June 29, 2006
There are three greetings that I've grown used to hearing here in Kenya. The first one is "oyaore," or "good morning." The second is"ber," or "good" (as in "good to meet you"). The third is"Hello…Will you marry me?" (the men say this with a thick Kenyan accent- almost sounds Rastafarian- and always puts a smile on my face). Almost all the girls who've visited Kenya from the States have heard this last greeting... we've all experienced various marriage proposals in all their glory! Here's the story my personal favorite proposal. So I just spent 5 days in Nairobi with Rachel (who recently left for the States), Flo and Fred to meet with health officials from CHAK (Christian Health Association of Kenya). We wanted information on where/how we could get medical supplies for our clinic- unfortunately CHAK isn't going to fit our clinic model so we'll have to keep looking. Anyway, Rachel and I were walking near the park one day and passed this man who was sitting on the side of the road. As we walked by, this dear man calls out "Hello! Will you marry me?" and Rachel and I smile back, nodding our heads no. Normally, our response would have ended the conversation, but this man continued in an eager voice, "But.. I have BIG garden… and, and many COWS!" Laughing, we couldn't help but appreciate his persistency and creativity, so we accepted. So I'm happy to report that Rachel and I are now engaged to some dear man with a big smile who hangs out on Moi Ave. near the "Chicken Inn" in Nairobi. We haven't decided on a date yet.
The ride to Nairobi was almost as eventful as Nairobi itself. We rode 8 hours from Lwala to Nairobi in a crowded matatu, passing the rolling green hills of the Kenyan countryside, and various small, bustling village markets- bumping up and down the whole way on the poorly maintained roads. We drove through the Rift Valley near the base of Mt. Kenya during sunset and I saw giraffes and zebras! It was incredible. I also got the chance to experience a little bit of the Masai tribe, which for many, is the definitive symbol of "tribal" Kenya. The Masai have a reputation for being fierce warriors. The women are famous for their colorful, large, plate-like bead necklaces, while men typically wear a red checked Masai blanket and carry a distinctive ball-ended club. They often have large holes in their earlobes, from which hangs traditional jewelry- strikingly beautiful. Their diet includes blood supplemented by a drink made from milk fermented with cow's urine and ashes, which (I thought this was pretty interesting) is shown to lower cholesterol! The tribe that I'm living with, the Luo's, are somewhat different. The Luo tribe is known fortheir music, dancing and love of soccer. There are many distinctive Luo instruments including those made from gut or wire strings and their base-thumping huge drums. The Luo's love their maize, beans, kale, millet and (fortunately? unfortunately?) I have yet to be offered blood to drink.
After 5 days in Nairobi I was so happy to return to our quiet little rural village of Lwala. Nairobi is an incredibly busy city- the streets choked with buses, people, speeding taxis and small kids running around in torn clothes, begging (I gave them apples from our hotel). I found myself missing the green hills of Lwala laced with houses made of mud and sticks, groves of avocado plants, maize fields, and the paddlewide leaves of the banana trees that practically sparkle in the sunlight. I missed simple every day tasks such as walking to the spring in the early morning to fetch water (hearing the sound of roosters crowing), cooking in front of fires in our kitchen hut and sweeping outside the house with a homemade broom made of bundled twigs. It was comforting to return to the familiar language, Dholuo, and its rich, deep vowels made in the back of the mouth. I missed running on paths through the maize fields (which reach far above my head) and on narrow dirt trails winding under the shade of guava trees and bougenvia. I'm so happy to be back in Lwala- no showers, no lattes and all- and picture myself having a difficult time leaving in 5 weeks.
