In which I recreate the missing link and have my 1st international 4th

After our first crazy day of clinic Chrissy and Danny and I got back in their car and had a secret little pleasure cruise- we drove back to the camp at like 1 mile/hour and drank cokes from the cooler that were still pretty cold. It was heavenly. We guzzled those cokes before we got back.
The people here have basically no medical treatment available to them, but they were surprisingly healthy. The two biggest complaints were eyes and acid reflux/ulcers. There’s a lot of people with dry/itchy eyes from all the dust, and a lot of kids with eye infections from all the flies that are constantly collecting in the corners of the kids’ eyes (not to mention any open wound), and lots of older people with cataracts. Unfortunately, we had this bin we’d filled with all the artificial tears we could find…but it accidentally got left in Nairobi. So we had antibiotic eyedrops but we couldn’t give them to everyone who had dust issues. Because medical care is so rare here people didn’t really understand how the meds worked. It took a bit longer than usual to explain how to take them (this drug is one at morning and one at night…this one is one in the morning…this one is one morning, afternoon, and night….) and we had to explain to them that there was no drug for cataracts or nearsightedness…both of those require something more than just a pill, and we didn’t have any glasses or surgeons.
After the first day of clinic I went with Danny and James and Jeff and Maria to the network tree to try and use the phones. We tried standing under the tree, and then up the tree, and then on top of the car, and then finally found some service in a random spot under a tree. It’s so bad up there that when the wind blows the service goes away. No joke. So I called my mom and informed her that I was still alive and we took pictures of each other trying to get service in funny places.
So day two rolled around…it was more of the same, but crazier. Word had spread so we had way more people to deal with than the first day. The problem was we were only planning on doing a half day, because we still had to pack up camp and travel back to Laisamis and setup for the next clinic, and we wanted that to happen before dark. We aimed to have the clinic packed up by 1. We ended up getting it done by 2 and saw about 300 patients so we must have been going a lot faster than the day before. We didn’t have enough people working with us to really contain the line well so there was often a huge crowd of people slowly pressing farther and farther into the hangar…so it was an effort trying to keep them where we needed them to stay so the people who needed to leave could leave. It’s interesting how having a mass of people around you, even if they’re not being unruly, stresses you out. Chrissy and I were about to lose our minds in the pharmacy because we just felt like we were being crowded in.
The corrugated tin walls of the hangar only went up about 6 feet, and above that it was a wire fence. There were lots of school kids hanging on the fance the whole day looking into the pharmacy and sometimes asking us to give them stuff “give me one medicine” and no matter how hard we tried to get them to go away or get in line or soooooooomething besides stand there and stare at us they just would not go away.
I found a somewhat scary-looking man and had one of the local church members who was translating for us ask him if I could buy his knife for my brother. We worked it out and I got his my-forearm-long knife and the sheath, which is made of two pieces of plastic from a plastic jug melted and nailed together, plus a few strips of different-colored plastic wrapped around it for decoration. Cool beans.
So we finished day 2 of the Log-Logo clinic and packed everything up and piled back into the cars and drove to Laisamis. Pastor Elias wanted to get there as soon as possible so those of us who had come in the Bass vehicle went ahead of the land cruisers, who’d be going much slower because of the trailer. So we started out on this road that we shortly thereafter decided was not just a path off the road, but its own road, and turned around to get back on the road to Laisamis. Thankfully it was only a 2 minute detour, because apparently that road was made for the Chinese, who are roaming around the bush looking for oil. So that road leads to absolutely nowhere except a place where there isn’t oil. Pastor Elias told us about some people who spent 3 days being lost in the bush before they reached civilization again because they took that road. HA!
We bumpity-bumped through the bush until we got to a nice dusty rutty spot in the road and I hopped out of the car, ran a few hundred feet ahead with my camera, and took a video of Danny driving the car through the dusty spot and the huge cloud that came up behind it because they wanted a video of that for something. It was hot. I was thankful for the air conditioning when I got back in the car. :-D
We soon got to Laisamis, saw the place where we were gonna camp, and then went to the district something-or-other’s office to tell him we were there. What should have been a 5 minute meeting turned into a 40 minute conversation where it was apparently necessary for everyone’s life story to be told and the district guy had to give a 15 minute speech about the area and ask us what we thought about the health problems in the area and James talked for 10 minutes about the differences between Laisamis last time he was there for a clinic 2 years ago and Log-Logo recently….and on and on.
Eventually we got out of there and went back to the campsite. Once again it was a house with a fenced-in yard and a latrine (this time with no bats) and there was a little hut there they used for cooking. After a short while the other cars arrived so we set up all our tents while 50 children crowded around the fence and stared at us and tried to make friends or ask for candy or money. There were a lot of little thorny bushes to avoid…and also a lot of pieces of various animal bones. I found a couple of vertebra and lined them up…then I got inspired and started collecting whatever somewhat recognizable pieces of bone- probably from cows, goats, and chickens- that I could find and setting them up in a skeleton. The kids caught on and started handing me bones through the fence as well- and by the end I had set up a nice little replica of some creature that has never actually existed, but I will call “the missing link”- since that’s pretty much how scientists recreate ancient animal skeletons anyways. :-P
I had lots of ribs, a few vertebrae, jaw bones with teth still in them, a couple of shoulder blades, and then I used random pieces of long bones to make arms and legs, and smaller pieces of ribs to give my creature hand and finger bones. It was fun. :-P
We spent the afternoon hanging out around the tables, then we ate dinner and went to sleep.
More to come tomorrow, but first- today!
It’s the 4th of July. It’s my first 4th of July outside of the US. But the missionaries have a party every year so we all got together and grilled burgers and hung out and ate a lot of food and even set off a bunch of fireworks. There are some people here for a couple of weeks who got out a guitar and a drum and played some patriotic songs and some completely random ones as well, and we sang (way, way too slowly, for some reason) the national anthem….it was good.  I also met some other people who are here for a couple of weeks who were talking about Chi Alpha, so I butted myself into the conversation to ask about Chi Alpha and it turns out they know Matt and Tracy and some other people I’ve heard of. Small world!!
So happy birthday USA, happy yesterday 1st birthday my baby cousin Melody Joy and Happy tomorrow 23rd birthday to my Heidleberg!

I am getting on a plane one week from tomorrow! :-D