Safely in Swazi

Well Stef and I officially made it to Swaziland. We left Tenwek on Thursday after a 2 hour delay and had to say our good byes to everyone. We really had so much fun there and developed such incredible relationships. I will never forget it. Little shout out to Caroline and Cindy! Truly some awesome Kenyans!

Thursday night, Christina, Stef and I stayed at a hotel in Nairobi so that we could leave for an early flight. Let's just say we made me awesome memories our last night in Kenya. We wrote our own lyrics to the Lion King's Circle of Life and choreographed a music video. It's pretty talented haha. 

We arrived in Swaziland in early afternoon on Friday. We were able to go to the airport to pick up another classmate, Lauren, who would be joining us for the next month. It was nice to see a familiar face. 

I have to say that Swaziland is waaaaaay different than Kenya or even Zambia where I have visited in the past. I know that part of the difference is that we are in a larger city, compared to a rural setting, but where we are, Swaziland is very westernized. We are about a 5 minute walk from a mall that looks like it could be right down the street in the USA. We went grocery shopping at the Pick n Pay which looked just like a Kroger Marketplace. It is definitely a way different experience than Kenya.

On Saturday, Zakhele (our new best friend who works in statistics at the hospital) showed us around. He took us out to an area called Swazi Candles that had a bunch of shopping a literally amazing candles. It was way different than I expected and hard to explain, but super awesome. We took a Kombi which is like a big van taxi that you just wave down and jump in with a bunch of people to get you places. Public transportation is the way to get around Swaziland.

Today was literally incredible. Zakhele took us to a church within walking distance. The church was super beautiful and so nice. Every was dressed to their best. Literally it was like a fashion show. I felt very underdressed in my long missionary skirt and my hair in a braid. The service was like a gospel concert. The singers were incredible and everyone was dancing like it was prom night. We had an awesome time worshipping God and seeing a totally different class of Africa.

After the church service, we grabbed another Kombi and Zakhele took us to a hotel where the manager let us lay out and swim even though we werent staying there. It was so nice to relax and get some sun. Overall it was an incredible day.

So Swaziland is going to be a completely different experience so keep checking in. The hospital we are staying at (literally sleeping on the second floor of the hospital) was originally a Nazarene mission hospital, but has essentially but given back to the governement to run. There are no missionaries here and we are basically the only white people other than 2 Finnish nursing students who are awesome! They share a kitchen with us and it's awesome getting to know them and their culture. We will be basically working with only Swazi's so it will be awesome to really get to know the culture. Swaziland also has one of the highest rates of HIV in all of Africa. In the hospital, over half of the patients are HIV positive so I will get a lot of experience working with my favorite population!

Stay tuned for more!

Catching up!!!!

I am so bad at keeping up with this blog! It is definitely busy here! Christina and I finally feel like we are getting the hang of how OB runs. We actually feel like we are helpful and relieve a lot of the workload from others. It is nice to be useful actually. We are running through 4 discharge summaries in 20 minutes!

I have finally given in and taken a couple of babies from the incubatora to hold and cuddle. It is ao hard to be running around busy all the time and never get to hold the babies! So basically I am in love with every baby I see lying around ( which is a lot).

Snuggling with a baby I snatched up from the incubator!

Christina and I with Dr. Hage, a visiting OB/GYN from the States who taught us an incredible amount of information.

This week has been incredibly busy and we lost internet access for a while so I will try to fill everything in. Christina and I are really loving the interns and physicians and nurses we are working with. It has really become a team. We have been able to assist in a lot of procedures but our real goal was to deliver a baby. In Kenya, nurses deliver all normal vaginal deliveries and the nursing students were being graded this week on their abilities so we decided that Friday night we would stay late and see what we could do after everyone went home. Christina and I both ended up delivering our first babies. It was such an awesome experience. I am hoping to get a couple of more deliveries in before I leave. The nursing staff has been so helpful and have taken a lot of time to teach us. 

The 3 "coaches" that are where the vaginal deliveries occur. I caught them when they were empty. There is almost always a line of women waiting for a coach to open up.

Here is the baby that I delivered!! Kiplangat is his name! I was a little excited at the time!

This is me handing the baby I delivered to his mom. She was so happy and grateful. She has had 3 failed pregnancies and this is her first healthy child.

On  Thursday, we decided to leave work a little early and go to an orphanage to spend some time playing. It was so nice to actually relax and act like a kid. We spent a lot of time playing jump rope, soccer, and tossing balls around. I also found a group of kids that loved taking pictures and making silly faces. At the end of the night, they sang a bunch of songs for us. It really refreshed me after a week of long hours.

