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.