So, no news on the med school front, except thanks for your encouragement/prayers. J
The clinic is going s-l-o-w…there’s been a steady increase in patients each month since they opened, but I still spend way more time than I’d like reading my kindle every day at the clinic. Some non-medical things have happened to liven up my days though:
On Wednesday a new exam table arrived, which came on the container the Basses received in Feb., as well as a wheelchair. It came in one piece except for the footrests, which took, for some reason, a while to figure out how to attach them, and then one of them was, for some reason, rusty and that took a while to fix. After the 5 people who were trying to put it together got it together, I took it for a spin around the clinic and then in the grass outside, it was quite fun. Then I told Edwin to have a turn, and decided that to pass the time we should learn to do wheelies and other tricks. Then we should perform said tricks right outside the compound gate to attract patients.
A short time later Danny and Chrissy came with some people who had helped gather the equipment that was in the container to show them where it was being used, so they took lots of pictures and video. One of the women brought little hotel-sized shampoo, conditioner, soap, and lotion for the girls. They were all at school so the gave the bag to Nancy. After they left Nancy takes out the bag and asks me what all this stuff is, so I was telling her what it was and what you use conditioner for, and that white people shampoo their hair every day, and she was looking at it like “what on earth am I supposed to do with all this” but she just kept saying “oh…well God bless her!” It was funny. So the bag went into the cabinet, I don’t know if it will ever see the light of day...they at least can use the soaps and lotions. At least the thought counted. ;)
Yesterday we got a shipment of supplies from the government’s Ministry of Health…a very funny one. There was a box with a machine that heat-seals blood tubing…like when you donate blood and they clamp those metal clamps onto the tubing? This machine of 2x1x1ft all to seal tubes that we don’t even have. Great. So the next box is like 100 rolls of that sticky, foamy ace bandage stuff like they use when you donate blood, except not fun colors. We’re like…wow…there’s a LOT of this stuff, we’ll never use this much! So of course if that wasn’t enough, the next two boxes are…more of the same! So now we have hundreds of rolls of this stuff, and barely any patients coming at all, let alone with injuries we’d need to tape up. Oooh well. At least the thought counted? They did send sooome useful things…some insulin syringes and 2 boxes with all the gloves, alcohol swabs, syringes, needles, and drugs necessary for 100 injections of contraceptives in each box. I don’t foresee doing that many for a long time, even in the busy clinics “family planning” as they call it, wasn’t an overly common thing, but the syringes will be useful to inject the other things we have, and previously had without needles. So if someone runs in in the middle of an anaphylactic shock, we can inject the adrenaline now instead of wishing we had needles while I debate whether I should try an emergency tracheotomy with only a youtube instructional video’s experience. :-p
With the above-mentioned wheelchair came what is perhaps one of the most wonderful inventions of all time: bubble wrap. Now I noticed this bubble wrap while the preschool class was having their recess time outside. So I thought to myself “this is gonna be brilliant” and brought the bubble wrap over to the 10-ish 4-year olds and showed them, in my feeble attempts at Swahili, how to pop the bubbles. They, of course, LOVED it. They thought it was the funniest thing ever, and were at it non-stop for almost an hour. And anyone who’s ever met a 4-year old knows how difficult it is to keep their attention for an hour. :-p But after about 15 minutes of course they got pushy and I had to play moderator, and show the kids that it was indeed better to try to enter the circle around this 3ftx1ft piece of bubble wrap in an empty spot instead of trying to squeeze between two kids already standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Eventually I realized the wrap was perforated in 1 ft squares, so I ripped them up and split them into 3 groups, each with 3 kids at it, and felt like an awesome biologist for maximizing the surface area to volume ratio. (If you have ever taken a bio class, you know the answer to 64% of questions is “increased surface area to volume ratio). So then the teacher came over and told them to sing for me, so then I was staring at these 3 little stations of 4 year olds popping bubble wrap for the first time in their lives, singing “Row, row, row your boat” and other little ditties to me, and it was awesome…especially because it’s really funny to hear kids singing in English with perfectly precise-sounding rolled “r”s.
Hm…now I will tell you about sleeping.
I’m in a room with 2 other girls, on a bottom bunk with no person on the top. Great, fine. However, there are mosquitoes that for some reason like to hover juuuust around my ear some nights. I don’t know if it’s because my head is the only exposed skin they can find, the rest being under a sheet, but I never noticed until I got to Kenya that a mosquito buzz is quite distinct from all the other buzzing bugs. Now I’m not worried about being bitten by one, because unlike my childhood full of week-long periods of incessant itchiness that resulted in me creating giant scabs all over my legs from scratching at the bites so much, mosquito bites now-a-days seem to itch for an hour at most, and then the bump lasts a day or two, then just goes away. Also, I’m remembering to take malarone every day now so I’m not worried about malaria. But for some reason I just cannot fall asleep with these bugs near my head, and even the anticipation of that high-pitched whine rather than a low buzz keeps me awake. So I’ve started sleeping with the sheet pulled up to my shoulders and tucked over my ears, so I at least can’t hear the buzz. Some nights there must be more mosquitoes than others trapped in the room, so I resort to my ipod then, but the sheet-over-the-ear works pretty well, since the sheet-over-the-head makes it a little difficult to breathe fresh air. Not that my breath smells bad, but cool, 20% oxygen air just feels so much better than then pre-warmed, oxygen-depleted stuff coming from my lungs.
Also, my fears about the too much and too special food are coming true. Despite being told that I am no longer a visitor and just “one of us” and my special treatment was only supposed to last 2 days, I’m still getting a separate dinner and lunch cooked for me every day, at least 1 and often 2 pieces of fruit with every meal, and tea served to me in the morning between breakfast and lunch and again between lunch and dinner. Not to mention that with the tea comes some giant pile of carbohydrates I’m supposed to stuff myself with, even though I’m juuust getting over the giant previous meal I had.
So I’m trying to figure out if it’s a good idea/what is the best way to talk to Nancy about this…making very clearly the point that I sincerely appreciate everything she’s doing for me and the food has been wonderful, but I really don’t need, and really don’t even want all the extra food, or the special treatment and GIANT portion sizes when I actually do want to eat (you know, 3 meals). So…we’ll see what happens with that I guess. I don’t want to offend people but I’m new enough to this culture that I don’t know what would be offensive or not, especially since after diner the first 3 nights she said “I am so happy you did not refuse to eat this food” Was she expecting me to? And does asking her to feed me fewer times per day count as refusing food, or only once it’s put in a plate in front of me?
I am loooooving the time I get to spend with the girls here. I’m beginning to see their personalities and it’s awesome. The other day we spent a good half hour while they were supposed to be doing school work and I was supposed to be reading my Bible, showing each other all the funny faces and weird noises we could make with our bodies, including clicking joints, flipping eyelids, rolling our eyes back into our heads…fun stuff. Not what you’d think of as a real quality bonding activity, but I think it was a big step in the girls’ getting over their shyness with me. The one who used to hide behind anything she could find...from a door to a wall to her own hand, now smiles and makes funny faces at me whenever I see her, and will actually talk to me now. Progress! J Yesterday I had my laptop out and ended up showing them pictures on facebook of my family and myself pre-haircut….they seem to be in Emmy’s camp of liking it much better long and telling me to “never cut it again!” haha!
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