Milton arrived from Vandy med school a few days ago after taking his step 1 board exams to be a doctor (and an fabulous one, I might add). Since Milton is the reason I'm in Lwala, it's been incredible to be here with him, experiencing and living in his home village. Milton is certainly a leader of his community and in addition to being one of the best soccer players on the team (along with Fred), he is adored and respected by all. While he's here, Milton is the doctor of the village, and almost every morning he is greeted by a line of patients outside his hut, eagerly waiting to be seen by their beloved "Abote" (Milton's nickname). Milton lets me go with him when he sees patients and I'm constantly amazed and touched by the lives he is helping here in the village. Sometimes he walks 30-40 minutes to go visit a sick baby, or a dying woman. We've seen about 30 patients in the past 3 days, along with Diana Lemly (another Vandy med student who arrived 2 days ago). Even though the past 3 days have been exhausting (last night we were awake until 12:30 am helping a crying, sick 1-year old take some anti-malarial medication), I am relieved that Milton and Diana are here… armed with their various medications, stethoscopes, a blood-pressure cuff and medical text books, they bring hope to the people of Lwala (and to me). Before they arrived, I was so frustrated/ heart-broken/ angered by the lack of medical care. The most agonizing feeling is to not be able to help a sick, suffering person when you're the one they look to for healing. Now that Milton and Diana are acting as temporary village "doctors," people are in fact getting some health care (very basic health care, but health care nonetheless). I wish they didn't leave in a week to begin their 3rd year of medical school. There is such a great need for their services right now. Again, we need to get the clinic up and running.
The past three days I've seen babies with malaria, asthma, chickenpox, infected wounds, and severe malnutrition. Milton and Diana diagnosed a sweet 4-year-old boy with Whipworm (a parasite) and Pallagra (where the skin of the legs and arms have dark marks, peeling sores and the ankles and feet are swollen… due to malnutrition). The list goes on… I saw a woman dying of Tuberculosis, a man with reticular pain who had a shooting pain down his legs into his feet (so bad that he couldn't work in the farm and was starving b/c he didn't have money or food), an old woman in severe pain from a bad case of shingles, a darling woman (who calls me her daughter) who's had intense abdominal pain for over 2 years, and several cases of HIV/AIDS and malaria.
The most memorable was the case of my friend, I'll call her Atieno, a 28 year-old woman who is beautiful enough to be a supermodel in the US. She's tall, elegant and has these smoldering cat-like eyes that are nearly yellow. She has three small kids, the youngest a little baby girl who is one month old. I know Atieno well from the health surveys we completed a while ago. She's shy to those she doesn't know, but once she trusts you, she's playful and sarcastic; full of life in both personality and spirit. Two days ago Atieno was gored by a bull- the horns gashed a deep wound into her right upper thigh, almost ripping through her entire quad muscle. She got stitches from a local healer, and even though the wound is clean, we are very worried about infection. Before Milton could get there, the healer injected her with something after she was gored (we're not sure what), and until we figure out what she was given, we're hesitant to give her Penicillin (which Milton andDiana have). She has a high fever and swollen lymph nodes… and the saddest part…. we're pretty certain she is HIV positive so her immune system is significantly hindered. Atieno's husband died recently of AIDS and the past few months she's been losing weight rapidly, is very weak and lethargic. She hasn't been tested for HIV b/c she can'tafford it (the test costs about 50 cents), and so of course we offered to pay for an HIV test… I'm going with her for support when she gets tested in 5 days. While we were talking to Atieno, her baby started to cry in her bed. I went to the room to pick up the baby, brought her to Atieno, and my heart sank when she began to breastfeed. HIV istransmitted from mother to child through breast milk. It was the saddest sight to witness an HIV positive mother breast-feeding her newborn baby. The same milk that was nourishing the baby girl's little body (her tiny fingers, toes, her soft skin and pudgy neck) may also have been infecting her with a fatal virus…. it's an image that will haunt me forever.
