Like Niagara falls but...

My life at the dispensary has been filled with ups and downs; often both within the same day. My first three months at my site I am supposed to be preparing my “Community Needs Assessment” report for Peace Corps. This involves making a map of my community and tracking different social calendars such as when schools are in session, when people are busy harvesting or planting crops, and tracking the history and development of my community. There is no science for how this is done and since I have yet to be able to have a conversation in Luo, most of my research has to be done simply by observation. Most of my “down” days are when I sit around the clinic all day waiting for something to happen, counting down the hours until lunch, and then counting down the hours until the work day is over so I can stop trying to look productive and crawl under my mosquito net and watch movies on my computer. If I had grand visions of what Peace Corps is, this was not it. It is these days that I question why I am here, and it’s on these days that I feel the pains of absolute boredom and loneliness.
A wise Peace Corps volunteer who served back in the 80’s once told me that if I ever felt like I wanted to go home, I should pack my bags but then wait three days. If I couldn’t find anything to keep me where I was after three days, then I should just throw in the towel and go home. I haven’t even considered packing my bags, but there are little things that happen every day that remind me of what he said. Each of these little things is enough to make me pack my bags in America and start this whole process over again to be where I am right now. I’d like to share a story from yesterday that encompasses several of those “little things.”
Monday morning:
I spent over 4 and ½ hours in church on Sunday. The Father asked me to stand in front of the whole congregation (100 or so people) to say a few words of introduction about myself and this was in the 4th hour. I had started counting the planks in the ceiling at this point because the whole service was in Luo, which I don’t understand yet, and the two hours of announcements where like white noise.  I needed food at the market, so after the service I ventured down to the nearest market while getting caught in a torrential downpour and ended up standing under a storefront for 3 hours to wait out the rain. Needless to say, I didn’t expect my Monday to be any better. Mondays never are right?
My alarm went off and I considered snoozing for a little bit because it was 8am and the clinic doesn’t get busy until at least 9. Unfortunately I heard Sister Gaudie’s voice outside my window and figured if my supervisor was already at the clinic I better get my butt in motion because it takes about an hour to make my oatmeal and coffee in the morning. And yes it really does take me an hour to make oatmeal because I have to pick all the little worms out of the oats before I cook them.  When I walked into the clinic to report for duty there was a big line-up of people waiting to be seen and a mother in labor who was resting in the delivery room. I jumped at the chance to not be sitting around bored today and sister Gaudie gave me a lesson in midwifery using our pregnant mother as the case study. This particular woman had been in labor for a few hours, it was her 5th child, she was 6cm dilated and her water had not broken yet. Sister informed me that with the rates of HIV in this area that it was recommended to keep the membranes intact for as long as possible to reduce the baby’s exposure to the HIV virus. I stress the words “as long as possible” because they truly were intact “as long as possible.” I was in the room next door waiting for a malaria blood smear to be analyzed in the lab when I heard Sister Gaudie call out “CHRIS, CHRIS!!!” (Most Kenyans shorten my name to Chris because it’s just easier to say). I ran into the delivery room to find the mother lying on her side and in literally a split second her water broke as the baby popped right out. It was basically Niagara falls but with blood, placenta, and a baby boy. Sister was holding the baby by his feet with one hand and trying to block the sprays of water and birth with her other hand. It was spectacular! We diagnosed several children with Malaria that day, and I finally got to see what the Plasmodium that causes Malaria looks like under a microscope.  This was not the Monday morning I thought I was waking up to.  I still feel like I am in the way sometimes and that I don’t have a clearly defined role at the dispensary yet, but it truly is the little moments like this particular Monday that remind me of the reasons I packed my bags in the first place.

Me at the rural outreach clinic assessing pregnant mothers.