Another early morning in Kiirua. Since being here, I have been waking up ridiculously early most days. This morning, I woke up at 3:30AM. Awesome.
This week has been a bit of a rollercoaster. I don’t know what our problem was, but on Wednesday, we all woke up on the wrong side of the bed. It was the first day that I really felt homesick and the first time that I thought: “Ok. I am ready to go home now.” Fortunately, we had a really great day yesterday, and we’re no longer a bunch of irritable cranky pantses! Yesterday, we did outreach with Josephine, Dennis and Dorocas. We went to Ntemburi, where we never really see any people (so I’m not sure why we go there…) so we walked for a few kilometers down the tarmac (highway). We saw the biggest cows that we have ever seen. Seriously, they were GIANT. I got a few pictures, but I don’t think they really show exactly how huge they were. I wanted Amy to go stand beside one of them, but with her intense fear of cows, she refused. This reminds me of another cow story. Another day doing outreach, this time in Machaka, we were walking down this narrow road, and all of a sudden, a herd of cows (like 8) turned the corner and started walking towards us. Two of them were kind of butting heads and fighting, 4 of them had their eyes on us, and two of them started mating…. They were moving back and forth, all over the road. We had to jump out of the way so as to not get trampled. It’s going to be strange to walk down PEI roads and not move out of the way for cows, goats, and donkeys. The nutrition girls almost got trampled by a herd of camels yesterday. No big deal.
After outreach yesterday, we headed into Meru to get our hair braided. Yep… you heard me. We went to one salon and while we were waiting, a little boy came up and started asking: “How aaaare yoooooou?” He was a street kid, maybe about 8 years old. There are a lot of street kids in Kenya. They sniff gas- as do street kids all over the world, I am sure. It is pretty upsetting to see. He was also having fun lighting matches, which was especially frightening because of the close proximity of the bottle of gas he was holding with his teeth. The other day, we saw a young man with burns all over his face. We gave him a bag of popcorn and a loaf of bread. A few minutes later, we saw him walking down the road with a bottle of gas hanging out of his mouth. We are assuming that gas-sniffing and match-lighting contributed to his burns- and that he probably traded the bread that we gave him for gas. It is really hard to know if we are doing good or causing more damage. It’s something that I have been thinking about a lot since we’ve been here.
So, the hair braiding didn’t work out yesterday, but we made appointments for today. We’re pretty excited to see how ridiculous we will look! Our friend Kiki (Josephine’s daughter) got her hair plaited (braided) a few weeks ago and it looks super cute, so we decided that we’d all go for the same style. She is African and 8-years-old, though, so we are not expecting to look as cute as she does!
Since being here, we have been having a bit of trouble starting IVs. The brannulars (IV cannulas) are pretty different than the ones we are used to. Also, it is much more difficult to locate veins under dark skin. Plus, because many people work (with their hands and not with farm equipment) in the fields, their skin is very tough. I have tried to insert a few but was not successful. But, I was determined. On Monday morning, when I arrived at the hospital, I told everyone that if there were any IVs to start, I was going to do them. There was one. I went in to the room and prepared myself. I tied a latex glove around the patients arm- they use gloves as tourniquets. Did I mention that Kenyans are very resourceful? I asked the man to squeeze his fist a few time, and out popped the biggest, straightest, juiciest vein that I ever did see. I angled the needle, pricked the skin, and landed the brannula like an airplane- just like Margaret taught me. And FLASHBACK! I was successful- and pretty proud of myself. On Wednesday, I tried again on another patient, though was not successful. However, two other people had to try several times before they were able to start the IV.
Our little friend went for another skin graft surgery on Tuesday. We were doing a blood pressure clinic for a women’s group in Micanduri so were unable to attend, however, our friend Elisa, a medical student from Italy, went to the surgery and said that it went well. The skin from the previous skin graft was taking very well and spreading over the surface of the burn, so Dr. Ngeera only had to remove a small amount of skin from her leg to graft on to a small area on her back. She recovered much more quickly from the second surgery. One Wednesday, she was up and walking around the hospital and smiling her sweet little smile.
Well, that is all for now. I may post a picture later of our braids- depending on how ridiculous we look!
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