Valuable Information

Just another day in the life of a health volunteer. I went to a Lori’s site last week to assist her with a small HIV workshop she set up at the technical institute next to her compound.  It went off really well, with over a third of the school in attendance! We had videos (in Kiswahili) about HIV and its pathology, slide shows and posters on STI’s and we were able to give out free condoms and family planning (birth control pills) to the students who were interested. We were also able to test almost thirty people, which was awesome! I was really glad to help out at the day and it made me realize a lot of the innate or easily accessible knowledge we as Americans have. I had brought over a huge amount of birth control pills that I had received from the district for my HIV day to give out to the college students. These students who were my age, or more often older than me, had no knowledge of what birth control was or how to use it. I gladly taught them individually or in small groups so that I was sure they had received the message, but it made me think about how common this knowledge is in America, and how easily you can access the information you need if you wanted it. Knowing to take one each day at the same time was a concept I had to repeat several times to the same group, and for most people at home this is something they hear about all the time. Here, the students have never had this type of information taught to them, or had media to get the information, such as television ads, or easy access to Internet. This was the case for the other topics as well that were taught that day, but because I was specially dealing with family planning, it became more apparent. This was something I’ve known since being here, but once you are really sitting down and teaching it, and knowing the information you are providing is really valuable, that’s when it starts to sink in. I guess it’s just something I wanted to put out there, be grateful for the knowledge and opportunities we are given, whether you utilize them all or not, the access to such information is not available everywhere.

And it is not just the information revolving around family planning and HIV, but so many other topics can fall under this unfortunate umbrella, in many areas besides Kenya. Being the teacher, and not the coordinator of the event really put me at the level to appreciate what was being done, and seeing the students understand what I was telling them was really a rewarding experience. I’m excited to help out again with Lori at this school because she has planned a school-wide event there in May that will hopefully capture all the students. 

This is a picture of Lori and the students, as well as Mama Margaret in the front in her scrubs. I'm taking the picture, because all the other ones were coming out blurry haha =P

As for me for now I am still working with my health clubs, doing lessons most recently on STI’s and this week on drug abuse. I am also still working on my event for World Malaria Day.

I still miss you all and hope everyone is well!

I am currently reading Zeitoun by Dave Eggers and have not really delved into any particular show right now!

With love and African sunshine,

Lindsey Rae

Consolidation and More

March 17, 2013

It’s the middle of March and I finally find myself back at site after a long but very fun consolidation period. As you may or may not have known the Kenyan presidential elections were held on March 4^th. Due to the post election violence that occurred during the last election period in 2007-08, Peace Corps brought all the volunteers together in a safe location in case anything were to happen this time around. Fortunately the elections were a peaceful process, and although there were some delays in counting, violence was minimal and not significant enough to send us home. For the volunteers this consolidation period, although racked with uncertainty till the end, was also a great time for us to get to know everyone from all sectors and training classes. We were able to all come together in a way that is not common for most Peace Corps volunteers. We had sessions with Peace Corps, but also were able to plan activities for ourselves, such as an Olympics, trivia night, talent show, and Peace Corps Kenya prom! In fact during the talent show my friend and lovely roommate Cassidy took second place for our rendition of the Cups song from the movie Pitch Perfect, which I hear is a big hit in the states right now haha! All in all it was an awesome couple of weeks, where we got to know the other volunteers better, the staff better (and let me plug here we have an AMAZING country director), as well as remained safe from an uncertain issues during the election process.

Now I am back at site, and although it has taken a couple days to get back into the swing of things I have started a list of what I want to do next and am planning activities both for work and play. I am looking into writing a grant to get funds to do an outreach for jiggers as well as having another HIV/AIDS day. World Malaria Day is also coming up at the end of April and myself along with Breezie, Joy and Lori are looking into doing an activity for that.  I am excited for things to come and hope that everything goes smoothly work wise, but I am keeping my expectations low, as you should when you live in rural Africa!

