In which I conquer bedbugs, tell a bazillion stories, and take an HIV test just for fun.

I am writing this blog post in hopes that the internet will decide to work again. Every time I try to connect, it say the remote computer did not respond. So I called customer service but the first time it hung up on me as soon as I pressed 2 to speak to a person about my problem, and then after that the said “your estimated wait time is less than one minute, we appreciate your patience” but it wasn’t like “less than one minute” was filled in…like that’s the message they always play. Because after listening to this weird dialogue where a man pretends to “download his feelings as an attachment” for his girlfriend, who giggles and says “oh, baby!” when he says “You’re like google, you give me all the answers”….ad infinitum, it hung up on me. So I called back a third time, and it happened again. I don’t have enough minutes left on my phone to deal with this right now so I’m just gonna have to wait it out. It might be a problem with the cell towers…one of the major phone companies changed ownership a few months ago and I think just now officially changed their service. I got a text message today asking me turn my phone off and back on to get Airtell service instead of Zain, the old name. So hopefully it’s just a glitch cuz of that and it will fix itself. BUT my internet isn’t Airtell…so it shouldn’t be affected by that? Maybe they use each other’s towers. I don’t know, but I want it to start working, please.

Here’s a smattering of funny stories and not-funny-but-informative happenings, and interesting things in the clinic over the past few days:

There was a 8-ish year old girl who came in with burns on the back of her calves, apparently she backed into the exhaust pipe of something and burned herself pretty bad on the left leg and only blisters on the right leg. So I cleaned it and dressed it (use number 2 for those 300 rolls of self-adhesive bandage!) and was very happy to see some blood and some dermis. She came back today for a dressing change, and I didn’t bother with the right leg because the blisters went down without breaking open, so it’s just closed. The goopy scab had come off the little 1.5x1in rectangle on the other leg, and it was beautifully pink under there, so I just redid the silver sulfadiazine (one of my favorite words to say) and ta da.

Today a man came in with flank/ureter/urethra pain, so despite not having a lab tech, apparently we DO have a microscope. So examination of his urineàgonorrhea puscles. It took him a while but he eventually admitted he was cheating on his wife. (you get what you deserve, says I!) So he got a shot in the butt, a very painful one (you get what you deserve!) and an HIV test, which was negative ( I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, even one who was cheating…maybe the scare is enough??) So I learned how the little test strips work, and Edwin asked me if I wanted to do one on myself. Well I am of course 100% sure it’s gonna be negative, so I was like “what the heck” so of course it was negative.

There was a kid yesterday who had had measles and when he came in he had lots of swollen glands in the upper body, you could see the ones bulging out under his jaw, and feel them in his armpits, so that was cool.

If you’ve seen the pictures on Facebook, you can see that the girls, who previously all had their hair in braids, took them out on Saturday. I was coming home from the wedding and saw them all sitting outside undoing each other’s hair with thorns from the bush behind them. One of them had a half-fro, one had just the sides in a fro (she reminded me of a clown with that hairdo), and I was laughing at them a looooot, so I took some pictures.

Sunday after church I helped chop the wood for the stove fire for dinner, in flipflops, in a long skirt. Chopping wood was not new for me, but the attire certainly was. It was fun though, cuz the ax was BLUNT worse than the non-sharpened side of a knife blade (there’s a name for it, I forget…) and there were lots of nails in the wood preventing it from splitting the way we wanted it to. Oooh well, we got wood, and we cooked, and we ate, so all was well. :