There was 7 of us who visited the orphanage and we all squeezed into a compact car to get there. You cant see behind Stefanie's head, but there are 3 full grown men in the trunk.

Christina and I having a good time with a couple of the children. 

Christina and I woke up this morning and assisted on rounds to help out the interns. We finished about lunchtime and went for a walk down to the river. We spend most of the day outside.I am trying to catch up on some sleep this weekend so that we can finish this week out strong. Stefanie, Christina, and I leave for Nairobi on Thursday where we are going to stay the night. Stefanie and I head off to Swaziland early Friday morning and will be there by the afternoon. We are very sad to leave Tenwek, but know that there is another adventure waiting for us in Swaziland.

I almost forgot! Christina and I went  to the eye ward this morning to say good bye to Peter. He is finally heading back to Waamba. On Thursday, Stef, Christina, and I made him a batch of brownies and brought him a Swahili Bible. He literally about jumped out of his bed when he saw us. I have been on more mission trips than I can count on 2 hands, but I dont feel like I have ever connected with someone the way I have with Peter. I feel that if the reason for going to Tenwek was so that I could make some kind of difference to Peter, then it was worth it. He immediately opened the Bible and started reading to us in Swahili. I pray that he grows to be a strong Christian man. I hope to return to Kenya in a couple of years with Barny and see how Peter is doing. Michael (who was our main connection between the Samburu people when we did the surgeries and he set everything up for us) came to pick up Peter this morning. We hadnt arrived yet to say good bye and he asked Michael, "Where are the muzungus?!" Which means where are the white people? Of course, we showed up and gave him our hugs. We will keep in contact with Michael to find out how Peter is doing. Stef and Christina took some great pictures for the brownie night with him so hopefully I can steal some of them to show you the joy on his face. He had never had a brownie before, but obviously liked them after he demolished 3 of them.

Here is a picture of us with Peter earlier in the week.

Safari Fun

Christina and I are finally home from the fun filled safari weekend! We arrived around lunch time on Friday to the most beautiful Fairmont Mara Safari Club. We were greeted with warm towels and fresh mango juice as we exited our car. It was definitely one of the nicest places I have ever stayed. We were taken to our "tent" where we would be staying the next 2 nights. It was beautiful! Our deck looked over the Mara River where about 5 hippos snorted, grunted, and splashed the whole time we were there. We had a rain fall shower head that was the best shower I have ever had in my entire life. That is definitely going on my bucket list to own one day. 

The hippos outside our tent! This is for you Grandma Hawk!

This is our beautiful tent. Christina and I were too scared of crazy animals coming into our room, we slept together in the bed farthest from the door!

Kind of a dark picture, but this is the lobby. 

We were able to have a nice lunch outside before we headed out on our first safari. Overall, we went on two 2 hour long safaris and two 3 hour long safaris. Our driver was Moses and he was so patient answering all of my ridiculous questions about the animals. If you really know me, then you know I can be quite inquisitive. He made such an effort to get us to see a ton of animals. We were able to see lions, cheetahs, wildebeests, cape buffalo, hyenas, elephants, zebras, giraffes, baboons, and we even were able to see a cheetah attach some antelope without any success. 

Christina and I in the land cruiser on the first day!

The elephants with the most adorable baby! The mom kept ushering the baby behind her to protect her from us. There were elephants everywhere so it was really awesome to get so close to them.

One of the many lions we saw.

A couple of cheetahs.

Sunset on the first day. It was so amazing to be so far out in the wilderness and be so far away from civilization. This area is only allowed to be inhabited by the Maasai tribe. They serve as protectors of the animals. They never kill any animals unless it is a lion that is attacking their herds. Many of the animals (like zebras) go to sleep outside of the Maasai villages because the lions are afraid of the Maasai and stay away from those areas.

The "daddy" lion that looked pretty beat up mostly likely from a fight with another male lion. He got within 10 feet of our car.

A couple of giraffes "necking". It made me laugh because they looked like they were moving in such slow motion that it couldnt possibly be doing any harm.

Christina and I joked that we were on a romantic getaway because we stayed in our robes and read our books together.

Standing on top of the seats so we could look out the roof. 

On Friday night, a group of Maasai men came to put on a show for all the guests at the resort. They did some dancing and chanting and then had a competition to see who could jump the highest which I guess means a lot to them. They then went around and grabbed women from the crowd to dance with them so of course Christina and I were chosen. We danced all over the lobby with them and they placed their beaded necklaces around us. Chrstina's man kept whipping his long hair in her face. We joked that we thought we were married to them after that ceremony. I got the highest jumper so I am going assume that makes me the queen. We had a lot of fun with it. 