Unfortunately the elections are technically not over, because of a judicial process going on regarding a petition that on of the candidates has put in place, asking for a review of the process and a potential recount or revote. The courts will be hearing the case in about 9 days and then we will see where the process will go from there. I hope and believe that whatever the outcome the Kenyan people will remain peaceful. Afterwards, hopefully this issue can be put to rest for the remainder of my service. I have really come to love my home here in the village, and will no doubt be saddened if I am unable to remain here.

On a happier note, Happy St. Patty’s day to all back at home! I wish I were there to share a green beer or two with you =). Also, some shoutouts are in order. To my littlest sister who’s birthday is in three days, Happy 18^th!  Don’t go too crazy, which goes for Rach too, who will finally be 21 on April 6^th! And of course Happiest of birthdays to my amazing grandmother on the 21^st of March, and cousin Brooke who happens to share the same awesome birthday date with my sister Rach! And last but not least sending a big “Break a leg!” to those in the production of Hello Dolly! who I know (which is really just my sister and her friends haha.) I know it’ll be amazing, and I can not tell you how sad I am that I can’t see it in person! Honestly, ask my mother, I was renting the film version (with the amazing Barbara in it) since I was about seven years old from the library.

TV fix: Consolidation gave me new episodes of Glee, Homeland, and New Girl. No worries, they’re all completed now, but I wish I had more!

Reading: Just finished reading The Girl in the Blue Beret by Bobbie Ann Mason. And by just finished I mean actually two hours ago. Thinking of reading Night Circus next, but the choices of a nook can be overwhelming!

For now all is good in Chebukaka, Kenya. I hope the same for you all wherever you are. As always, missing you all, and sending you sunshine and love from Africa.

Xoxo

Lindsey Rae

P.S. Snail mail is always welcome! And I’m sorry if you’ve sent something and I haven’t responded yet, with the whole consolidation thing it was a bit hectic here. I promise to get back on track! <3

HIV/AIDS Health Education Day!

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Hello again! The last month or so has been pretty busy which is always a nice change. I returned from my vacation for the holidays like I said before, and I jumped right back into working. I continued with my health club at the girl’s high school, and decided to go to boy’s high school and see if they would like to work together with me. The boy’s high school is much MUCH larger than the girl’s and when I went to introduce myself to the students in order to see if there was interest, the entire student body was there, which was over 1000 boys. I had to use a microphone to talk to all of them! But over the next few weeks, I returned and started having health club meetings with a small group of boys on Tuesday afternoons. I gave lessons to both the boys and girls clubs on HIV/AIDS, STI’s, and relationships.

Another event I started to work on was planning an HIV/AIDS Health Education Day in my village. I talked to my community health workers and some of them had participated in events like this before, and agreed that it would be a good idea to do here. So we began the planning. We had meetings together to decide how we wanted the day to run, and we agreed on a type of round robin education system. The day was held at our chief’s center, because the dispensary I work with is faith based, and family planning services are not permitted on the compound. We created “booths” for different topics, such as HIV/AIDS, STI’s, wound treatment, HIV stigma, prevention of mother to child transmission, nutrition, condom demonstrations and family planning. The word “booths” is put in quotes, because here, that really just means a table or maybe just a chair, underneath a tree. But it’s the education that matters. I also had several meetings with the district public health nurse, and the district public health officer, to keep them informed of the work I was doing, and they were also able to provide me with certain supplies. I received over 9000 condoms to distribute, as well as family planning materials for the women, such as pills, shots and implants. They also provided us with several testing kits for HIV and the necessary supplies to screen women for cervical cancer.

           

So over the month’s time, I met with them as well as put together education materials for my community health workers and created flyers to advertise for the day, which was on February 9^th. I wanted my health workers to be the ones doing the majority of the education, and I also brought in nurses from my dispensary and a friends local “mama” to assist us with testing and giving out the family planning services. They were super awesome, counseling the people, testing them and advising them on what to do whether they were HIV negative or positive. Mama Margaret, my friend Lori’s mama, was the nurse giving out family planning services and she was also wonderful working with all the women. Besides working my CHW’s I also had some of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers to help me for the day. My neighboring volunteers, Joy, Breezie, Lori, Rachel, Amy and Rachael (not actually a PCV but still awesome) came to help me out with the day and they were amazing! They each either had their own booth or helped a CHW with one and I couldn’t have appreciated this more, because it let me move around to supervise and answer any questions my health workers had.

