A Small Jubilee of my Own

Well it’s been one whole day haha. But I did promise cows, and a bit of an update on this week. So as you have now seen my home, for the past couple of weeks, since I have arrived at site, I’ve just been setting up my home, and “relaxing”. Which as I have mentioned can take its toll. However, I did have a few things planned for this past week, which was definitely a good thing.

On Tuesday, I traveled with one of the sisters, and the parish priest to the town of Kakamega, where a celebration would be held in honor of seven nuns. Six of them were celebrating their Golden Jubilee, which is the anniversary of their fiftieth year as a nun, and one was celebrating her Silver Jubilee, which is 25 years as a nun. This has been planned for quite some time, and the reason I was included on this venture was that one of the nuns celebrating her Golden Jubilee resides here on the compound in Chebukaka, and I still had not met her. Now my first thought on this celebration is, HOLY CRAP. These women have been nuns for half of a century. Which means they are a bit older than that, pretty much overcoming the Kenyan life expectancy by default because it is somewhere around the age of 60-63 the last time I checked. We entered the church, and of course I was the only mzungu present, which most definitely got some stares. But all of the nuns we were around were very welcoming. All the while, during the three-hour church service, which although some of the speaking was in English, all of the singing was in Kiswahili, I was just in awe of these women.  They have devoted their entire lives to serving God, and of the ones I have met they are some of the happiest, hard working people I’ve met. Afterwards, I finally got to meet the sister who stays on the compound, and her face just LIT UP when she saw that the “visitor” had come to celebrate with her. I had been feeling a bit out of place, but her reaction to my presence, just made the entire day worth it. It is those small victories that I will consider my own personal jubilees. I think that as a Peace Corps Volunteer, although they may be few and far between, these are the moments you remember, and they make the whole experience worth it. I am so sorry I don’t have any photos from this day to share. We left home so early I completely forgot to throw my camera into my bag.

The very next morning I was also able to experience another small jubilee, accompanying some public health workers on the last day of the polio vaccine campaign. This was the tail end of the campaign, so we were assigned to an area, and were “mopping up”, making sure that every child under five had been vaccinated for the disease. This door-to-door campaign is exactly the type of community health work I imagined, so I was very happy just to tag along. The workers whom I accompanied were very accommodating, answering my many questions about the area, their lives, and health issues of my area. We discussed jiggers, and malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, and several other topics. It was so nice to have some real conversation with people interested in the same activities as myself. We walked around for over four hours, canvassing areas that may have already been seen but making sure to ask if every child had been vaccinated. We vaccinated 8 children that morning, and although that was a small number, that is eight more children protected from polio in my area. The workers said they vaccinated hundreds of children in the previous days. The grassroots campaigns are what make 100% coverage of children’s immunizations a possibility.

Here is a picture of the public health worker giving out the vaccine. The polio vaccine is just an oral vaccination that is two small drops into the child’s mouth. This is easy for the child and health worker because many of the kids immediately begin to cry.

This is what we were carrying around with the vaccine in it, because it is temperature sensitive and must be kept cold. If it gets left in the sun for too long the color of the vaccine changes so that the worker knows it no longer is effective.

This is one of the workers with some of the children we just immunized! The man has a marker and a piece of chalk in his hand, because once a child is immunized, they mark their right pinky nail in order to make sure it does not get duplicated. The chalk is used to write on the doors of the homes, with symbols marking that they have given out a vaccine there, and what team of people did it, and how many children were vaccinated. There were eight teams in my area, and these are just two people who canvas areas for children that require the vaccination. 

Okay, so that was the fun public health item I got to do for the week. To change the topic completely, I promised some pictures of cows. Well here goes. This is outside my house everyday. And a little baby one was just born two days ago! I think I may name her Daisy just to be super stereotypical.

 As you can see they graze on the compound quite frequently, there is also a pasture they go to, but sometimes its just right outside my house.

 Right out side the window haha. Now it has seemed to happen a little less frequently, but its definitely an interesting site in the morning. Hope you're all getting a little bit of a feel for my area, and life here. Missing you all a bunch!