News from Kenya - #8

Journal Entry 8-Day 12,13,14

April 8, 2010 6.30PM

I’m writing from Buburi Health Center. I came here yesterday. I just finished a fairly busy day working with the staff at the center. The center is much more organized and better equipped due to wonderful assistance from Joanna and her friends who lives in the UK. She is a nurse and I mentioned her in my first journal entry. The center now has testing kits to check for malaria. This is a wonderful step for the center. They taught me how to do the testing and I spent much of the day testing all different age patients, from babies 3 months old to adults as old as 85 years. I had to stick their finger or heel with a lancet and it was very difficult for the young ones. Not only were they afraid of my white skin but I had to hurt them on top of it. Once the blood is there I needed to use a tiny plastic ring to collect 5 micro liters of blood and put it on the testing instrument and add 4 drops of solution. The hardest part for me was getting enough blood onto the plastic ring. It is sort of like getting the solution for blowing bubbles to stay in the ring only much smaller and I have to swipe the blood not dip it. Often the child was screaming and trying to pull away their finger. I felt terrible for scaring and hurting them. At the same time I was very happy that they could be tested and treated effectively. After 20 minutes the results are obvious. If there are two lines the person has malaria. If only one line it is negative. We tested 35+ persons and all but 3 or 4 were positive for malaria. They are then given a course of Artifan, the drug of choice for treating malaria in this area.

I also treated several persons who had complaints of back and knee pain and general joint problems. Most of them have had the problem for years and I knew one treatment would not make a lasting difference. Shortly before coming to Kenya I took a course in Reiki, Japanese energy medicine, from Carolyn Musial. It was very helpful today. I used it on all the people I saw. All said they felt better after the treatment. I also used some massage techniques. One woman was sent to me due to a complaint of leg pain but with evaluation it became obvious the cause was from an unhealed surgical wound on her foot. She is a diabetic and had two toes removed in 2007. The wound is small and would have been easy to miss as it was filled with dirt from the road. She used to come for treatments and it had closed but was now open again. One of the staff cleaned the wound with sterile water and dressed it. She will be started on antibiotics and was instructed to return to the clinic in a few days. Hopefully she will follow-through.

Saturday April 10, 2010

11:30 AM

I am in Kisumu and grateful to be back to “civilization”. I am feeling better. Thank you for your prayers and concerns. I finished the antibiotics and I think things are on there way back to normal. The weather has been dry and hot the last 4-5 days. The mosquitoes this time of year are more active and/or plentiful than when I’ve come in the summertime. I have many bites. I hope the Malarone medicine I’m taking for malaria is effective. I have used the repellent Deet that I brought but it irritates my skin and I have difficulty breathing shortly after I apply it. I therefore have not been using it much. I do sleep under a net.

I just came back from buying water and milk at the Nakumatt. Otherwise today is going to be a quiet day I think. I met up with Rom’s wife
Connie at the Nakumatt. She stated Rom just left by bus for Nairobi to meet Connie’s sister Pamela who will be arriving tonight from London. She is coming to stay for a week to visit her mother, “mamma”, who is very elderly and in poor health. Mamma lives with Rom and Connie now instead of in her remote home village of Awasi. Pamela will sleep here at the flat with me. It will be nice to visit with her. I met her and her family the first time I came in 2003.

Now, a little more about my visit to Buburi health center. The compound where the health center is located is Rom’s family home. (Paul explained to me that in Kenya the words home and house are very different. A home is a whole group of houses - the family compound. A house is a single dwelling.) Rom’s sister, Francesca, is the main person living on the compound. She has an adopted daughter, Lorna, who is in class 4. Others live on the compound but I don’t know who they all are. There are several excellent volunteers who come to assist in the work of the health center. They go out to the villages and teach about diseases and how to prevent them, especially malaria. They usually volunteer two days/week and they come on different days so there are almost always volunteers present. One of their two volunteer days they prepare the mosquito nets by dipping them in the preparation that keeps the mosquitoes away and lay them out to dry. The other day they deliver nets and teach families. Joann has provided them with purple or pink T-shirts that say FIOH-Kenya on the front and Friends of Buburi on the back. They seem very proud to be volunteers and their work is valuable.

After my busy day on Thursday at the center I ate chapati and green grams. They are small peas-also called dengu. The people live and eat very simply. I don’t think I could manage their diet over the long run but everything is very fresh as there is no refrigeration or electricity in Buburi. They eat outside sitting on benches or small stools or on the ground. There was a large windstorm on the Thursday before Easter and part of the roof was blown off Francesca’s house. Two walls plus the roof were destroyed on the kitchen. By Thursday evening the roof had been repaired on the house. They were still working on the kitchen.

Rom and I discussed some of the concerns of the center while we ate. Lorna came in and I helped her play some educational games on my ipod touch. She had never seen such a thing and really enjoyed it. When we did the spin art she kept looking at her finger to see if the color was there on her finger. She speaks some English and did well with the games involving letters, colors and numbers in English.

I went to bed about 10:00PM. My portable toilet worked well and was like have a bedside commode. I slept well. There is a beautiful bush called Rose- something that opens at night with white flowers. The scent is wonderful. It reminds me of honeysuckle but even sweeter. It came in through the window as I was lying in bed listening to the night sounds of crickets and many other night animals.(No-not lions or rhinos or hippos ;-). I felt snug under my net and there was a nice breeze.

I got up around 7.30AM on Friday and had some Kenyan tea and a granola bar that I carried with me from Kisumu. I had some small bananas too. They are very good and sweeter than the large ones. I washed up using “wet ones” that I brought from home. We planned to leave for Kisumu about 10.30 AM but there were many people at the center for treatment so we decided to stay until about 1.00PM. I treated 7 people with muscle problems. I taught Rosemary, one of the staff, some simple range of motion exercises. I also taught her some basic back and knee exercises to use with the patients. Almost everyone has the occupation of “digging”. They work in their vegetable gardens and of course everything is done by hand. They are in a forward bent position most of the time. I worked mainly on some extension exercises and shoulder flexibility as most of them were very stiff when trying to raise their arms overhead. I also used my Reiki techniques on all of them. Most reported feeling better after the treatment.

I felt sort of funny sometimes because the staff members would often introduce the patient by saying “here is an old woman with … problems” When I found out the persons age it was usually between 55 and 62. I am 62, and although I know I am getting older I do not consider myself old. Life expectancy here is much shorter. However, I met several patients who were 85 or 86 and getting around quite well. Cataracts are a big cause of extremely poor vision here. They cannot afford to have them removed so many older individuals have very thick cataracts. I wonder if Doctors without Borders or some organization comes and does blitzes of cataract surgeries? I just had a cataract removed and I know what a difference it can make.

I will buy 10 canes for them to be able to give away at the clinic. Some I met used a rough stick or nothing and they needed support. I instructed the staff in fitting the cane to the patient. Rom says they cost about $2.50.

Lorna and David, a neighbor child in class 3, traveled with us in the car back to Kisumu. They will visit with their Aunt for the rest of the Easter holiday. We talked some, but their English is very limited. I arrived back at the flat about 5 PM. It felt good to get washed up. I ate some soup and turned on the TV and listened to the news. Then I watched the movie CONTACT on my computer. I had seen it before but it is one of my favorites and I enjoyed watching it again. It stars Jodi Foster. Then I played some computer games for a little while and went to bed.

End of Journal Entry 8