Before I go I wanted to update you all on 2 patients that I saw early on in my stay in Lwala (a patient I met during the health surveys). I wrote about the 14 year-old mother who had major complications during her labor, and who's newborn appeared yellow and lifeless in my arms. The mother was moaning outside on a straw mat, and her family mistook me for a doctor when I visited… anyway, both the young mother and her baby died about a week ago at home. I wasn't able to attend the funerals because I was in Nairobi. Hearing about their deaths really, really upset me and I'm still trying to grasp what happened, but I think it's so representative of the current situation in Lwala. Young mother, in poverty, doesn't receive proper pre-natal, obstetric or post-natal care either because she can't afford it or because there aren't qualified doctors or nurses in the area…. and both she and her baby die as a result. I can only hope that these emails are expressing how deeply needed the Lwala clinic is and how desperately people here need help. As not to end on a sad note, during the survey we weighed a baby whose name is… get this… BillClinton Odongo. Incredible.
Hope all is well in the US-
Oriti for now,
Love Abbie
The ride to Nairobi was almost as eventful as Nairobi itself. We rode 8 hours from Lwala to Nairobi in a crowded matatu, passing the rolling green hills of the Kenyan countryside, and various small, bustling village markets- bumping up and down the whole way on the poorly maintained roads. We drove through the Rift Valley near the base of Mt. Kenya during sunset and I saw giraffes and zebras! It was incredible. I also got the chance to experience a little bit of the Masai tribe, which for many, is the definitive symbol of "tribal" Kenya. The Masai have a reputation for being fierce warriors. The women are famous for their colorful, large, plate-like bead necklaces, while men typically wear a red checked Masai blanket and carry a distinctive ball-ended club. They often have large holes in their earlobes, from which hangs traditional jewelry- strikingly beautiful. Their diet includes blood supplemented by a drink made from milk fermented with cow's urine and ashes, which (I thought this was pretty interesting) is shown to lower cholesterol! The tribe that I'm living with, the Luo's, are somewhat different. The Luo tribe is known fortheir music, dancing and love of soccer. There are many distinctive Luo instruments including those made from gut or wire strings and their base-thumping huge drums. The Luo's love their maize, beans, kale, millet and (fortunately? unfortunately?) I have yet to be offered blood to drink.
After 5 days in Nairobi I was so happy to return to our quiet little rural village of Lwala. Nairobi is an incredibly busy city- the streets choked with buses, people, speeding taxis and small kids running around in torn clothes, begging (I gave them apples from our hotel). I found myself missing the green hills of Lwala laced with houses made of mud and sticks, groves of avocado plants, maize fields, and the paddlewide leaves of the banana trees that practically sparkle in the sunlight. I missed simple every day tasks such as walking to the spring in the early morning to fetch water (hearing the sound of roosters crowing), cooking in front of fires in our kitchen hut and sweeping outside the house with a homemade broom made of bundled twigs. It was comforting to return to the familiar language, Dholuo, and its rich, deep vowels made in the back of the mouth. I missed running on paths through the maize fields (which reach far above my head) and on narrow dirt trails winding under the shade of guava trees and bougenvia. I'm so happy to be back in Lwala- no showers, no lattes and all- and picture myself having a difficult time leaving in 5 weeks.
Milton arrived from Vandy med school a few days ago after taking his step 1 board exams to be a doctor (and an fabulous one, I might add). Since Milton is the reason I'm in Lwala, it's been incredible to be here with him, experiencing and living in his home village. Milton is certainly a leader of his community and in addition to being one of the best soccer players on the team (along with Fred), he is adored and respected by all. While he's here, Milton is the doctor of the village, and almost every morning he is greeted by a line of patients outside his hut, eagerly waiting to be seen by their beloved "Abote" (Milton's nickname). Milton lets me go with him when he sees patients and I'm constantly amazed and touched by the lives he is helping here in the village. Sometimes he walks 30-40 minutes to go visit a sick baby, or a dying woman. We've seen about 30 patients in the past 3 days, along with Diana Lemly (another Vandy med student who arrived 2 days ago). Even though the past 3 days have been exhausting (last night we were awake until 12:30 am helping a crying, sick 1-year old take some anti-malarial medication), I am relieved that Milton and Diana are here… armed with their various medications, stethoscopes, a blood-pressure cuff and medical text books, they bring hope to the people of Lwala (and to me). Before they arrived, I was so frustrated/ heart-broken/ angered by the lack of medical care. The most agonizing feeling is to not be able to help a sick, suffering person when you're the one they look to for healing. Now that Milton and Diana are acting as temporary village "doctors," people are in fact getting some health care (very basic health care, but health care nonetheless). I wish they didn't leave in a week to begin their 3rd year of medical school. There is such a great need for their services right now. Again, we need to get the clinic up and running.