The welcome sign to the health day! 

Myself with Susy at the registration table

View of all the booths! and the testing was going on inside the building!

Breezie teaching about Nutrition and specific nutritional tips for people living with HIV/AIDS!

Miss Joy teaching on preventing the transmission of HIV from mother to child!

 Lori teaching about and showing a powerpoint (with pictures!) on sexually transmitted infections!

Amy and Racheal running the condom demonstration and family planning tables with Rosemary my CHW! awesome job ladies =)

My CHW Fred, teaching about HIV/AIDS!

Mama Margaret doing some HIV testing!

playing with little rebecca, she was soooo cute and fun =)

Some of the kiddos who came and hung around at the chiefs camp =)

 

Rachel and I having some food after the day wrapped up. Thanks for being the photographer all day love!

 

Most of the crew who helped put on the day! Asante sana everyone! =)

            In my opinion, the day turned out very successful. We had over 150 people attend the event, with 67 of them being tested for HIV and only three turn up positive. We distributed over 6000 condoms, and showed several people how to use them properly. Many women were given family planning services, four were given the implant (and more wanted it but that’s all we had!), 16 got the shot, and many more received pills to take home. We referred women to the dispensary on that Monday to receive screening for cervical and breast cancer, and 37 women were screened in one day! My supervisor is one of the seven qualified nurses to screen for cervical cancer in the county and this was definitely a number to be proud of. Three women came back positive, and we referred them to see the district doctors. This was my first big Peace Corps project, and I’m really glad how well it turned out. Several people asked me when I was going to be doing it again, and wanted to know where they could get tested or receive more family planning services. I know people also went away with a great deal of knowledge that they didn’t have before this, and by teaching my CHW’s I can try to ensure some amount of sustainability with that knowledge and hope that they can pass it forward to those that they know. I was also told that the turnout might have been even higher had their not been two funerals that day. Traditional funerals here usually involve the whole village, and the burials are an all day affair on Saturday’s. There is often a big feast, with a lot of people, there’s a viewing of the body, and the person is buried in the afternoon. So maybe next time there will be a higher attendance rate, the more the merrier!

            With the health day under my belt, I was now off for another short adventure to the beach! Same place, Diani, a bit of a different crowd, but it was still a great time! A small group of us headed down there for a few days and just basked in the sun at the pool and the beach, and went out for seafood dinner, and to the bar at night. It was a nice little break after putting in all that work for the past month and half.

Breezie and I when we went out to dinner in Diani =) 

Having some drinks with friends at the hostel! South Coast Backpackers is awesome!

            After a few days we headed home, and in true Kenyan fashion, travel was a disaster. The first half went smoothly, but the leg from Nairobi to my village in Western Kenya was definitely not. My friend Joy and I hopped in a shuttle, which should take about 7 hours to get us back to our bigger town of Bungoma. Well for starters, the journey took about 9 and ½ hours instead, because of ridiculous traffic and construction. This left us with the dilemma of getting to our villages, but thankfully we had a friend in Bungoma who put us up for the night since no matatus were traveling towards our sites at that hour (it was about 9:30 pm). Also during this lovely ride I made friends with the baby next to me. The poor mama was all alone and traveling with several bags and the 2 month old baby, so for a while I offered to hold her and relieve the mom. She was actually adorable and not fussy at all, so that wasn’t really a bad part of the trip. What WAS a horrific part was the LIVE chickens the man behind Joy and I had brought on the shuttle. Usually when people are traveling with live chickens, (yes its common, rarely phases anyone here at all), they put them in a box with a cut out for their head. Instead this man just had them out and placed a paper bag (in Kenya the word paper bag is used for plastic bags, that price chopper bag, yup they’d call it paper). Well half way through the ride, they started to move up towards our feet, peck at us and proceeded to poop under me, where my feet were supposed to go. Needless to say I kind of had a little fit at the man, and had to sit with my feet up for the rest of the ride.

