In which I ditch the desert, but not before becoming a Watta and starting my first IV

So first silly things first.

This is apparently an exercise in faith and humility. I’m following the advice of my biological and heavenly fathers when I do this, and I don’t want to do it but I’m being a good little girl and obeying. :-P
I heard from a couple medical schools….bad things, that they don’t love me, but I shouldn’t hate myself because they had lots of applications and it’s very competitive. (I actually find the condolence letter highly amusing, I feel like they’re trying to convince someone not to get depressed or suicidal after the 1^st depressing sentence by saying “comforting” things) So. I’m not really worried….yet…because really, I don’t care if I only get into one school, as long as I get into one…and I’ve still got a few I haven’t heard from yet. So I’m just trusting God and knowing that this is what he wants me to do and so it’s gonna happen. The only reason I stress out is because I worry “aaaaaaaah what if I’ve got it all wrong and somehow this isn’t God’s plan and I don’t get in anywhere, what am I going to TELL people!?” so I’m doing the whole “humble before humiliation” thing…or something…and saying PRAY for the other few applications (which still includes my first choice…and the last choice that is a couple thousand miles away from home) that I haven’t heard from yet. Kay?
Daddy Gerard, was that good?
Gah I hate writing that paragraph and posting it because my PLAN was to not say anything to anyone until I had a nice little acceptance to tell people about. Grrr. So don’t get offended if I didn’t say anything because this all happened within the last internet-free week and I made my family zip their lips and throw away the key, but I wasn’t really going to tell anyone anyways even if they ASKED unless you were extra extra special and since nobody has asked nobody knows if they count as extra extra special or not. :-P

Bah.
anyways. Back to the fun stories:
This week there were a couple days I dressed like the locals and pretended to be a Watta, one of the tribes in the area. The nurse, Margaret, has a 9-month old daughter, and one of the older women from the village comes to watch her during the day so Margaret can go to the clinic. So I had her teach me how to tie the leso like them (the ones they wear are basically strips of cloth about 5 ft high and something like 20 ft. long, and you wrap and tie them and ta da, a dress!) so everyone was apparently very excited to see me dressed like one of them, they started calling me “hawatta” (the Watta word for “Watta”) and telling me I would marry a Watta. I get even more funny looks as a white person dressed like a Watta than I do as a white person dressed as a white person. :-p When I left, the teachers at the school (who are from all over Kenya, and considered missionaries) were saying that they were so blessed and challenged by my willingness to become like the people and my bravery and faith for sleeping in the truck…which I had to laugh at because I only did it because I thought it would be interesting to learn how to tie the wrap like them, and I sleep in the truck because I’m a BAD missionary and not willing to suffer the heat of sleeping inside! :-P But that’s how God works I guess, making things that are just new and exciting and even completely selfish for me to be the same thing that just impresses people and makes them feel like I really value their culture. J

The clinic was SUUUUPER cool this week…there was this one little girl with a fungal skin infection that was like this gaping hole right outside her armpit, it looked like a deep cigarette burn but it was all dry, but there was a ½cm HOLE in her flesh. And an 8-year old girl walked 15km with her dad to get to the clinic because she had a burn from spilled boiling milk ok her leg, which was 5 days old. I graciously got permission to photograph it, so that’s on facebook for the non-squeamish. We debrided it and dressed it, then sent her home with some more supplies to change the dressing so they don’t have to walk the 15km again in 2 days. It’s a LONG walk! We walked 6km (each way) yesterday and it took over an hour (each way), and I have a big internal blister on one of my feet from too much walking. And this little girl did it with a huge burn on her leg.
I also started my first IV ever in a dehydrated woman…it’s much more complicated than just drawing blood…instead of just sticking any length of the needle into the vein you actually have to do it well enough to thread the plastic catheter in a little ways…eventually we got it to work. :-D And then later the lady had 13 girls, all within a couple years of each other age-wise, to visit..and she was ALL of their grandmother. That’s a LOT in a short time!
Did I mention that we don’t use a tourniquet? One hand squeezes the arm as the other hand puts in the needle. And did I mention that you can’t see the blue veins through Africans’ black skin? And that half the people needing injections are kids (aka small veins)? I’m gonna be such a good stick when I get back to the place with adequate lighting, tourniquets, and oh yeah, smaller than 20-gage needles in small children. :-D
And a kid dislocated his thumb, but popped it back in himself, and we jerry-rigged a splint out of a tongue depressor and gauze. Win. (that was for Thomas, who probably doesn’t even read this blog because my silly little brother can’t be bothered to miss me. :-P)
There was a kid who was so TERRIFIED of standing on the scale that we could NOT get him to stand up by himself or anything that would result in him being weighed. So we ended up weighing him plus mom holding him, then just mom (which was an issue because once she was on the scale he wouldn’t let GO of her…haha) and subtracting…eventually we got it to work. He weighed 15kg.

I hate doing laundry by hand.
I thought I hated doing laundry in machines, but that’s nothing compared to doing it by hand.
IT’s not the work, really…it’s that I don’t think I’m very good at it, so I don’t feel like my clothes actually get clean when I do it. I get really apathetic about it, and so I spend most of the time when I’m supposed t be scrubbing, or as Mom likes to say, “throwing those clothes against a rock” swirling them around in the basin pretending my hand is the agitator in a machine. :-P So I was very glad today when I got back to Nairobi to throw everything dirty AND everything clean that I already hand-washed into the Bass’ machine. :-D

On Tuesday I was on the phone with Emmy, and standing under a tree (with no leaves…ever) for the partial shade and a bird decided it would be cool to relieve itself on my skirt. Awesome.

I have heard a lot of donkey brays lately…and I keep wondering what someone who had never seen or heard a donkey before would think if he heard a donkey braying in the middle of nowhere. I would probably think some giant monstrosity of an animal had just a. lost its favorite child and b. was dying itself. The sound is so mournful and ….squeaky that it sounds like dying sad things. It always makes me laugh at the ridiculousness of the sound.

Anyway. So Saturday afternoon we made the 6km walk to the other school that only has 1^st and 2^nd grade, so that the younger kids who live closer to that place don’t have to walk so far….to visit the teachers there. We hung out and ate a ginormous amount of soup and this GIANT plate of plain spaghetti. And then I saw an impala on the walk home! But it ran behind bushes before I could get a picture. Theeeen since it was my last night, Isabella made me a cake and we had most of the people in the compound over to eat it and say bye. Then I woke up at 3:30AM to get in the car by 4:00 to drive in the pitch blackness through the bush to Garissa so someone else could catch a 5:00am bus and we could catch a 6:00 bus to Nairobi…which we did, and now I am HERE! And I had a giant fruit juice/smoothie thing that was a layer of beet rose juice (whatever that is) and a layer of avocado..juice and a layer of mango slushy juice…and it was basically the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted, since I haven’t had anything cold/juice/fruity in a long time. :-D

And the best thing about being home from Sombo is that on Wednesday, HEIDI INGRID JUDD is coming to Nairobi and then we are gonna get on a train together with two of her American vet friends and spend THIRTEEN HOURS on a train catching up on not having seen each other since July and getting to meet each other and being SO EXCITED! So that’s gonna be awesome. But for now it’s the simple pleasures of sleeping inside without dying from heat and drinking cold things and driving on paved roads and using washing machines and plugging my computer into the electricity source that isn’t going to go away when the sun goes down if there’s too much stuff plugged in. :-P

This is getting long so I’m gonna shut up now. Bye.