In which I narrowly miss a nasty virus, and climb a volcano

Well once again I’ve been slacking…sorry.

We left off after we arrived in Laisamis. We did the clinic there in this awesome site that solved all of our crowding problems. There was some building that had a yard with a fence. So we set up registration right inside the gate and had perfect control over how many people came in and therefore avoided all crowding all day long. Perfect. :-D So the doctors got to sit on cushioned chairs inside a somewhat cool building instead of those fold-out canvas stools so that was nice. Our pharmacy was a tent with a few sheets used for walls to keep out the sun and prying eyes, since we were right next to the fence and kids like to congregate there. But we hid behind the sheets and had a very nice day dispensing meds with Joseph translating for us. We had an awesome system going for a while. The meds were all on tables in a U shape and Chrissy and I were sitting close to the corners and we decided we would fill all the prescriptions without standing up. It worked quote well for a few minutes. I would get the papers from the runner, and call out the drugs…whoever was closest would grab it and then I’d toss the pile on the table for Joseph. Perfect. J

When we were packing everything up that afternoon one of the Australian girls was trying on the giant necklace-thing that the Rendille wear so we all went over and were taking pictures. It was much harder getting it onto a mzungu head than the Rendille, they had so much extra room and the three of us that tried it on all had the worst time doing it. They tried to put it on me next and 3 people spent 3 minutes pulling it onm pulling my hair and skin around trying to slip it over my head and finally gave up. It hung around my forehead like a visor for a minute, then I gave it one tug and pop, it fell down around my neck. Ha!

That night, the terror began.
Alicia wasn’t feeling well so she didn’t eat dinner. Danny brought out a cooler from the car that had not been opened since we’d left Sunday morning. It had ICE COLD water and coke and diet coke in it. We all jumped on THAT let me tell you! Then Alicia started throwing up. Then the doctors decided she could use an injection of an anti-nausea medicine…but that didn’t help because she was still throwing up all night, and I heard it because my tent was right next to hers. By the time we went to bed her tent-mate was also sick. The next morning I found out that Chrissy and James, one of the Australians, had also been sick all night. So we had 4 people losing the contents of their GI tracts from both ends. We ha been planning on doing a half day of clinic, but because of the sickness we debated doing a ¼ day or not doing it at all…we ended up deciding to let in 200 patients and then stop. So we were missing half the team…that made it interesting. Alicia and Chrissy and I had been doing the pharmacy and now I was the only one left…so Lisa switched over from triage and together we did the pharmacy.

Everything is so much more stressful when you’re in charge.
The other days we’d unpack boxes and boxes from the car and we’d all say “Chrissy, where do you want this?” and she’d tell us. NOW everyone was asking “Danielle, where do you want this?” and I said “I DON’T KNOW ASK CHRISSY!” but Chrissy was back at the camp trying to keep her insides inside her.
Somehow through the grace of God we managed to get through the day.
No thanks to Dr. James, who sent me like 400 special orders (most of the drugs are already packed in little baggies with the dosage written on them, so we just grab a bag for each patient…but sometimes the doctors change the number of days, or times per day, or something…which jus t takes a lot more time) despite the giant pile of papers we had to get through, he also sent someone to me saying he needed the drugs for these three people now, so he could explain the dosing to them. Ok. I take the sheets and tol the guy to go back and tell James I was gonna kill him. He had like 4 months of twice daily 4 different drugs that we HAPPEN to not have any pre-packed…for EACH PERSON…I had to empty out a box to fit all the drugs he wanted. All the while stressing out at the huge pile of papers I felt personally responsible for handling!
So when we were done and the doctors came out, I chased him around the yard hitting him with my water bottle. It felt good.
We packed up all the drugs…and then unpacked half of them because one of the pastors left her cell phone inside one of the bins….i don’t know HOW that happened.
Eventually we got back to camp and loaded up the cars and high-tailed it home. Because everyone was miiiiiserable.
A couple of hours outside Nairobi Lisa and I were beginning to notice that Danny looked like he was trying really hard not to be the 5^th victim of the mystery disease…and he did quite well until about 1 hour outside Nairobi, when he pulled the car over into the median…which isn’t like medians in the US where there’s just grass and sometimes trees and bushes…this median was dirt and might as well have been an extra lane for all the cars that were driving in it. So it was a bit dangerous but the only option, as he jammed on the breaks, opened the door, stuck his head out with his foot still on the break and emptied his stomach on the ground. In between throwing up he yelled back into the car “Is the car in park?” It was.
After that we managed to get home without incident, we all crawled into bed almost immediately. I spent that whole day and night terrified I was going to get sick…every burp and every tiny rumble of my stomach made me paranoid that I was gonna be next but somehow I never got sick, thank you Jesus.

So that was the trip into the desert! The Australians all went on a safari after that, they were feeling better by the halfway point of our trip so I trust they had a pleasant safari.
We spent the next couple of days recuperating, being lazy, etc.

One day I went with some of the kids to a “water park” in the local shopping plaza…it had a bunch of slides but they were so slow it was quite easy to come to a complete stop in the middle….one of them I spent the whole time propelling myself down the slide with my hands. We tried walking up them because it was so easy to do and almost more fun than climbing down but we got in trouble so that had to stop. :-P

Friday we went to Mount Longonot- a volcano in the rift valley. We stopped in Limuru along the way to pick something up from the clinic so I said hi to all my old friends there. Then we drove to the volcano and spent an hour and a half climbing it.
MY GOODNESS. It was a ROUGH climb. It was really steep…and at 8000ft there’s not too much oxygen in the air…or at least that’s what I told myself as an excuse for my constant out-of-breath-ness. But if was GORGEOUS the whole way up, we even saw some giraffes wandering around on the way up. When you get to the top you’re exhausted and hot and yucky but the crater is beautiful and full of grass and the rim goes up in and out of the clouds and the breeze hits you and it smells so perfect and clean and misty it’s refreshing and just beautiful.
We were too exhausted to walk for another half hour around the rim so we sat for a little, ate a snack and went back down.

Going down was almost as bad as going up…because the same muscles that you’ve fatigued by making them pull you up the mountain need to lock every step you take when you walk down. So…it took less energy but it was just as tiring somehow. We were thinking it would be nice to have a sled so we could just slide down the side of the mountain but no such luck.
We made it down finally and then drove to Naivasha to drop off the things we’d picked up from the Limuru clinic, so I got to see my old friends there too. Unfortunately the kids were all at school, but I went and found Nancy and she was SHOCKED out of her mind to see me, and very excited, so that was nice. J
Then we went home and were crazy sore by the end of the day.

This is getting long…I might write another tomorrow or I might leave it until I get HOME because TOMORROW NIGHT I AM GETTING ON A PLANE TO GO HOME!!! !I AM SO EXCIIIIIIIIIIITED!!!
I am going to miss Kenya and all the people I’ve become friends with…a LOT. But right now I am just super ecstatic to give my family and friends giant squishing hugs! And eat some really fantastic food. :-D