Kibera

Yesterday we went on a tour of the slum Kibera. The clinic we work in is in Kibera, but we were told that we work in the nicest part of Kibera and we should experience how people actually live in the majority of the slum. Many of the volunteers we live with work in an orphanage. The owner of the orphanage, Ester, is who took us around Kibera with some of the other volunteers. It was so different from anything we have seen. Everyone lived in a mud house with a tin roof. We talked to one man who was building one at the time and he said they have to build mud houses as they are not permanent because it's governmental property. They told us the houses were warmer then their own houses which are made out of concrete. The houses were also extremely close together, the majority of Kibera cannot accommodate any vehicles. There was also garbage everywhere, you couldn't get around it. Since no cars can enter into the real residential area there is not garbage pick up. If garbage is not thrown on the ground it is often burned. Burning of the garbage really affected the air quality.We were surprised to see how many kids there were running around everywhere playing together. Ester, is truly an amazing women. She got all the kids together and sang songs with them and then bought them all one sweet. You could see how happy all the kids were and that it was such a big treat to them. Even the parents were leaving their houses to see what was going on with all the children. Despite how the people of Kibera were living, they were really happy. Everyone was so friendly and told us all about their life and culture everytime we stopped walking. You could see too how the older children took care of the younger ones. It was nice to see how strong of community Kibera has. Overall, it was a really great day and we really enjoyed getting to see what life was like in the slum.

Today we were at the clinic again working with moms and their babies. We did immunizations, weight and height charts and gave nutritional information to pregnant and breastfeeding moms. It was another fun day there, we both really like working with this population. One lady came in that was 7 months pregnant and her water broke in the clinic! Normally the clinic would have her give birth, but since she was only 7 months along, the clinic doesn't have the resources to support the baby if it was born with under developed lungs, which was a high possibility. So at the end of our day we called for transportation to take this woman to the hospital. We left before she was transported as there was no more patients for the day. Hopefully we will find out what happened with her when we go back to the clinic this week! Either tomorrow or friday we are going to go the hospital in Nairobi to see what the hospitals are like here. We have heard a lot about their burn unit and maternity wards, so we are hoping we can help out there for the day we go.