We returned on Sunday to try to work on schoolwork. Back to the grind. I think I developed an upper respiratory infection so pray that I get over that soon. It seemed like Cindy the intern on call over the weekend worked really hard to discharge a lot of patients so we finally feel like we are getting more control of the floor. Pray that I get my strength back and start feeling better. This week Christina and I hope to get a lot of experience in obstetrics so I want to be feeling my best. Also, pray for all 3 of us as we are really missing our family and friends. Stefanie and I are trying to keep our heads up knowing we have a whole other country and adventure ahead of us. 

PS- Kenya Airways finally called me back after I have obsessively harassed them since my arrival for my missing luggage. They found it at the airport in Nairobi and hopefully it will be in Bomet by tomorrow. Thank God!

OB fun!

Well life at Tenwek in the OB department has been hectic. There is a nursing strike for the whole country so many ofnthe Kenyan government hospitals are not working right now so women from all over are coming to Tenwek to have their babies. We are so overloaded that we have 2 to 3 women in a bed.

There are women everywhere in the halls, on benchs, in corners huddled up trying to make it through another contraction. It takes our OB service 4 hours every morning to round on all of the patients because we have about 60-75 inpatients everyday. These women have major complications like post partum hemorrhage, renail failure, full blown eclampsia, and many c sections. It is a madhouse in the OB ward right now but somehow we make it. The administration has stopped us from doing any elective surgies due to the high capacity, only emergencies right now.

Christina and I are really loving the people we work with, both the Americans and the Kenyans. We all learn a lot from each other. I was able to scrub in with a Kenyan physician on a c section and it is the most I have ever felt respected by a physician. He treated me like I was another physician routinely scrubbing in with him. He had me jump right in and get my hands in there. He said, "pay attentiom, you are doing most of this next time". As a PA student, it is not often that we get that kind of trust and respect with procedures. It felt great afterwards feeling like I was really doing something.

I finished the day with suturing a patient back together after her c section incision became infected and opened back up. I think Dr. AJ, my surgical preceptor in Lexington would be proud. I feel that at the end of the rotation, I will be utterly exhausted but really familiar with a lot of OB complications.

I feel like it makes such a difference working in an environment where God is such a focus. Before surgery everyone gathers to pray over the patient, and when we all sit around the table at night, we discuss the way God has either affected us or affected one of our patients. It is so amazing to be able to share your faith so freely with coworkers and patients and it's even better to work with people who have the same beliefs and purpose.

I pray that God will continue to be with Christina, Stefanie, and I as we are halfway through with our time in Kenya. I pray that He will move within our hearts and lead us to be blessings to those we interact with during our time here.

Also, update! Peter (our adopted Samburu boy that us girls have fallen in love with) has had both of his surgeries and he is doing well. He will be going home next week and hopefully the eye team at Tenwek has kept him from growing blind. Stefanie, Christina and I gave him a Bible today that we all wrote messages inside for him.

Well I hope everyone has an awesome weekend. Christina and I are off in the morning to head to Maasai Mara game park to stay until Sunday. We will be going on several safaris and we are moooore than excited!

PS- I love you Barny and miss you like crazy!

Standing on the edge of the Great Rift Valley!

Safely under my mosquito net in the spider free room!

A couple of Samburu boys that we gave water to during our drive through the bush to Waamba!

One of our patients waiting to be screened. This is the typical Samburu clothing.

Me working on screening!

Scrubbing in for surgery in the church!

I was attacked by mosquitoes because I left my arm against the net during the night. Bad move!

My first broken bone! A chair fell on my foot!

A bunch of children waving at us at the school next door. They kept yelling Ciao! at us because they thought were were Italian since they had Italian doctors visit last time.

The Samburu village of Waamba

So after leaving Nanyuki and its massive amount of spiders, we finished our journey to the village of Waamba. The Samburu tribe are mostly herdsmen so many of the people live far out in the bush and are nomadic in nature, but there is a "larger village" called Waamba where we stationed ourselves for our surgeries.

We traveled on dirt roads bouncing along for many hours. We were so far out in the bush that we had our own safari. We saw antelopes, dick dicks (puppy size antelopes-suuuuper cute), elephants, and zebras. The city of Waamba has only had electricity for the past 9 months so it is vaguely reliable at best. We set up shop in the church because it had electricity sometimes while the hospital had no electricity ever. It seems like they have their priorities right in God's eyes!

