A Month Already???

So to my amazement a month has passed already. In one way, I could swear that I just got here, but in another, I already feel very comfortable here. I know it’s been a little while since my last post, but I’ve definitely been busy and because of that I think I’ve been dreading trying to fit everything into this next post, so I guess I’ll just have to write about some highlights from the past two weeks.

Jessica and I moved to Kisumu on January 24^th, so we’ve been here for just over two weeks now. Kisumu is such an awesome little city. It’s the third largest city in Kenya, but by no means would I call it all that large. There are lots of people and lots of vehicles, but it’s small enough where I’m already starting to know my way around, and if you know me at all you know it took a good year or so before I could begin to tell where I was in DC (and I still may get lost at times :)). We take tuk tuks to get around everywhere. The best way to describe these vehicles is if you picture the yellow and red plastic cars that we all had when we were little and would move around with our feet. They are shaped like that, are small, and seriously make the sound tuk tuk tuk tuk as we drive by places. Now they obviously don’t use their feet to drive it but they do have handle bars to direct where we go. They are a cheap way to get to and from all the places we need to go. We have one main driver who brings us to most of the places around town. We see him at least once every day on our very early drive to the gym. Yes, the gym. Lauren and I signed up for a gym here for the month because we were eating too much chapatti and chips (fries). Everything is fried in vegetable oil so gaining weight, surprisingly enough, is not hard to do in Africa. We get picked up by Sammy at 6:15am everyday and are driven back at 7:45am so we can shower and get ready in time for the bus to bring us to work in the morning. A note about the gym, remember how I talked about Javin, the bodybuilder from Eldoret, well, by joining the gym in Kisumu we have made more bodybuilder friends. Who knew that I would go to Kenya and know at least three bodybuilders by the end? The funny thing is that one of them, Victor, said he was a body builder and I was like oh, we met one in Eldoret, his name is Javin. And he was like, I know Javin, he came in second and I came in first in our competition (last I recall I think Javin said the opposite but I let it go, no need to argue with someone’s whose neck is bigger than your leg). The best part was that the next day he wanted to show me pictures from the competition. He had a pic of the four finalists which Javin was a part of. Victor asked me to point him out and thankfully I was able to differentiate between them all. But just wait - he also had his solo pics. And I was thinking the entire time, look at his face, look at his face, look at his face. Do you know how tiny those teeny weenie bikinis are in body building competitions?! Well I flipped through very quickly and was like uh huh, good job. Good job? What do you say to pictures like that? Well I was then thankfully able to go with Lauren in another room to finish our workout for the day. Man oh man, Kenya just continues to throw interesting stuff my way.

                So enough about the gym, I have to go into the stories that have to do with why I am actually here. Since Jessica and I were in Eldoret for two weeks first and Lauren was in Kisumu those first two weeks, we have relied somewhat on her to show us around initially. She has made some amazing contacts with community health workers (CHWs) and we have been able to build on those friendships. Some of the best days I’ve had here in the past two weeks are with a CHW named Steve – Dad, you will be happy about the name, Mom, you will probably tell everyone that “there is a Steve in Kenya! What are the chances?!” He can’t be more than 20 years old, but I swear he looks twelve. He grew up in Nyalenda (the slum we will be surveying at some point in Kisumu), and currently still lives there. He is so sweet and is more than eager to take us around the area and show us anything that we would like to see. The first day that we went, the most poignant person we visited was a traditional birth attendant (TBA). TBAs could be thought of as midwives, but are actually more than that. The woman we visited, Mama Esse, takes care of many many women in the area. She provides prenatal care, advice, and general knowledge of what should be done during pregnancy, delivery and after. We got to see the area where she delivers the babies, which is in the room adjacent to her living room. We lift the cloth that falls in the doorway and there are two beds and a cement floor. This is it; now I am not surprised by any means because I have seen these huts many times now, but to know that just the night before there was a woman screaming in this room, lying on the cement floor giving birth (the beds are used for the women after they deliver to rest) is certainly something to imagine. What was amazing to see is that Mama Esse does have a small bin with cotton pads and gauze, a pair of surgical scissors, a few individually packed cord clamps, a uterotonic drug (to reduce postpartum hemorrhaging) that she claims to use on every delivery, and a box of gloves. She uses the money she collects from these women in order to buy these materials. Now I may be a bit biased but I think the government should absolutely be providing all of this for her, especially since she has probably saved hundreds of lives over these past ten years as the most trusted woman in the area to make the deliveries. You might be asking though, that if there is an emergency what can she do on a cement floor? She refers these women to the hospital if she knows that she cannot take care of them. Also, any woman who is HIV positive is referred to the hospital. So there are certain cases where she knows that she is not the proper person to be handling them. Mama Esse is a wonderful woman though, and Lauren and I are hoping that we can find some of the medical equipment that she needs and provide her with as much as possible for the future.

