Mathare Day 1

Tuesday

Today was day 1 of working in the Mathare clinic. In the morning we brought my suitcase over to my new apartment, on the third floor of an apartment building on the edge of the slum, very near the clinic. I just piled my stuff in there and went to the clinic.

It was a veeeeery sloooooow day today; the doctor and I spent much more time chatting with each other than with patients. Yesterday was apparently very busy, and hopefully tomorrow will be. So should the opportunity arise, I’m going to learn IVs, injections, and (this is rare, sadly…)suturing, and how to treat the common medical ailments.

The doctor’s name is Jeff. He made me a list of the few most common ailments they see, and gave me a book on management of common medical issues in Kenya, so I can read about them. They see a lot of respiratory infections, malaria (not common in Nairobi, but often people travel outside Nairobi, get Malaria, then come back and need to be treated), parasite/worm infections, urinary tract infections, and wounds (my faaaavorite!) so if we can get the patients flowing, this will be a good experience!

There is one room for the lab, one exam room, and one room for the pharmacy. It is free for the patients to see the doctor, but they have to pay if they need a lab test or medications. Unlike the US, where lab tests are hundreds of dollars sometimes, all of these range from 50-200 shillings. And 80 shillings is one dollar. Every now and then they have a free day, where even the lab and medications are free. Most hospitals around here charge to see the doctor, and then the people have to go elsewhere and pay a lot of money to a “chemist” for their drugs. So this is a very good setup for them.

At one point I stuck my face out the curtain(door) and the kids who were at recess saw me and started shouting "mzungu" so I went out there and they all came over and stood at a distance, until one got brave and came over to touch my hand, which of course started a mob of kids around me touching my hands and fighting to sit next to me until their teachers called them inside...I just can't get over how big of a spectacle I am around here...haha

At 5:00 we closed up the clinic and I went home, unpacked my suitcase and had some (instant) coffee. Then Beth (who owns a salon 30 seconds away) went back to the salon for a “few mintues” (that was almost an hour ago) so I’m here writing this!