently our anesthesiologist doesn't like pre-eclampsia c-sections (who does??) and won't do them. The initial consensus was to let her try to deliver naturally and see how it went(nooooooo!), but after much discussion we finally decided to refer her out. For all the Downton Abbey fans out there, that is how poor Sybil met her demise. Before she left, I gave her some pads and reusable diapers (thanks Em!) and she was delighted.

Other than that, I have just been working in the hospital, tackling the never-ending list of projects that needs to be done at the rotary house (like fix the shower so my visitors don't get scalded), and hanging out with my ragamuffins.

All my love,

Jessie

 

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Airports and Amsterdam

Ahhh, my restless heart is once again free to roam the world. I have explored Amsterdam today, in between my marathon flights. I flew to NYC first- Interesting new development to report in airport security; I didn't have to remove my shoes or take anything out of my bag. They say this is an attempt to get people through faster. And it was-until we got to the bottleneck of one guy holding an ipad. Each person had to walk up and touch the screen. After you touched it it would show you a gigantic arrow to the left (or occasionally the right if you had a walker or a stroller) and then you had to go that way to get in line. Apparently the human post holding up the ipad wasn't allowed to touch it for you, so he had to explain it to each person. Now I am in the international line, so the older-and-non-English-speaking population was really struggling. As was the human post. Very entertaining to watch though. Though it may save that poor man carpal tunnel syndrome in the future from endlessly sweeping his arm to the left, the mental toll might not be worth it. Not sure this is the best use of tax dollars and state of the art technology........just my humble opinion.

Anyway, my first taste of Amsterdam was quite lovely, and I hope to sample more in the future. I packed soley for weather on the equator, which I bitterly regretted when I saw the outside temp was about 40 degrees. I put on everything I had with me, which included compression socks with sandals, leggings, a long skirt and a raincoat. Shexy, I know :) thankfully the Dutch are a little more free and loose with their fashion, so I wasn't too much of a spectacle.

Amsterdam is quite a beautiful city. So pretty in fact, that I took several pictures of a mall before I realized the palace was one more block down :). Whoops.

This is the view from right outside Anne Frank's front door. That was a sobering, but amazing place to be. It's hard to believe such things were ever allowed to happen. Also amazing what the human spirit can endure, and still remain hopeful. I'd like to think I would have had an attic full of Jews if I'd been alive then.

The flower markets are actually on floating barges that come right up to the sidewalk :)

And this lady is my hero. I can only hope to be rocking sassy red heels and handbags, while on a bike, when my hair is white. Something to aspire to.......

Jessie

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