                I also need to talk about my favorite clinic that we visited in Nyalenda that day. This has to be one of the most ironic things I’ve seen in Kenya so far (and there has been a lot). The name of the clinic is Gods Will Clinic and guess what it specializes in? Family planning. I talked to the woman that was at the front counter about everything they offer and I was so excited about all the services that they had. We discussed: birth control - the pill vs. the injection (20 bob per month, 100 bob for 3 months, respectively) and the emergency pill (100 bob); HIV/AIDS testing; CHWs promoting these services in the field; and whether men accompany their wives to the clinic. I guess it’s good that I feel completely comfortable about discussing all of this openly and was able to get so much information from her. So in regards to the birth control, women will come in to take the pill, but more women opt for the injection because it lasts for 3 months. The pill is 20 bob per month – bob is the short way of saying shillings (they were a colony of Britain) and 20 bob would be about 25 cents. Can anyone in the US imagine a month pack of birth control for 25 cents? So that was exciting to see that women can come in and get this for such a small amount of money. The injection is 100 bob total for the 3 months. The emergency pill or what we could call Plan B, is also 100, so it is more expensive for a one time thing, but still affordable at about $1.25. The CHWs promote their services throughout Nyalenda in order to make sure the families have the proper family planning in order to keep everyone healthy. And of course I always ask about the man’s role in all of this. Understanding that the role of the man here is still pretty traditional it is somewhat understandable that they would not want to participate in this. Ideas are changing though and the men are being promoted to become more involved in the family planning process, which is great to see. The woman at the desk said that she has seen more men come in with their wives to make these decisions together. So overall this clinic definitely brought me some hope that people are becoming educated in how to keep themselves safe and healthy.

                I want to talk about one more visit that we had last week – I’ll have to write about more in the next post, since each day we get to see more and more amazing people in the town and it could probably take up ten pages if I wrote them all down now. We went with Steve to go see an herbalist in Nyalenda. He is also the village elder and very well respected throughout the area. This being said he lives about as far as you can go in Nyalenda and almost on top of Lake Victoria. It was a good hike through the brush and so much more interesting to walk through then the through the little city of Kisumu, since there is so much more culture to run into along the way. We passed by so many children who, in school, all learn to say one thing by heart, “Hello Mzungo, how are you, I am fine,” all in one breath. It is said with the best diction and to a beat that I wish I could better explain, but it is priceless each time. We respond, sometimes in Swahili sometimes in English, knowing that they will laugh at us whenever we respond in Swahili. So we finally reach the herbalist. The herbalist’s name is Lawrence and doesn’t know a word of English, so Steve became our translator. We sat down in his hut and began asking him about how he became an herbalist. He said that he worked in masonry up until age 30 when one night spirits came to him telling him about how he could help treat people. From that night on he decided to be an herbalist. He said that a lot of times when people come in with one ailment or another he will have to wait on diagnosing them because he has to sleep on it and wait to see what the spirits tell him to give them the next day. We politely shake our heads up and down and say ok. There cannot be any judgment here. This is the way they have done it for centuries and we are here to learn about the methods that so many people in this area come for - but we can then go home and talk about how there is no way that that tree bark is curing gonorrhea (I’ll get to that part in a minute). Lawrence leaves the hut and about five minutes later brings us a platter full of branches, leaves, bark, brown liquid, and other sorts of things. We go through what each one does and how to ingest it. There was one leaf for an upset stomach, another to cure a cough, a root to help with other intestinal problems, and of course the brown juice which was mixed from all sorts of things to cure gonorrhea and syphilis. We proceed to ask how effective this was and he assured us that after a glass of this in the morning and a glass at night it would be cured. We said ok. If only the US knew about this special juice I’m sure that healthcare would save a lot of money… as long as it didn’t put you in the hospital for all the worms and other bugs that you just ingested. Sadly he didn’t offer us any to try, so I can’t describe it to anyone, but that could be best for us all. We were at his place for almost an hour, but before leaving I asked Lawrence if he had any questions for us. He was most interested in whether the US used any plants like this to help treat people. My initial thought was hell no, but then thinking about it further we actually do. We just put it in a different packaging since Americans won’t pick up a tree branch and munch on it - silly Americans. He was pretty amazed to hear that we do actually incorporate some plants medicinally, such as aloe and Echinacea. It was a pretty cool transfer of cultural norms.

I’m having a great time here in Kisumu and have so many more stories to share. I truly cannot believe it’s already been a month and hope that the time starts slowing down for these next three months ahead because there is so much more I want to experience. One more amazing thing about being here is the depth of knowledge that people have about politics in every other country. I have never felt more involved in world politics than I have in Kenya. I encourage everyone to read about what is happening in Egypt, and around Northern Africa and the Middle East. There are so many changes that will be occurring in the near future and it makes sense for everyone to be informed. That’s it for now, I hope to be updating this more often from now on!