Leaving today!

We can't believe it's already time to go! We had our last day in the clinic yesterday. It was really sad to go, everyone in the clinic has been so amazing. We had a really great last day there and we hope to keep in touch with the people we worked with. We spent our last day visiting an orphanage nearby and going one last time to the local market. It was nice getting to see what an orphanage was like here. It was great to see how happy all the kids were. The girls at our volunteer house that go there everyday brought friendship bracelets to make and colouring books to play with. You could see how much all the kids loved it, so it was really fun getting to play with them for awhile. Its funny to see how much the kids love getting their picture taken. They all rush over to see what the picture looked like after and try to take your camera to take more pictures, it was really cute. We then went one last time to the market in town to buy a few last minute gifts. The market consists of tiny wooden cubicles with most people having a lot of the same things all yelling at you to come see theirs. They all offer you a 'special price'. They offered us a 'great deal' because we were canadian!

Overall this whole trip was so amazing and we will never forget it! Thanks again to everyone who helped us get here!

Tagoni Hospital

On thursday we visited Tagoni hospital with some of the other volunteers who work there regularly. Tagoni is a private hospital here, as are the majority of hospitals. There are a few government subsidized hospitals that are cheaper for the citizens but from what nurses have told us, the quality of care goes down and the wait time increases dramatically. We really do wish that we could have visited one to see what it was like but unfortunately we didn't have any connection with one. Tagoni is so different from any hospital at home. Each ward had it's own individual building, a doctor and a team of nurses. We spent the majority of our time in the paediatric ward, as there was not much going on in the other wards and no surgeries were scheduled that day. Both of us spent a lot of time in the children's burn unit. From what the mothers and nurses have told us, since the moms cannot afford to take time off work to stay with their kids at home, a lot of children will burn themselves by knocking over a boiling pot of water. They only keep the kids who have burns less then 30% of their bodies and 2^nd degree or less. Still we both felt for all these children. The burns looked bad and they were visibly in pain, let alone the screaming that started when the nurses were cleaning their wounds. It was nice to see though that after their wound cleaning they were happy and wanted to talk and play with you. All of the kids moms stayed with them the whole time they are in the hospital. Most of the kids are in the hospital for up to 6-8 weeks. After doing the ward rounds with the doctor, Alex got the opportunity to work with the occupational therapist. She was working with kids with rickets, burn victims and cerebral palsy. He said it was a really great experience seeing how she worked with each patient depending on their condition. While Alex was there the other nursing students and I played with the children in the burn unit. There wasn't too much to do medically after the wards and I am really glad we had the time to sit down with them. I think they really enjoyed it.

On Friday and today we went back to clinic and were again in the maternity clinic. We both really love working with the moms and babies. Tomorrow is our last day there!! Time has flown since we got here. Our last project at the clinic is to make a nutritional informational sheet for pregnant moms who have really low iron. We are going to bring it to the clinic tomorrow to make copies. Every mom we saw had low iron and required nutritional counselling. We had the nurse write down some Kenyan ethnic foods to add to our list for the women. Overall the past 3 weeks have been amazing here and we don't want to leave!!

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.

Food Distribution

Today at the clinic we had the food distribution day. The distribution happens every other monday for malnourished kids 5 and under and also pregnant women. Every child and woman has their height, weight and mid upper arm circumference measured to see if they improve with the food they are getting. There were the most kids they have ever had today and we used all of the food that we had. The food is a corn soy blend that is mixed with fortified vegetable oil. The food is from the World food program and each child gets 3.5 kgs. First the children have ration cards filled out where we recorded all of their measurements and if they had any other problems like kwashiorkor. This is where the child has become swollen due to a lack of protein in their diet. After there cards are filled out they wait in line for their food which all had to be mixed and measured for each child. After 2 weeks if the child has improved they are discharged from the program and another child is taken in. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work today. There were so many people there that all had to get weighed and measured and given food it took the whole day to get them all done. It was really nice to see how many people the clinic is able to help by giving them food. Unlike in Canada these families can not afford to buy much especially anything with a substantial amount of protein. Meat is very expensive for them and this program is a great way to help the kids get the food and nutrition they need.