            With all that behind us, we did finally make it home back to our sites safely. It has been a busy month or two, and now I am just relaxing and cleaning up my house, and getting ready for whatever’s next. The Kenyan elections are coming up, and due to past events, the Peace Corps will be taking precautionary measures to keep all of the volunteers safe during that time period. Please pray that things are safe, and the election goes smoothly. Who knows what will happen, but I’m glad to be in good hands here. There is no reason to worry I will be fine!

            As always, I am missing all of you so so much, and I hope things are well wherever you might be! Keep in touch, I know African mail is slow, but it is always appreciated! =)

Current Entertainment:

Books: I just finished Wanderlust, A love affair with Five Continents by Elizabeth Eaves and I am now reading Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.

TV: HOMELAND! I only had up to season 2 episode 5, but I’m hooked! And I got some of the new season of Glee, but only up to the Christmas episode, so hopefully I can get more of both soon!

Love and miss you all!

Xoxo

Lindsey Rae

Kenyan Holidays in the Sun

Wow, so if you follow my blog, let me start with an apology. It’s been two months since I last posted, and I can only imagine what you were thinking! (but not really, I know most of you have a facebook =) ) But for those of you who don’t, I’m sorry for my dropping off the grid. I guess I’ll start with a quick recap of what’s been happening since last time.

So November ended up being quite the busy time for me, because as I told you, I was doing household interviews in all of my 18 villages within my sublocation, and yes I finished them all! It took a hot minute, but I was glad for something productive to do. The interviews were about 65 questions long, and I asked things such as how many people lived in the household, what level of education the interviewee had, knowledge on HIV/AIDS, hygiene, substance abuse, water access, farming, children and education, and jiggers knowledge. I interviewed a total of 86 people, mostly women, and received many of the same answers from them. Unfortunately, many of them only completed standard 8 (pretty much like our eighth grade, which they consider the end of primary school), or they continued to secondary school, but did not complete it. This was often due to a pregnancy, or the woman was getting married. In my area, many of the women are not originally from here, but have married into this area. However, the men when asked where they are from, they often responded with, “hapa!” (which means right here, in Kiswahili). They often inherited the land that they grew up on. In Bukusu culture, the women do not inherit anything, and they actually do not have complete control over their children. If they decide to leave the family, the children are not technically considered the mothers. This is not the case in all of the tribal cultures across Kenya, but something I learned about mine recently. I also learned that many people were not up to date on how the transmission of HIV occurs, and how to prevent it. This was an area that my counterpart and I would teach on if we came across the lack of knowledge. We learned that substance abuse is a big problem in my area, mostly local brewed alcohols, and “bang”, which is the term for marijuana here. They also said there’s little that the community is or can do about the problem, and many people responded that this was how people generated income for their families. Jiggers were also a big health issue I discovered in my interviews. This is a small flea that burrows into the skin underneath the fingernails and toenails, and can cause itching and pain, and if left alone long enough can cause auto amputation with repeated infections. It leads to problems in school as well for children because of the discomfort. This is an area I want to do a project on in the future. 

This is a hand drawn map of my sublocation, Kibichori, drawn by one of my Community Health Workers!

At the end of the month, some of my fellow PCV’s and I celebrated Thanksgiving together in Bungoma, which is the “larger” town nearest to us. I use quotes because its not that big, but it does have a supermarket, and a few nice places to eat and relax. That weekend was busy, because afterwards my friend, Joy, had an outreach program for Jiggers that she had planned. A few volunteers and myself helped her out, and we were able to get about 150 people treated for jiggers. The problem with jiggers is the treatment is expensive, and it needs to be holistic because in order to try and prevent reoccurrence it is important not only to treat the person but the household as well to kill the fleas at the source. The medications for both people and fumigation are expensive, so when I get to working on this project, it will definitely be grant-writing time!  The day went very well, and then it was almost December! 

At Joy's Jiggers Outreach! Here you see those infected soaking their feet and hands in potassium permaganate (sp? lol) which kills the jigger and the eggs it lays in the body. This is the non invasive way to treat them.

Joy and one of her organization members discussing and treating people for Jiggers!

