After one month and a half

We’ve been in Kenya for about a month and a half now. Things are going good. Some things according to plan, some not. Once again, a little story from us separately after a short story from us both.

We went to Nairobi two weekends ago. There we saw friends (Dutch guy and Kenyan woman) and spent some time there. We were driven all over Nairobi by their driver (very swank). We went to the Giraffe Centre. There we fed some giraffes (twiga in Swahili, because from a distance the look like twigs). We “kissed” them as well. They have very rough tongues… But is was very fun. Nynke took her first Matatu ride and it was okay.

Another fun story: We have a maid who cleans twice a week. This is good since we can occupy ourselves with different stuff… This is of course a Kenyan. We see her sometimes, but not often. So when we needed some extra washcloths, we wrote a note to ask if we could have some. In stead of giving us the cloths, she washed our clothes (and hung the underwear out on the line for everyone to see which is not done in rural Kenya… but luckily Kijabe is more modern and a lot of cultural things we’ve learned are not as strict here:))… An understandable miscommunication, but it is funny. Anyway…

Nick:
My projects are going good. So far I’ve updated the procedures in the lab and now I’m trying to determine if one particular process is going correctly. Next to this, I see some things in the lab which we could improve. I’d like to discuss this with my bosses, but one of them is going on leave this week for 5 weeks. So I guess I’ll wait and make sure I see everything correctly.
If I’m not keeping myself pretty busy, somehow other people find stuff for me to do. If I’m not running around in the lab, I’m helping Nynke with some computer stuff. It’s different, but pretty fun. I get to work with my wife on something. That’s very fun…
For the rest I’m doing good. I don’t know why people are asking, but I’ve recovered perfectly. My blood also looks good (no strange things). This I know since I may be giving blood. But only if they need my blood. The sheep is, by the way, perfectly fine. It was a sheep from someone who works in the hospital and the lab can draw some blood when we need it. So no nyama choma ya kondoo (roasted sheep meat, sorry Paul) for us. Our Kiswahili is going along nicely. We’re learning slowly (pole pole), but steadily. We keep each other sharp and try to practice when we can. The people here love it :).
I’ve found someone to play guitar with, so that’s also great. He’s better than I am, so I can learn a lot. As a result of the rafting trip my foot got sunburned. I could hardly walk for 2 days. But it’s fine now.

Nynke:
Things have gotten a bit quieter in the hospital, which is nice. In the beginning I could barely keep up with all the patients. It takes a lot more time than you think: first I try in Kiswahili to communicate with the mother and if the mother speaks English, I switch to that after a few sentences. If not, I find a translator. Then she explains what I’m doing: no I’m not doing any injections, drawing any blood, it won’t harm the child; I’m only taking measurements; yes, the clothes need to come off, otherwise I won’t get accurate measurements…. Etcetera… :) Then if the child is sleepy or not too afraid of white people it can go quite well… I’ve also had children scream away! After the measuring I usually clean off the urine/stool from the scale with whatever I can find to clean it off (for some reason when the diaper is removed they just start going at it). Sometimes mothers will ask me about medical or surgical stuff concerning their child I don’t know about, so I refer them to the doctors or nurses… all in all it can take up to 30 minutes per patient! One ironic anecdote: I measured a child who just threw a huge fit (and she did that with practically everybody) and cried/screamed so hard that the scale would barely stop moving (it’s an old-fashioned scale where you have to move weights) and she would almost fall off if we weren’t holding her….and then later I found out that she was over 18 months and I couldn’t include her in my study…
When I have some spare time I try to do some other necessary work, which is all part of the job: look through the charts to see what surgery the patient is going for, if there are any problems after surgery and try to make sure I see the file before the patient is discharged home and the file goes back to the medical records office, where it’s a lot harder to retrieve. Fortunately I have some very nice people helping me keep up with admissions, discharges and even keeping the file for me at the billing office. Hopefully in the near future I’ll be able to start with data entry in the computer and maybe the retrospective part….

Ps. We have a telephone number (mobile and home), so if you ever want to call, let us know and we can give it to you by e-mail… we thought it wouldn’t be very nice if everyone in the internet world gives us a call :)