When it rains, it pours!

I spent the last week on the beautiful island of Zanzibar to celebrate my birthday and relax after a busy month.  Zanzibar is a traditionally Muslim island and we were traveling through during the month of Ramadan (a very religious holiday where Muslims fast throughout the day among other things…). Natalie and I flew into Stonetown and prepared ourselves by wrapping our heads and covering ourselves from head to toe out of respect. We went to a beautiful fabric shop and toured the spice and seafood markets before having a drink and watching the sun go down.  It was a week of complete relaxation next to some of the most beautiful turquoise waters I have ever seen. I went on a snorkeling tour on my birthday and saw dolphins and other tropical fish.  The sand was like powdered sugar and I’m sure I will be shaking it out of my clothes for the next month.

Speaking of the next month, I am putting together the last minute touches to my lessons for camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). I was chosen to be one of the facilitators of the camp and it is going to be a week long camp for 60 high school age girl to learn about women’s empowerment, health, and opportunities for their future. I am the designated nurse for the camp, but I am also teaching lessons on female anatomy and reproductive health etc. I am so excited and proud to be bringing two of my health club girls with me!

The following week after camp I will be attending a Peace Corps funded conference on HIV/AIDs and community development. I will be taking a young woman from my community, Soila, who is a social worker student interning at the dispensary. This will be the second time she has ever left the village and I’m happy she will have the experience and can help me with some of my future projects.

Following that and my yearly medical exam in Nairobi, I will be flying out to Senegal for training to become one of the three chosen Stomp Out Malaria Volunteers. I will still be living and working in my village, but will also take on further responsibilities in major Malaria projects in Kenya, as well as working with some of the district offices and assisting other volunteers with Malaria based resources and funding.  I guess as they say, when it rains, it pours. I have a feeling my last year in Kenya is going to flash before my eyes.

Also, Check out a short clip on my life and work at the clinic!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAF-HB41GGg

Kendwa Beach, Zanzibar

Paje Area, Zanzibar

First Aid, Village Style

I have been enjoying my new roommate, a Public Health graduate student from Seattle University. We have kept ourselves supremely busy with, among countless other things, outreach clinics and teaching first aid lessons to my health club students. It has been a great joy to see these students genuinely interested in knowing how to help fellow students or community members in the event of an emergency. It has been interesting trying to adapt American first aid curriculum to village life. For example, calling 911 or “waiting for help to arrive” doesn’t really apply when you are 12km from the nearest paved road.

We try to bring up a lot of discussion during the lessons to find out what the students already know and to answer questions about traditional or local remedies that they may have seen. In a lesson about fainting I asked anyone in the class if they have experienced fainting or witnessed someone faint. One of my very dear students admitted that she had fainted but did not want to share her story. Another girl piped in that she had seen it happen and was willing to share the story. She began to explain… “Bilha was being caned by one of our teachers, and suddenly went limp and fell to the ground.” For those of you who do not know what “caning” is, it is a harsh form of corporal punishment where teachers use a large stick or ruler to beat the students. I have been lucky enough to not have witnessed this, but I absolutely crumbled to pieces inside imagining my sweet student being beat to the point of losing consciousness.

Natalie and I spent yesterday organizing the clinic’s supply room and ended up stocking the treatment rooms with missing items. It was a good thing that we did because despite being a very slow day, we had two interesting wound cases. I sometimes feel like MacGyver trying to turn saline, iodine, and gauze into a magical wound healing dressing. I guess that’s just life in the village.

Community outreach in my village

Happy 4th!

 I spent last weekend with some of my closest Peace Corps friends hanging around the pool, playing beer pong, and enjoying the closest thing we could get to a 4^th of July party. The hotel had an amazing buffet dinner planned for us and we all stood together around the banquet tables singing the national anthem in unison while some made speeches about how these were the Peace Corps moments we will remember for the rest of our lives.

Back in my village I met up with a Public Health graduate student from Seattle University who will be working alongside me for the next six weeks. I sometimes forget how beautiful my village is until I hear the words out of someone else’s’ mouth. I didn’t even know it was possible to take living in the village for granted!

