In which I ponder about perception of people and tonsils

Sooooo Remember I was writing about the kids’ tutor who said he believed everything but “I haven’t repented”? Well. On Sunday, as every Sunday, no matter what the sermon topic every Kenyan church I’ve been to has said “if anyone wants to get saved raise your hand”- kind of as an afterthought (albeit a sincere one) and this guy raised his hand and went up there and got saved. Ha! So I’d like to think my prodding helped him along that process just a little bit. :-P
(what was interesting to me was that the pastor then took like 10 minutes to talk about him to the church, while he was awkwardly standing up there, before praying…like “I know this kid, he has no dad, he repeated form 4 (equivalent of 12^th grade) twice to try and get better grades (the system here is, if you get a certain grade, the government will give you a huge scholarship towards university, but each field of study has certain grades you need…so think what happens is people repeat and retake the final exams until they get the grades they want.)and now he has Bs (up from a C+) and on and on…and I was thinking …I would NOT want all this information announced to the church, especially at a time like this. But I will call it a “cultural difference” and move on. :-P

Sunday I did my laundry again…ONLY enough clothes to last me until the weekend when I got back to Nairobi and live in a house with a washing machine for a few days (tee hee) BUT on Saturday I watched the kids do theirs and became significantly enlightened as to how I could do it better, and it was a much more pleasant experience than it had previously been.
Then I scrubbed this pair of sneakers I’ve been wearing through the mud since I got here and they got 27 shades lighter brown afterwards.

We are STILL picking the ends off green beans and cutting them up. But I like it so it doesn’t bother me. But what makes me sad is that they all get chopped up into tiny pieces. I think part of the goodness of a vegetable is lost when you just cut it into tiny pieces and mix it with rice. I’d like to bite a chunk out of a carrot, or have a mouthful of tomato instead of seeing that my rice is tinted red and thinking “there must have been tomato in here” ya know?

Someone brought a huge boom box to the house on Sunday, so there’s been music blasting from the radio LITERALLY from 6am until 10:30pm EVERY DAY since, except for from 7:30-9 which is designated study/homework time. As soon as 9(ish) hits and we pray for the food, the radio goes back on FULL BLAST and the kids all come alive. They dance down the hall, dance standing in line waiting to get their dinner, dance while they spoon themselves heaping platesfull of ugali, dance while they’re eating, and dance themselves into bed. It’s soooo funny.

This week at the clinic has been vomit week. Either people have instant dizziness-nausea-vomiting reactions to the antibiotic I just injected them with, or little kids cough themselves into throwing up, or they just..do. It’s lovely, let me tell you. Good thing I’m not a sympathetic vomiter…though there are few smells I dislike more.
Sometimes I think Naomi thinks I’m the stupidest person ever. It may come from the fact that I frequently ask her “what!?” when she says things, but that’s because I don’t understand which words she’s said because of her accent, not because I don’t know their meaning. Maybe she hasn’t realized that? She often asks me to do things I’ve already done, and then…doesn’t know what to do with herself, almost…when she sees I’ve done it “Write a lab request form for MPS” (malaria parasite) I say “I did it” and hand her the paper. She goes “oh…”. I don’t get it..like she can’t fathom how I could have been that perceptive as to write a lab request form when she tells the mom she wants to send the kid for a malaria test. I’ll be in the middle of wrapping the blood pressure cuff around someone’s arm when she tells me “Take the BP” …great, got it. I ask her “what’s the dosage for *insert name of medication here*?” and she tells me the name of the medication. I say “what’s the dosage?” but when all I’ve said is “what’s the” she starts saying the name again really slowly and annunciating each syllable. I say “I GOT THAT, WHAT IS THE DOSAGE!?” Ha!
We don’t communicate well. Whatever else is going on I don’t know, but I am certain of that. :-P
I was telling my mom, if this was a med school rotation I would have to try and figure out a way to deal with this … if I was getting evaluated I wouldn’t want her to think I was clueless. but since I’m here for such a short time and I have no actual responsibility, and there will be no evaluation, I don’t feel like trying to figure out how to fix it, and I will just deal with the possibility that she thinks I’m stupid.