Myself and my Community Health Workers who joined me at Joy's Jiggers Outreach! Learning and having fun! =)

Now onto the whirlwind of December! Quick shout out to the best mother in the world, December 1^st, is her birthday. So HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! Anyways, I spent the first two weeks in Nairobi for my In-Service Training. This was wonderful, because I got to spend a ton of time with my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers in my class, as well as a few others who were in Nairobi to teach lessons at our training. But besides spending day in and day out in lessons and classes, we also got to do some seriously American-esque things! Like see a movie?! I know, crazy right. Now there weren’t many options so yes, I saw the last installment of Twilight, but hey had to complete the series I guess right? Haha. It was great just to be able to sit in a theater and watch a new movie, and on a HUGE screen. Its amazing the difference from your computer screen everyday to something so large. We also got to get good food on several occasions, burgers, frozen yogurt (think Pinkberry, or 16 Handles, it was just as good!), good coffee and drinks. We even found beer that wasn’t Tusker! Micro brewed beer in Nairobi, amazing. We also did our fair share of shopping around in the markets, and were even able to go out a couple of the nights. But don’t worry, we did learn while we were there! We got some good information on places to look for grants, learned about jiggers (Joy came and taught about her day, which was fun because I was actually at it!), discussed malaria, life skills teaching, and went on a field trip to a place called Real Impact that works on new ways to farm and be environmentally friendly, such as planting vegetables in sacks.

After this amazing time, I traveled home with one of my best girls, Lori, who lives pretty close to me at site. We got back, tired and longing for a shower and the Wifi access we had in Nairobi. But neither one of us had long before we turned around to another adventure! Lori was off a few days later, to fly to Guam and spend her holidays with her family, which I was supremely jealous of. I was relaxing for a few days, and then spent a few days with Joy, and some of our friends for her birthday! We went hiking on Mt. Elgon, which is very close to our sites. (Have I told you yet that Joy, and Breezie are two volunteers really close to me at site? I see them a lot if you haven’t picked that up yet haha). The hike was awesome, we went to some caves, one that had a waterfall going over it, and then went to see the other larger waterfall that flows into Kuywa River. I of course had a few spills during the hike, in accordance with my clumsy self, but still it was a great time. The next day we went into town and hung out by a pool at one of the nice hotels, and then had a nice dinner and went out for drinks.

Now, finally we reach my holidays vacation. I traveled down to the coast with several of my friends from my class and spent my Christmas on Diani Beach (south of Mombasa), relaxing, hanging out with my friends, riding camels; you know the usual beach stuff. We did our vacation hostel style in order to save some money and it was a great time, we all got to be together, and we also met a lot of cool people. 

 A view of the hostel we stayed in at Diani Beach! So nice! 

Diani Beach, sooo beautiful!

Taking a ride on the beach with George.

Sunset and Moon Rise on the beach in Diani. Can you tell I really like it here yet? haha!

I continued on this hostel tour when I left Diani to meet up with another group of friends (which included Joy and Breezie haha) and we went to the north coast town of Kilifi. This hostel was AMAZING! Super spacious, and the showers, they were in bamboo trees. It was awesome. 

Bamboo showers, SO AWESOME!

Everything was eco friendly and it was off the beaten path, which was also really great. We stayed here for a short time, because we were heading up to Lamu a few days later for the New Year. Note to self: Never ride in the back of the bus when the road is bad. You will have back issues after. I’m pretty sure I caught air on several occasions. But after the six-hour beating on my spine, we made it to the boat, which would take us to the island of Lamu. This area of Kenya is SO different from where I live. It is mostly Muslim, there are no cars on the island (only donkeys, bicycles and boats), no one is constantly asking me “how are you?!”, and everyone is super friendly. It is much more conservative, but it is a wonderful atmosphere. Fresh fish was on the menu pretty much everyday, along with fresh squeezed mango juice or some other blend of deliciousness. The mangos here are also HUGE compared to my site. It was awesome because I LOVE mangos. The girls and I got to take a dhow boat ride one day, which was an all day affair, and we also got to see the ruins of a small village on a separate island. 

The dhow boat we hung out on for the day. Such a relaxing good time, the men who ran the boat also cooked us a wonderful seafood curry for lunch!