The Weekend

We had a very fun weekend in Nairobi. On Saturday we went to the mall for breakfast, we were very surprised at the size of the mall it's huge! After breakfast we went to the movies! The movie theatre had two screens one with Winnie the Pooh and one with Captain America. We went to Captain America which cost a whopping 4 dollars! The theatre was very nice, it broke halfway through and we had to switch but other than that it was great! On Sunday we visited the elephant and rhino orphanage which rescues orphaned animals. Most of the animals are orphaned due to poaching for tusks and rhino horns. The elephants were so cute and the keepers fed them bottles and they had a nice mud bath. The orphanage was started in the 70's and has been rescuing orphaned animals ever since. At the Giraffe centre we got to feed the giraffes and get kisses from them! It was really fun and nice to see all of these areas started to help protect and preserve the wildlife of Kenya. Overall it was a really fun weekend! Tomorrow at the clinic is the feeding program for HIV + patients, we will be helping to do quick checkups on the patients in the program and also distribute the food it should be a very busy day!

At the Clinic

Today was a very busy day at the clinic. There was a maternity clinic today for all the babies to come in and get vaccinations. Also pregnant mothers came in to have checkups. The babies are all very cute, before they got their shots we had to weigh them and measure their height. After doing that we had to plot their height on growth charts. Almost all of them were under weight or quite low, except for one or two that were average. After being weighed they went on to get their shots. Ange got to give all the babies their shots, which was a really good experience as she has never given needles to a baby before. James the nurse showed her how first and she did all the rest. The babies got shots for pneumonia, TB, hepatitis and polio. All the babies cried so much when they got their needle one of them sounded like it was laughing hysterically it was very cute! The pregnant mothers that came in got checked to make sure the babies were in the right place and that they had a strong heart beat. Of course this is all done by palpating since their is no ultrasound in the clinic. The nurse showed us how to tell how far along the pregnancy is by counting the number of finger widths the baby could be felt above the belly button. Two of the mothers were expected to give birth any time! Then we checked the iron levels of the pregnant moms and not surprisingly all of them are very low, in fact if they were in Canada they would be classified as anemic however in Kenya the value to be considered anemic is much lower so many of them were just considered low. It is interesting to see the difference in health standards here for example in Canada you are not even allowed to donate blood if your iron level is below 25, and the highest measured level we saw today was 12! We gave them some counselling on good foods to eat to help increase their iron however it is quite expensive to buy meat here which is probably why they have such low levels. We also gave them iron supplements but this is of course only a temporary fix. It was a very busy and interesting day we are looking forward to Monday as there is a food distribution center at the clinic that day!

Our First Week

We've landed in Kenya! We got here last thursday late at night and we have just internet now! The first 3 days we went on a safari because we couldn't start at the clinic until Monday. The safari was great we saw lots of animals, it was amazing! Kenya is such a beautiful country full of amazing wildlife, and huge forests full of monkeys and baboons. Also while on the safari we visited a Masai family to learn more about there culture and traditions. It was very interesting, they build houses out of mud and sticks, and use leaves for the roof. Every 6 years they have to build a new house because of termites. They have an incredible and very interesting way of life. We got to our guest house where we will be staying the rest of the trip on Monday. The guest house is great there are about 10 other volunteers staying there al either in a clinic or in an orphanage. Yesterday we got an orientation on how to get around on the busses which is an experience in itself. We also had a tour of the clinic we would be working at. The clinic is named Urishika clinic which means coming together in Swahili. The community in the slum of kibera decided to start this clinic for their people. Every ward was donated by community members and various NGOs. They have both a girls and boys ward, out patient clinic, HIV and TB clinic and a maternity center.

Ange:

Today at the clinic I was working with one of their two doctors. We saw patient after patient. Some of the things I got to assist with were: blood pressures, injections, medications and wound cleaning. Every day at the clinic seems to have a program. Tomorrow, there is a time for women to come in for cervical exams and on friday there is maternity check up. I will be assisting with both of those and anything else coming up. Me and alex also watched a 6 year boy get circumcised. It was difficult to watch but it is in their culture for all men to get it around the age of 12 as part of becoming a man. Another interesting thing the doctor told me was that nearly everyone in Kenya has latent TB. So they don't even test for it. You come and get treatment when you start having symptoms, meaning you now have an active case of TB. Overall, so far its been a great learning experience and really interesting/eye opening seeing how people live in the slum!

Alex:

I am working with the nutritionist at the clinic mostly doing counselling and growth monitoring. Today when I arrived we had several new moms with their babies come for checkups, the first baby was a new born and weighed 2.6 kg which is low. We counselled her on the importance of breast feeding and gave her a pamphlet to help. The rest of the babies were older and were all proper weights, but for some reason the nutritionist said that almost all the babies he sees are too short for their age. It was very interesting to see the difference in nutrition cases in Kenya and Canada. In Canada the majority of cases dealing with nutrition are about obesity and over eating, where as in Kenya there is nearly no obesity and far far more malnourished and under weight people. It was a great day and a good start to our next two weeks.