One Abscess and 15 Chapatis

It’s been a very interesting few days!

I’m getting better at the eating less thing…I’m learning a little bit the intricacies of the fooding as I go...I have mostly not been stuffed-to-the-brim after meals, a great success!

I’ve gotten to see some interesting stuff at the clinic the past few days…The boy with the elbow injury came back and we sent him for an X-ray, but I never heard what happened about that…?

We had a case of typhoid so I got a lesson on the key differences in diagnosis of Typhoid, Malaria, Tonsilitis, and Amoebaiasis, which all have a few symptoms in common and are all common here.

I THOUGHT I might get to see a case of appendicitis when a teenaged girl came in with right-sided abdominal pain, but it turns out it was too high to be the appendix, and she didn’t have any of the other signs. Good for her, I guess!

Today there was a kid with an abscess on his forehead that we had to drain- the think was like a half-inch diameter ball was sitting on his forehead (WARNING here comes gory details, skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to read it!) and so Jeff cut it open with a scalpel and I got to squeeze all the blood/pus out of it. There was a lot of it, it sort of burst out of there as soon as he cut it, like it was under pressure (well..it was) and so it was awesome. I really like pus!

Unfortunately the kid did not enjoy it and he was quite unhappy that we were inflicting pain on him, so afterwards I tried to make friends with him so he wouldn’t grow up with some strange fear of white people. :-P I think it worked?

This week I had githeri for the first time…It’s basically a concoction of beans, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, cilantro, chick peas…despite my general dislike of beans, chick peas, and cooked non-mushed-into-sauce tomatoes, it was actually pretty good.

What I did not enjoy at all was my first taste of liver. The flavor was not great but I could hadle it…what I could NOT handle was the texture; the way the meat crumbles into mushy crumbliness in your mouth…it feels EXACTLY the way I would have thought it would feel from having dissected so many livers. So basically I started putting the pieces of liver to the side in my mouth while I chewed the rest, and then swallowing them whole with the other chewed food. Success.

Saturday morning 30 seconds after I got out of my bed, a tiny cockroach (about 1.5cm) ran across my bed and up the mosquito net…so I grabbed a shoe and killed it. Proof that they are not indestructible: it only took one swat. :-P

I’ve started daydreaming about the next time I’ll get to use a laundry machine. :-P

Sunday was perhaps my best/favorite day so far…no clinic, but after church a couple people came over for lunch, and I got some very funny Swahili lessons (apparently they don’t like my definition of “pot”...what I call a “pot” has no English word to them, it’s just a “sufuria”…basically an aluminum pot without handles. They call something else “pot”….it was interesting to see what difference I give to “jar” vs. “bottle’ (the diameter of the opening relative to the diameter of the container) etc.

All three people I have said “this is a pot” (referring to a surfuria) in front of have given me this absolutely incredulous look like I’m CRAZY…oh well, perhaps I am.

THEN we went out to the main street to get some meat and carrots and cilantro for dinner. It was the farthest I’ve walked since I’ve been here (and we basically went one block…) ….and I thought it was bad when I walk by myself! Not only do the little kids yell “mzungu” but the adults also ALL have a comment to make to whoever I’m walking with, and sometimes me. If it’s with a guy they congratulate him on “getting himself a mzungu” …and today I was walking with the woman who lives across the hall and a guy followed me into the clinic compound asking me “Will you please give me a chance Mzungu!?” mmmm….no thanks, I’m not really into the habit of picking up guys off the streets. :-P Thankfully, he left when I said “sorry, no” But they never do that when I’m alone. Someone said seeing me walk with a Kenyan signals to them that I’m :approachable” so they feel comfortable talking to me. Makes sense I guess.

But anyway… THEN when we got home we made CHAPATIIIIIIIIIIIIII! Which is the Kenyan version of a flatbread…tortilla/pita-like bread. SO GOOD. I’ve loved them since the first time I came here, so it was fantastic to learn how to make them and get to eat them (for the next few days)! I never realized how much OIL goes into them! But it tastes sooo good so it’s ok. :-P There’s pictures….that I will eventually get to putting online. :-D