 Myself in one of the arches in the ruins of an old mosque.

 

We spend New Year’s Eve on a beach, relaxing, listening to music, having a drink, and then having some fun in the African drum circles that were forming. We all got traditional henna before leaving the island, and concluded that Lamu was definitely one of our favorite spots in the country. 

Rocking some traditional henna designs in Lamu!

 

As is expected in Kenya, travel is never as simple as you would like it to be. When we left our vacation in Lamu, preparing ourselves for the reality of site, we had a few mishaps. First, our buses engine was not in the mood to work, and we broke down about, mmm 4 times? That was fun. But what was better, was after this happened, less than a half hour after the last break down, we got a flat tire, which we had to stop twice to fix. We finally made it back to Kilifi, where we stayed one night because making it to Mombasa was a no go for us that day. We went the next morning to find that the bus company had given away our reserved seats, and then had to scramble to find a different bus. We found one, and then had to kill several hours in town.  Finally made the bus, got to Nairobi, found a shuttle, and then took the remaining 9-hour trip to get home. These small hiccups make you appreciate the quality of bus companies, subways, and pretty much all public transportation in the U.S. even if it is not as abundant as here.

Now, it’s been a few days, but I’m back at site. I checked my mail, and received several Christmas cards, and holiday packages, and again, I can say with confidence, I have some of the best friends and family a girl could ask for, so thank you all so much! As a public health volunteer, a work plan is something we have to pretty much come up with ourselves. So, if you’re still reading this, (which I give you kudos for!) remember when I mentioned lack of HIV/AIDS knowledge? I decided that in February, I’m going to hold an HIV/AIDS Health Awareness Day. It will consist of several stations teaching on the subject, as well as family planning, how to properly use contraceptives, STI’s and proper nutrition. I will be working on setting this up, as well as hopefully going back to the girl’s secondary school to start the Health Club back up. The compound I live on has also been building up their school, and now have up to class 4, so I will be trying to teach a life skills class to some of the older kids. I am bouncing around the idea of creating a world map on one of the walls of the school, as well as trying to create a library of books in the school so the kids have something to read and keep them learning. These are just some of the things I’m working on these days, and hope to get off the ground. I really hope the health day goes well, so cross your fingers for me!

I hope you are all doing well at home, and around the world! I am always missing you and thinking of you all! Again, I’m sorry this update is RIDICULOUSLY late, but I hope you get a little sense of what I’ve been up to, and feel free to write, email, call, message me if you want to!

And of course my current entertainment:

Reading: West of Jesus by Steven Kotler AND The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

(yes I finally finished Pillars of the Earth. Took a minute, but worth the read!)

Watching: Season 6 of 30 Rock. I had to skip season 5 because I didn’t have it, but this show just gets me to laugh out loud every time! Also finally started watching Modern Family, I know, slow to jump on the bandwagon, but I’ll catch up.

Any book, movie or tv suggestions are always welcome!

Much Love,

Lindsey Rae 

P.S. even though I had a wonderful time on vacation, this will always be my favorite place on earth....

 God Bless America =)

What's Been Happening

So it has been quite some time since I’ve posted. Well, lets just say the month of October had its fair share of ups and downs. And obviously by fair share I mean everyday, all the time, not my most favorite month..if you catch my drift. BUT with that said, I can confidently say I have some of THE best family and friends a girl could ever ask for. I have the constant support of my mother, who I am surprised has not herself gone crazy listening to my every crazy thought. One of the many reasons I love her. I also have a continuous stream of people at home sending supportive messages, cards, packages, ect. And let me tell you, those are some of the most important things in Peace Corps life. And there is always the volunteers you call up that understand exactly what you’re going through, and make you feel like you are either not as crazy as you feel, or at least not alone on the crazy train.

