“Mama Africa”

… is the name of a song we often hear while traveling in crowded matatus (mini-buses that serve as public transportation). They’re supposed to fit 14 people, but just today we squished ourselves in one that held, get this, 34 adults. I had two babies sitting on my lap, and was pressed against an elderly man wearing a tattered top-hat. Practically sitting on his lap, I apologized to the elderly man for cramping his space. He laughed and said “Don’t worry mah sweet child. Welcome to Africa.”

I’m rounding week 2 here in Kenya. I spend my mornings waking up to roosters, washing dishes outside in buckets (usually using rain water), walking to the well to fetch water (either to shower or for cooking), and drinking chai tea (with fresh ground ginger, masala, and milk from the cow outside our door). The sky opens, the hot African sun rises from the horizon, and I leave to go spend my day in the clinic, or at the Lwala primary school, or to visit friends in their mud huts with thatched roofs.

I love going on afternoon jogs around the village. I imagine it must be quite a site to see this white woman with long, red hair running down the dirt paths. Children always run up to the road to greet me (they want to shake my hand- and afterwards, run away looking at their palms to see if any of my whiteness has rubbed off like paint…hahaha).

It’s kind of hard to get very far on my run before someone stops me to chat. Not many people in Lwala jog just to jog, so there’s always confusion when people ask what I’m doing. Here’s how a typical mid-jog conversation goes (Milty and Fred, sorry for all the spelling errors- I’m still learning how to write in Dholuo):

Villager: “Ber ahinya!” (“hello!”)
Me: “Ber ahinya!” (“hello!”… trying to wave and just keep running without being rude)
Villager: “Idhi nade?” (“how are you doing?”)
Me: “Adhi ma ber” (“I’m doing well” … slowing down a little)
Villager: “Intie?” (“are you here?” … a typical greeting)
Me: “Antie!” (“I am here!” … slowing the jog)
Villager: “Idecanye?” (“where are you going?”… walking toward me, reaching out to shake my hand)
Me: (I have to stop jogging to shake hands) “Onge, ringo” (“nothing, to run” –and this is where my grammar declines rapidly)
Villager: “An’go? Idecanye?” (“what? But, where are you going?”- as in “you must be going somewhere… nobody just runs without a destination”)

And this is where I get stuck. I don’t want to try to explain in my broken Dholuo that I’m just running for exercise, and that chances are I’ll just be running in a big circle, because that will take lots of time and probably cause lots of confusion (since I sound like a 2-year-old when I speak Dholuo). So I end up just saying,

Me: “Ade dala!” (which means, “I’m going home!” I feel badly because this isn’t totally true, but it’s the only thing I can think of that I know is grammatically correct- and I’ll eventually be going home, right?)
Villager: “Eeeee (pronounced like the letter ‘a’), erokamano” (“ah, yes. Ok. Thank you.”)
Me: “erokamano ahinya. oriti!” (“thank you very much! Goodbye!”)

Repeat that exact conversation about 15 times, and that’s what my jogs are like in Lwala. It’s pretty funny.

Just yesterday I was shadowing Nurse Rose in the clinic (or “hop-si-tal” as they say in the village), and our last patient of the day walked in. The mother wore a dress of bright orange splashed with a lively pattern of green and brown mangoes. Her baby lay on his stomach, weak and skinny with tiny arms and legs. The child looked no more than a year old, and so I was shocked to hear that he was in fact, three and a half years. The mother unwrapped the child from his blanket and lay him on the examining table, face down. Excuse the graphic description, but coming from his skinny little bottom was this huge, swollen, red mass of tissue- the baby had a rectal prolapse, which means his rectum had bulged out from his thin body. Apparently this condition is a result of severe diarrhea, which is extremely grave for children because it causes serious dehydration and malnutrition (which explained his shockingly small size).

Rose said the prolapse was the largest she’d ever seen- that she wouldn’t be able to treat the child in the clinic by herself. So it was 5:00 on a Friday, and Omondi (the clinic manager) agreed to take the boy (who I’ll call “Samuel”) and his mother to the nearest private hospital (2 hours away). Bill Young (who is here working on clinic stuff), Samuel, his mother, Sam’s 9-month-old sister and I piled into Omondi’s car. Sam, who couldn’t sit or lay on his back due to the prolapse, lay his head on my lap and fell asleep, despite the bumpy ride down the rocky, dirt road.

We arrived at the hospital (nice by Kenyan standards). It was dark and POURING rain. I’m talking sheets of rain, so torrential it feels like the sky is falling down; rain so loud you can’t hear your own voice, or cars on the road, or the babies crying (no, screaming) in the injection room.

Two hours later, after several attempts to insert an IV into his hand (and lots of whimpering on his part), Samuel was sleeping soundly from some Valium. His prolapse had been fixed thanks to a kind Clinical Officer (who’d never preformed the procedure before, but managed anyway).

I felt for Samuel’s mother, who’d never been in a hospital like this in her life. Coming from Lwala, from cows and maize fields and mud walls, to this huge hospital with electricity and multiple floors and plastic everywhere- it must have been a huge culture shock. Eyes wide, looking out of place in their Lwala-style clothing, the mother with her two young children agreed to spend a night at the hospital in the wards (sharing one bed, of course). We plan on returning today to visit them in the hospital. And already, Omondi (Lwala clinical manager) is looking into getting an ambulance for hospital referrals from Lwala.

In the past 6 days I’ve also seen in the clinic: a man with a serious snake bite, several babies with kwashiorkor (extreme malnutrition), a severe case of malaria that required IV, pregnant women galore, a older man with the biggest open leg wound I’ve ever seen, two cases of shingles, and tons of kids with bellies full of intestinal worms. They’ve all received excellent medical care, and most are doing much better after taking their prescribed medication. It’s incredible the difference this clinic is making in the community.

So now it’s Saturday and we’re off to walk the five miles back to Lwala (after, of course, purchasing some rabolo, sweet, small bananas that women sell on the side of the road).

Hope all is well wherever you are reading this.
And just in case anyone was curious, if you need to use the restroom here, you say “lach oh ewa” which literally translates to “the urine is defeating me.”

I love Lwala.

Matek,

abbie