Our first big project together is first Aid training with my health club students. The students were so excited about the lessons and the certificate at the end, although a few seemed a bit queasy when I had to explain what the word “amputation” meant. One of my students was especially enthusiastic sitting in the front row and asking me for the topics that would be covered in next week’s lesson. He is the student that during my Goal setting lesson, told me he wanted to be a doctor. He is the same student that asks me to photocopy pages from my HIV/Aids handbook and told me his dream is to see what a hospital looks like.  I don’t think I have ever seen a high school student with such thirst for knowledge.

So here I sit, appreciating the country I was born in, the country that I am privileged to experience now and the amazing people, Kenyan and American, that I am surrounded by.

Life in the Village

I want to start with a special Thank You to First Lutheran Church in Mount Vernon. To all of you who came to hear my story and show your support. It can sometimes get lonely out in a rural village in Kenya, but knowing you are all invested in my ventures motivates me to keep going. Thank you!

I had the most amazing trip back to America and it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be to get back on that plane. I think part of me appreciated the love I felt from all my family and friends and the comfort of knowing they would all be there for me when I got back after another year.

Back in Kenya it didn’t take long to get back to my usual routine. I had to sweep my floors and shoo away all the lizards that moved in while I was gone. My first day back at church in my community, some of the members asked if I would stand up in front and share a few words about my travels. They called me forward by my village name, Christina Akinyi, and the entire congregation of nearly 200 people applauded and cheered for my return. It was an amazing feeling to know this small Kenyan farming community felt such a strong connection with me that they celebrated my return and the chance to shake my hand again.

My students walked from school to my front door just to say hello and took me to the school soccer tournaments over the weekend and instead of hearing the typical calls of “mzungu” (meaning “white person”) throughout my village everyone was greeting me by name. We had a busy clinic day where we vaccinated over 160 babies in one day! We even had a celebration at the convent for the arrival of three aspiring nuns where we drank and ate ourselves silly with goat, chicken, and fish!

One day I was taking the 45 minute walk home from the school when it started to rain. I looked in front of me at the black sky opposite the lush green sugarcane fields and red dirt road and saw a full rainbow straight ahead. The rain started coming down at such a rate that I was soon walking through a stream where the road had been and I was soaking wet from head to toe sloshing around in my shoes. In a situation that should have been miserable, I couldn’t contain my smile and a feeling of pure happiness. They say the Peace Corps in the “hardest job you will ever love.” While it’s not always sunshine and roses, there isn’t a day that passes that I don’t feel thankful for my life and the people in my Kenyan village.

World Malaria Day

Today in Kenya, 72 children will die of a Malaria infection.

In America we don’t learn much about Malaria because it was eradicated in the 1950s. The disease is caused by a parasite, Plasmodium Falciparum, and it is passed to humans through a mosquito. At my clinic almost half of the patients who are under the age of five come to be treated for malaria infections. I have seen children who are lying listless on a hospital bed that don’t even flinch when an IV line is inserted and can hardly open their eyes.  When I heard of World Malaria Day on April 25^th, I knew it was something I wanted to celebrate and bring awareness to the people of my village.

I started with my high school health club. I asked them what they wanted to do and we started to organize an original song about malaria, a dance, and a drama. I then spoke with the sisters to get their support and to help mobilize the community. We spent weeks going around to different community groups and leader to tell them about the even we were planning. Next I needed funding for some chairs, a tent, and to set up a PA system the day of the event. I got help from the district officials to fund my event and instead of hosting it at the district headquarters I was able to convince them to make my tiny village the official host of the World Malaria Day event for the entire district!

Over 500 people from my community and from the district offices came on the day of the event. We set up our tents and chairs in the soccer field across from the clinic and my health club provided dancing and entertainment throughout the day. I had my health club students assist me with translating a few phrases into the local dialect to put on posters for the event. Unfortunately as I was transferring those phrases onto the posterboard, I had difficulty deciphering which letters were which and a community member had to tell me that instead of writing “to prevent malaria in Pregnancy” I had written “to prevent malaria in a sexually transmitted disease.”

We offered free testing and treatment for Malaria and people were lined up outside the clinic doors for hours to be seen.  We gave out over 80 mosquito nets to pregnant mothers and children as well as encouraged people to allow their homes to be sprayed in the next following days to kill mosquitos. It was a great opportunity to bring awareness to this disease and to work together as a community in measures of prevention.