With that said, about halfway through the month I decided that one way to make myself busy was to start going on village visits, doing interviews and really seriously getting to know my community, the people that live there and how they go about their daily lives. With the help of a couple of amazing Kenyans I have been visiting villages 3 days a week for the past three weeks. This is 9 different villages. Seems like a lot, but I have 18 villages in my sublocation, so I’m actually only half way there. Lucky for me, there is about 3 more weeks until I head to Nairobi for my In Service Training, so I have a schedule for part of the week for the rest of the month! Earlier in the month I had gone around and visited the schools in my area, and found that the girls high school did not have a health club or lesson period. So I decided to create a health club there, and that’s what my Monday afternoons have been occupied with recently. However, this will come to an end for the term soon, because the girls are done with school on November 23^rd. We have only met a few times, but it has been really fun, and the girls are great. I’m excited to really get into lessons with them next term and hopefully they will continue to open up and ask questions as they have already started to do.

I also got to celebrate our American tradition of Halloween with a bunch of Peace Corps friends.  A few of us girls decided to be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and we made our costumes entirely out of market day finds, with our shells made out of plastic basins haha. We travelled to Kabarnet, where my friend Andrea’s site is for our get together, and it was BEAUTIFUL. She lives at a pretty high elevation, so her views are amazing. It was really great to get see people after about a month apart.

Hmm…otherwise, I’ve just been trying to keep busy with the usual reading, watching an obscene amount of televisions shows and movies on my hard drive.

Currently reading: The Pillars of the Earth: by Ken Follett (this book is SOOO long. But hey I got time right? And it’s actually really a great story)

Tv Show obsession as of late: Breaking Bad (I’m almost done with Season 4, and yes I watched all four seasons in the past few weeks. Don’t judge.)

Thanks for the Advice Teddy

I know its been quite a while since my last post, but well, not too much has been happening. I've had a lot of ups and downs in the past month, more than I care to remember honestly. But I came across this speech/quote yesterday and it helped me out a bit.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."-Theodore Roosevelt

With that, I promise to update more soon, and even though my weeks have been rough, certain things can really brighten up your day. I had the privilege of helping escort two more healthy babies into the world today. The maternity ward and maternal and child health clinic hold some of my favorite moments so far in Kenya. And yes, there is yet another Lindsey that will be running around the Chebukaka area when she grows up =)

Eventful Week!

These past few days have certainly been eventful! To start off the week I had a meeting with my Community Health Workers. I think that it went really well! I finally got to introduce myself to them as a group and we discussed the major health issues of our area, what they would like to learn, and I had them priority rank the diseases we talked about. Then we discussed how we as a group could combat these issues, and how to best mobilize the community. I did as little talking as possible, and I think that it went really well! 

The CHW's and myself!! =)

The next day I got to meet a few district officials that will I’m sure be very important for me to have good relations with in the future- the District Public Health Nurse, and the District Medical Officer of Health. Both meetings went well!

My most exciting day though this week was yesterday by far. I went over to our dispensary in the morning, preparing to go out on the mobile clinic with one of the nurses. However, when I got there I went to find my supervisor, and I got to witness my first live birth! It was AMAZING. I couldn’t believe how calm the mother was, she never yelled, just stuck it out, and this is obviously without any drugs. She has beautiful baby girl! I found out a little later on that day that she named her daughter Lindsey after me! I was so honored! It definitely made me tear up a little. This morning I went and took some pictures with baby Lindsey and her mother before she was discharged, take a look!

To make yesterday even crazier, I was relaxing on the computer later that day, and out of nowhere I feel a HUGE shock travel through my body and then down and out my right leg. Right after that the lights started flickering, but I hadn’t yet unplugged my computer from the power source because there was no sign of a problem, and it had only just begun raining. My computer was perfectly fine though, which was WONDERFUL. I checked in with our medical office, and they said that I probably actually saved my computer from being fried, and I would just feel tingly for a while.

Then today I met with my communities PLWHA (People Living with HIV and AIDS) support group. This meeting also went really well, and I think that I will able to do some great work with them. 

The support group and I!

After the meeting though, what happened? I saw ANOTHER live birth! A beautiful baby boy was born at the dispensary today! I can’t believe how much new life I have seen in the past 48 hours. It has been amazing. I feel really blessed to have been able to have these experiences.

Each day I have been feeling more and more like this is where I am supposed to be, and that this path will steer me in the right direction. Hopefully I feel this way tomorrow =P but for now, I am really loving life here in my little village!