The first night we screened people and picked out the best bilateral cataracts to perform. We did 4 surgeries that night so that by morning they would be able to see and be our best advertisement to the community. We worked until about 10pm. Stefanie, Christina, and I took turns scrubbing in on the surgeries as first assist, screening, circulating, and performing retrobulbar blocks for the surgeries. The retrobulbar blocks were the most terrifying to learn because you have to stick a 1 inch needle about half a centimeter below the eye ball, but thankfully there were no hemorrhages all week on any of the blocks that we performed!

I think by Friday, we saw around 300 patients and performed 60 surgeries. The 2 surgeons were our professor Sam Powdrill and his past pupil David who is a Kenyan clinical officer which is the equivalent of a physician assistant. There was also 3 Kenyan nurses who came from Tenwek who work in the eye ward there. Most of the issues were cataracts, glaucoma, allergy eyes, trachoma infections, and trauma. I cant even count how many times patients stated they were hit in the eye with a stick. Everyone has a walking stick and it seems everyone gets hit in the eye with it at one point.

Waamba had no restaurant so every meal was served by local women cooking together. They were so generous and loving. The Samburu tribe was so grateful and really made us feel welcome. Every morning when we would removed the dressings and the patients were able to test their new eyes out, you could see their excitement. One man started jumping around and yelling. These people never knew that it was possible to be able to see again. Very few physicians ever make it that far out. These people know how to survive, they are loving, generous, and welcoming. I will never forget them!

We brought back a young boy who is 12 years old. He is an orphan that lives at the school in Waamba. He was diagnosed with juvenile bilateral open angle glaucoma. He needed a special surgery that needed to be performed at Tenwek soon or he would lose his vision permanently. He rode with us all the way back to Tenwek. He had never seen black top roads before. He road in the big truck and absolutely loved it!. Obviously Stefanie, Christina, and I all fell in love with him immediately and have basically adopted him here at Tenwek. We visit him everyday and buy him milk. He had his first surgery today and is doing great. They will do his other eye tomorrow!

We arrived at Tenwek on Saturday to a large welcoming committee. There are so many visiting physicians staying at the guesthouse. We are finally settled in. We had to say goodbye to our professor on Sunday. We were so sad to see him leave!!

Stefanie joined the surgical team, while Christina and I started OB/GYN on Monday. We spend our days rounding on patients which takes about 4 hours because we have so many on the service, then spend the afternoons either doing ward duties or in labor and delivery. I assisted in my first delivery today (next one I have to do) and I was able to deliver the placenta! I made friends with a Kenyan nursing professor and he is going to help me with my first delivery!

Finally internet access!!

Well it has been an eventful first week in Kenya. We arrived in Nairobi on the 26th at around 11pm only to find one of my bags never made it to Kenya but thankfully it was the one filled with donations so I still had all of my clothes. Our professor from UK who used to live in Kenya was waving at us excitedly as we exited the airport. It was nice to see a friendly face after travelling for 24 hours. That night we slept at a guesthouse in Nairobi.
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The next morning, Christina, Stefanie, Sam (our professor), and Roy (works with New Hope International who funded the eye surgeries) all got up early to meet the eye surgerybteam from Tenwek Hospital so we could head to the Samburu region which was about 14 hours drive through very rough roads. The Samburu tribe is related tot the Maasai tribe but they were pushed farther north separating families. They live far in the bush in a very desert area where they survive by herding goats. They have very little water which Roy has been working to fix by drilling 7 wells so far for them.

We were unable to drive all of the way because we are not allowed to drive after 6pm because it is too dangerous on the roads. We stopped in Nanyuki for the night and this is where my nightmares came alive. Christina and I were placed in a cottage which seemed perfectly quaint at the beginning of the night, but after dinner I noticed a spider in the porch. Now if any of you really know me, then you know I dont handle spiders very well. Christina convinced me to run inside the cottage past the spider, only to find the inside was infested with even larger spiders. As Christina attempted to kill one spider after another, i curled up in the fetal position on the bed and started crying in a full blown panic attack. I am talking about fist size hairy monsters. She realizes she sees a new one every time she kills one.

At this time, I am trying to unlock our complicated door to run for my life and I hear our professor outside and I just start wailing "Powdrill!!!!!!"and he comes to our rescue. He realizes that you cant kill all of the spiders and takes us to the front desk to get a spider free room. Christina took a picture of one of the spiders and showed one of the Kenyan nurses who told us it was poisonous and would affect the nerves, so yes I can say my panic attack was justified and I swear Ialmost died!!

I will fill you in tomorrow on the rest of the weekwith the Samburu tribe!!