At the end of the day one of my health club members turned to me and asked “Is there a World AIDs Day?” Yes Bilha, there is…

Waduto wariw lwedo watiek tuo mar malaria

Culture is a Funny Thing

I recently met a Kenyan girl who is the same age as me and lives in my village. We have started to form a friendship and I enjoy walking to her house to sit down for coffee and talk about culture. She is just as curious of my American traditions as I am of hers. One day she was walking me home and we could hear a thunderstorm in the distance. She asked me if I was afraid of the thunder. I said no, but asked her what there was to be afraid of. She went on to explain that the Luo tribe believes that thunder isn’t just a noise, but it takes the physical shape of a giant rooster the size of a house that can attack you or set your house on fire. She also worried about me as I walked the rest of the way home because I was wearing my ONLY rain jacket which ironically happens to be red. She told me that lightning would strike me if I was wearing red.  Luckily I made it home safely without being struck by lightning or meeting the thunder along my way.

Another day we bought pears in the market and after washing them I started eating mine right away. My friend Julianne turned to me and asked if I was afraid someone would see me. Worried that I had mistakenly done something culturally inappropriate I asked her what was wrong with eating fruits or foods in general in public. She told me that some people are witches and if they see you eating they will curse your food, your stomach will start to swell and you could get very sick. Glad that I hadn’t outright offended anyone, I told her I didn’t believe in witches and finished my pear on the way back home.  I haven’t been cursed yet…

Another day I was on my way to one of our youth group meetings with Sister Tina, which is always a terrifying experience. Sister Tina is a 5 foot nothing nun who can’t drive in reverse and who stalls the car at least twice each time we are out driving. Every Saturday we venture out to a different rural youth group which generally means me and Tina off-roading in the tiny car for at least 45 minutes on “roads” (or should I say hiking trails) that were not made for cars.  At this particular youth group last week we were fielding questions about puberty when a small girl asked “is it ok for me to slaughter a chicken before my period is about to start?” How do you answer that question!?!? We asked one of the adults to explain and the belief is that if a girl or womans’ period is about to start in the next day or so, if she slaughters a chicken the blood will start to flow out of her lady parts like the blood flowing out of the slaughtered chicken’s neck.  What a terrifying image!

Culture can be a funny thing and it definitely keeps my life interesting.

A truly amazing day

I have had many amazing experiences in Kenya, but today tops them all.

Let me start from the beginning. I have been working really closely with the nurse midwifes at my clinic and learning the ropes of conducting a delivery.  Since I previously worked at a veteran’s hospital, mother and child care was the farthest thing from my repertoire.  It seems each delivery I have assisted with has been interesting in its own way.

My first delivery I was a bit bewildered as I was being clung to by the 15 year old girl delivering her first baby. It would be putting it modestly if I said this girl was grabbing onto me like the Jaws of Life.

Another delivery I was standing next to the woman who was so silent through her labor that we weren’t sure how soon the baby would come. The next thing we know, this woman laying on her side, lifted her leg and simultaneously gave birth while her water broke.

I spent another long night as one of the nurses from the clinic gave birth to her first child. The whole staff was there until the birth around 2:30 in the morning and I felt like a real birth attendant helping her with her contractions and staying by her side through the whole thing.

I suppose there have been a few relatively non-eventful births at our clinic and today seemed like any other day. I was packing my bag to go visit my friend Julianne for lunch when a woman came in to the clinic. I asked how many centimeters she was dilated and nurse Phoebe said she was fully dilated and could deliver any minute. I decided to postpone my lunch and stick around. About an hour later Phoebe was telling me to just go and come back later, this woman was not progressing and it could be many more hours before the baby came. Again, I told her I was patient enough and would wait, just in case she needed my help. This woman was only 20 years old and giving birth to her fourth child, so nothing indicated this would be anything other than a normal delivery. However, she was having trouble pushing and the baby was not advancing for a dangerously long time. When the baby boy finally came out he was not breathing and the color of an ash tray. While Phoebe cut the cord and attended to the mother, I took the newborn baby and tried to clear his airway and use a resuscitation bag to get some air into him. Eventually he was able to take a few weak breaths but it wasn’t until an hour later that we heard his first cry.

I have been in emergency situations before in my nursing career, but it was comfortable knowing I could just call a code if any of my patients were struggling. Being in a remote clinic with just nurse Phoebe and myself, it was a bit terrifying yet exhilarating to know we pulled together to save this little ones’ life.  I couldn’t ask for anything more right now and I’m so glad I postponed my lunch date.