The past three days I've seen babies with malaria, asthma, chickenpox, infected wounds, and severe malnutrition. Milton and Diana diagnosed a sweet 4-year-old boy with Whipworm (a parasite) and Pallagra (where the skin of the legs and arms have dark marks, peeling sores and the ankles and feet are swollen… due to malnutrition). The list goes on… I saw a woman dying of Tuberculosis, a man with reticular pain who had a shooting pain down his legs into his feet (so bad that he couldn't work in the farm and was starving b/c he didn't have money or food), an old woman in severe pain from a bad case of shingles, a darling woman (who calls me her daughter) who's had intense abdominal pain for over 2 years, and several cases of HIV/AIDS and malaria.
The most memorable was the case of my friend, I'll call her Atieno, a 28 year-old woman who is beautiful enough to be a supermodel in the US. She's tall, elegant and has these smoldering cat-like eyes that are nearly yellow. She has three small kids, the youngest a little baby girl who is one month old. I know Atieno well from the health surveys we completed a while ago. She's shy to those she doesn't know, but once she trusts you, she's playful and sarcastic; full of life in both personality and spirit. Two days ago Atieno was gored by a bull- the horns gashed a deep wound into her right upper thigh, almost ripping through her entire quad muscle. She got stitches from a local healer, and even though the wound is clean, we are very worried about infection. Before Milton could get there, the healer injected her with something after she was gored (we're not sure what), and until we figure out what she was given, we're hesitant to give her Penicillin (which Milton andDiana have). She has a high fever and swollen lymph nodes… and the saddest part…. we're pretty certain she is HIV positive so her immune system is significantly hindered. Atieno's husband died recently of AIDS and the past few months she's been losing weight rapidly, is very weak and lethargic. She hasn't been tested for HIV b/c she can'tafford it (the test costs about 50 cents), and so of course we offered to pay for an HIV test… I'm going with her for support when she gets tested in 5 days. While we were talking to Atieno, her baby started to cry in her bed. I went to the room to pick up the baby, brought her to Atieno, and my heart sank when she began to breastfeed. HIV istransmitted from mother to child through breast milk. It was the saddest sight to witness an HIV positive mother breast-feeding her newborn baby. The same milk that was nourishing the baby girl's little body (her tiny fingers, toes, her soft skin and pudgy neck) may also have been infecting her with a fatal virus…. it's an image that will haunt me forever.
Before I go I wanted to update you all on 2 patients that I saw early on in my stay in Lwala (a patient I met during the health surveys). I wrote about the 14 year-old mother who had major complications during her labor, and who's newborn appeared yellow and lifeless in my arms. The mother was moaning outside on a straw mat, and her family mistook me for a doctor when I visited… anyway, both the young mother and her baby died about a week ago at home. I wasn't able to attend the funerals because I was in Nairobi. Hearing about their deaths really, really upset me and I'm still trying to grasp what happened, but I think it's so representative of the current situation in Lwala. Young mother, in poverty, doesn't receive proper pre-natal, obstetric or post-natal care either because she can't afford it or because there aren't qualified doctors or nurses in the area…. and both she and her baby die as a result. I can only hope that these emails are expressing how deeply needed the Lwala clinic is and how desperately people here need help. As not to end on a sad note, during the survey we weighed a baby whose name is… get this… BillClinton Odongo. Incredible.
Hope all is well in the US-
Oriti for now,
Love Abbie
posted by abbie at 12:12 PM
1 Comments:
Hi there nice work you are doing there,and very good inspiring stories.You can still check out my blog lukastem.bye!
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