I had ANOTHER conversation about my amount of food the other day…I was allowed to serve myself my lunch one day and Nancy was surprised how small it was. I tried to explain to her that I’m not used to eating such large portions, even if they don’t seem large to her, and I don’t want to eat more than I need, it’s not healthy (plus, a GIANT spoonful of margarine goes into basically everything they cook…). So she told me (for the 15^th time, though usually in different contexts) “when in Rome, do as the Romans” and I said that if the Romans were doing something unhealthy for me, I shouldn’t do it, no matter how much the Romans wanted me to. So I think she quickly got over the little offence I thought might be brewing up, because after I finished eating and thanked her for lunch and told her it was very good “even though I eat small amounts”, she said “no, it’s ok, it’s not small”. So I guess she came to terms with it. J
I have served myself at every meal since. I think the girls being away has somehow released Nancy to let me help her in the kitchen…2 nights ago she told me to come in and watch her make my dinner, and last night she wanted me to do it (though I don’t think she trusts me with a knife yet…you know I HAVE cooked before, just not Kenyan food! I know how to DO everything, I just don’t know what to do, haha. Oooh well..I guess if I let them think I don’t know what I’m doing at all I can use it as an excuse when I don’t do it the right way according to them) but I was on the phone with the director of one of the masters programs so I couldn’t. Then after lunch today I brought the dishes into the kitchen as I’ve been doing for a while, and asked if I could wash them. She said “it’s not required” so I said “ok, it’s not required, but is it allowed?” she just looked at me, so I washed the dishes. VICTORY!! This is definitely a result of the girls being away, because usually she tells me to just let them do it, since they have assigned nights for dish duty. BUT she let me instead of insisting she do it. PROGRESS.

It seems I have had final victory over the bed bugs…last night I slept through the WHOLE night and I didn’t have ANY new bites on me when I woke up!
Every now and then one of the old bites starts to itch and I get scared it’s a new one, but then I see it’s already got a scab from scratching, or I know I already had one there and it’s ok.

Four of the 5 girls went home yesterday afternoon, to visit grandparents and aunts and such, so it’s been veeeery quiet around here since then. One of them just came back, though without her sister, so I don’t know what’s going on there but it’s still pretty silent…mostly because Alice is the loud one and she’s still gone. :-P

Oh! Yesterday was April 12, which is the exact halfway point of this trip. It’s crazy to think it’s almost over…I can’t say it feels like I just got here, or that it feels like I’ve been here forever…it fees just about like I’ve been here for 3 months. :-P And so I have 3 months to go! It’s exciting to think I have only had half of the experiences I’m going to have, so far…and the (large, of course) part of me that misses home likes the thought that each day I’m closer to being home again than I am to when I left home. J

I video chatted with my mom the other day and the girls were there and crowded around me and the laptop, as they do every time I open it, no matter what I’m doing…I could sit there and just stare at my desktop for 10 minutes and they would do it right along with me, just as interested as if I was showing them pictures of themselves. Anyway, they loooved talking to her, fascinated by the video thing and the fact that they could see themselves in the little window in the corner. Faith kept yelling “HOW ARE YOU?” at her, and I tried to explain several times that you didn’t need to scream, but she kept doing it…like she was trying to make her voice reach the US instead of go through the internet. SO mom got a tour of the house, and the girls got a tour of my house, and I got to see the new bedspreads Emmy got….I don’t know what was in her head when she got bright PINK comforters, but at least the reverse side is bright ORANGE, my FAVORITE color…though she has the pink side showing on my bed. I’ll fix that when I get home.

So far I’ve started applying/almost finished applying to two masters programs, both with “do well and you get a guaranteed interview at our school” incentives…I was in the middle of looking up more and seeing how to apply when the internet decided to stop working, so I’ll get on that as soon as it lets me.

I spent the entire evening last night until 12:30, and then literally ALL day at the clinic today, from 9-5 with a few short interruptions for lunch and 3 or 4 patients that came in, writing emails and researching these programs. I have a problem where once I get an idea in my head I absolutely CANNOT rest or think of anything else, unless it’s really interesting, for long until I have satisfied myself that I know everything I can about whatever new thing I’ve discovered. So.

Today I was too tired to get out of bed at 7, so when I got home from the clinic I had the best workout ever in the extra mattress room…did you know if you do the non-aerobic stuff first it makes the aerobic stuff like 40x better!? The trainer on the cruise told this to my dad, and I did that today and I was jogging laps in the room for a good 30 minutes and felt fine and breathing heavy, but not gasping for breath, despite my heart rate being no lie 176 (88x2 = 176 RIGHT!)…as I usually am after like 2 minutes of jogging. I only stopped because I didn’t feel like running back and forth anymore, and my feet were hurting cuz that’s the first time I’ve put on sneakers for more than 5 minutes in…like 2 months.

Ok that’s all. I hope the internet works by now.