It also amazes me how difficult it has been to get a few specific kids to open their mouths to see if their tonsils are inflamed. Some of them are terrified you’re going to give them a shot …(with a tongue depressor? ?In the back of the throat!?...but to a 4-year old there is no such logic of course) and others are too sick and lethargic to make much of an effort…so the mouth opens like 2cm and you can’t see anything but the tongue. The tongue depressor is good for…depressing the tongue…but if the mouth won’t open it doesn’t help much, except to serve as something for the feisty kids to bite. So yesterday I actually put on a glove and used the “scissor finger” method they taught us in EMT class to open an unconscious person’s mouth to check if the airway was clear, to further open the mouth of this kid who was making a very unsuccessful effort to open his mouth. But apparently he decided after that, that he didn’t want his mouth open any farther, and tried to clamp it shut. Apparently I have a strong thumb because I won that battle. His tonsils weren’t even inflamed. Ha.
However TODAY there were FOUR people trying to get this one kid to open his mouth. He was resisting. Mom was holding his upper body and tilting his head back, aunt was keeping him from kicking the doctor who was holding the tongue depressor and flashlight, and I was holding his nose closed so he was forced to open his mouth (thanks Mom and Dad for teaching me that one…through telling stories of trying to force medicine down my throat when I was that age)…it was a circus in there. The poor kid was miserably sick and deathly afraid of everything in the clinic…including the scale.
I often wish I could get inside other people’s heads and understand what on EARTH they are thinking sometimes. :-P

Back to Naomi thinking I’m stupid (maybe) I’ve been thinking about this…Being here has sort of freed me to do completely whatever I want. In American society I always feel like I’m being watched and judged, and I act accordingly. Everyone says “I don’t care what people think” but the truth is we all do to some extent…and we act or dress or cover up our flaws accordingly. Here, I KNOW I’m being watched, and probably also judged, but I know anything people think is strange about me can just be chalked up to me being American, and so I don’t care. I can truly embrace the “I’m never going to see half of these people again” and make a fool of myself without feeling like a fool. I wear the most ridiculous outfits because it’s WARMER to wear sneakers and leggings with a skirt than no leggings and sandals. And when my shoes were wet I didn’t care that I went to ‘work” in filp-flops and socks, or that in the morning I shower and forget to even try to do anything with my hair. I say and do whatever weird little things I want and don’t mind the confused looks…maybe because I know I would get them no matter what I did. When I try to blend in (like hand-washing my clothes) they laugh at me and think it’s funny…so I might as well also run around the yard in circles every night, eat the small amount that I like to, sit with my legs curled up under me, etc…because no matter what I’m a strange creature to the people I’m surrounded by. Hence why I don’t care that Naomi thinks I’m stupid, and I even often play dumb to get out of awkward situations, or give myself time to think of a reason why I can’t go into town with pastor’s 25-year old nephew who also wanted to come to the house to taste my chapati (which is, like the number one requirement for marriage- you have to make good chapati)
So while I’m here I am for once completely free of all cares about what people think. Be jealous. Maybe when I get back home I’ll do the same thing and I will tell myself that people are justifying my weirdness with “She just spent the last 6 months in Africa” as opposed to the current “She’s American”.

This is getting long but I HAVE to tell you about my DREAM the other day! It was the best dream ever and when I woke up it still felt real and good and not like “oh no, it was just a dream and now I am sad and disappointed” because the thing I got that I wanted was not something you carry away with you and enjoy later like a new car, or whatever. I had a dream that I met my mom and dad and brother and sister and both sets of grandparents at some show…somewhere..and I don’t know why. But in the course of this evening I specifically remember giving my mom and dad both the best longest hugs ever and sitting on Mom’s lap for like 10 minutes. (I never sit on her lap. Idk why this was in my head other than I’ve seen a lot of sick kids snuggling on their mom’s laps the past couple of weeks and it put the idea in my head) It was wonderful and when I woke up I really felt like I’d recently gotten a hug from them. J The human brain is fascinating what it can do.