After a few days...

As the locals would say: Habari!! (Their way of saying “What’s up?”) I’m sitting on my back porch right now as the day winds down for us, viewing this majestic landscape that I just cannot get enough of. I’m attaching a picture of the view that I have, but it just doesn’t do justice to the contrasting colours and elevation changes. (Depending when you view the blog, the pictures may not be up yet since I have to send them to my mom who posts them up when she gets the chance). It is certainly one of the most beautiful places I have visited.

We are now a full three days into our time here and are starting to understand what our roles are and what we will be responsible for. Jackie has had the privilege of delivering multiple babies and has been a major part of a couple of C-sections as well (she is working with the OB/gyn doctor, if you don’t know what that means, basically she’s in charge of women and babies). Actually, today the main OB doctor is away – she’s American so a few of them went into Eldoret to have a Thanksgiving meal together. That left Jackie in charge of any complications that might arise, a pretty huge responsibility for her! All three of them (Jackie, Allie, and Crystal) seem to be doing very well, although it is an adjustment when you’re seeing cases you aren’t familiar with and you require a nurse to translate everything for you.

I’ve been keeping busy as well (relatively speaking). I’ve hooked into the construction crew who are building a new operating theatre for the hospital, and it seems that will be a great opportunity to build some relationships. They work really hard for about $2.60 a day, which seems pretty meager to us but is actually a decent living here. I worked closely with a 20-year old guy named Elisha, yesterday. Since our task was not too complicated we had a lot of time to share our stories with each other. His was extraordinary to me, but seems typical of the people around here. Bottom line, he wants to further his education to become an electrical engineer, but since his dad has passed away, his siblings have moved out, and his mother is ill, he has to work this job to support the two of them so he can’t afford the school fees. I’m looking forward to getting to know him better over the next few weeks.

What I really enjoy is playing soccer and basketball with the local teenagers and young adults, who come onto the station (where we are staying) from about 4pm until dark every day. At first I think we were pretty funny to them, but they’re definitely getting used to us and when it got dark yesterday I sat down and chatted with five of the high school aged boys for about half an hour. We had gotten our hands on two basketballs that deflated every 3 or 4 minutes so we had been rotating one person out to pump up the ball we were playing with every time it got flat. Then the ball that had been pumped up came into play (very resourceful!).

I’ll leave you with a funny story. I had been pretty self-conscious because the people here are ALWAYS smiling, laughing, and having a good time. Since we stick out like sore thumbs, we naturally think they’re making fun of us! So yesterday I stole the soccer ball from a boy during the game, and then all of the sudden he ran away from me! Everyone on the field then burst out laughing, and no one would tell me why. I thought it was because I was wearing shoes and he didn’t want to get stepped on, so I took them off but that made them laugh even harder! I was actually kind of bothered by this because I never did figure it out until sitting down with some of the boys later that night. It turned out that that boy had “broke wind” (or farted, haha) and didn’t want me to know it was him!! We had a good laugh about that, and it was a great reminder to me to not be so skeptical…

I also took a bit of a hike today because it was a pretty relaxing day for me, and took a few pictures of the landscape. I’ll include one of them, although it really doesn’t do the area justice!

I’m really enjoying the comments you grade 8’s are leaving on the blog, it feels great every time I hear from people back home. I’m also excited to speak with you over skype this evening (morning for you) – hopefully it works!!

Many blessings…

PS I forgot to post this earlier, so I'm writing this AFTER I got the chance to chat with the grade 8's. It worked relatively well, at least for a time there. You had some great questions, and hopefully I'll be able to answer them more effectively as the trip goes on. It was amazing to hear from you, and congrats to the volleyball teams for moving on! Hopefully we can get the chat working for a little bit more later this evening....