Thank you

Thank you to everyone who helped me travel to Kenya. It was an amazing trip with amazing people. Everyone was so kind and generous. I hope to travel to India next January to do a similar outreach, in the mean time I will be working with my professional pharmacy fraternity in clinics around Rochester.

Here is a link to our fundraising website. A couple brothers travel on mission trips to El Salvador as well as Kenya with me, and we are also sending brothers to our national meeting to help grow the fraternity. This will allow us to do even more outreach abroad and in Rochester. Every little bit it greatly appreciated. <3

Click here to see our donation page!

Home sweet home

After mike carrying a 30lb vase through multiple airports we arrive in Rochester. We wait in baggage claim for our luggage. We each find one of our suitcases. As we are waiting for the second, Chris mentions how she smells Amurula (the amazing elephant liquor from Africa that we brought back with us). We joke how she probably is missing it. Nope, a 1 liter bottle broke and spilled inside my one suitcase. I now have a suitcase full of soggy newspaper and Mikes shoes. Luckily his shoes are clean and only one bottle broke. But anyways, turns out they left our second luggage in JFK. So i have no personal luggage. We fill out a report and go back to my apartment. Turns out the vase broke :( This vase was so cool! It was giraffe print and made of clay. It must have broke during a landing. Oh and 2/3s of my pictures are MIA at the moment on my now corrupted memory card. But despite all the bad luck we had on our returning flight, we all made it home safe, had and awesome time, and our luggage was delivered.

 I will forever have a place in my heart for the Kenyan people and everyone I worked with. We had an amazing group. <3

Here is the link to our group photo sharing page. (there are tons of pictures unfiltered)

Pictures!

Bye Kenya!

Yellow Fever Vaccine?!

So as I'm sure most of you know  when you travel somewhere you need to check to see which immunizations you need in the new country. As Chris Mike and I are checking it out we get the usually Typhoid, and Hep shots. Yellow fever is one though that is very very expensive but is necessary in some African countries. After some research and information from  multiple sources it was not required for Kenya, but wouldn't hurt to get if for whatever reason we had to flee the country and enter a country that required it.  Yellow fever is a vaccine where you need a verification card that says you got it and some countries will not let you in unless you have the verification card. Now I already had mine from a previous trip, Chris decided to get it to be safe, Mike on the other hand chose not to get it because it was not a required vaccination and it was very expensive. Had I been in Mikes shoes I wouldn't have gotten it either.

Now. Today we are at the Kenya airport checking in to leave Kenya and fly to our connecting flight in Johannesburg, South Africa. The attendant asks for our yellow fever vaccination card. Mike does not have one. She states it is required to leave Kenya and fly to South Africa. We try to tell her we are only there for one hour to switch flights, but no you must have it. Shoot. Ok so we walk across the street and upstarts to the Kenyan port health office. We wait in line. Mike and I ate KFC earlier and Chris is starving so she goes back to the airport to grab something to eat and we will meet her at the gate. Finally its Mike's turn.

Mike is standing at the desk for a while and I start to get nervous outside so I walk in. The Kenyan officer just keeps saying over and over how he is going to stay in Kenya for 10 more days because that is how long you have to wait for the vaccine to be effective. OMG. Ok so Chris has all the phone numbers and contact info for Millie's family. My head is racing with ideas on what to do. The officer is talking about how he should have googled it, and how is it that I have mine and Mike doesn't have his. He then says the vaccine will be 1,500 ksh but "hopes we have more on us." Ok how much do I have? Probably not enough. Crap. We keep telling him we can't stay 10 more days but he keeps replying I don't have to stay but Mike does. Mike asks if he's kidding. He replies "what do you think."  I'm freaking out at this point. Not a clue what to do. I guess if worst came to worst I could go and track Chris down in the airport grab the numbers, and have Kevin come back and pick us up....The officer hands Mike a receipt and has him pay the 1,500 ksh. He WAS kidding thank god! Mike goes to get his shot and comes back. They have to back date his verification card to May 30th so he can pass through South Africa.

WooHoo we will make it to America!

Masai Market

Before we leave for our flight we have to buy more souvenirs of course. After driving around for about an hour and a half we get to the market. Haggle for a few items and walk away with some good purchases. Each vendor would say "this price, because it is morning" or "you are my first customer, they say this is good luck." Moses sold me a vase and a painting for a "good" deal because his sister is in america and we take care of her. Basically I still got ripped off after haggling down from 12,000 ksh to 1,600 ksh. Oh well hope he uses the money wisely.

On our way back we fill up with KFC and stuff our faces in the car so we can leave on time and make our flight.

Carnivore!

Once again we all wake up early for a long car ride. It seems like we have spent days in the car, we have almost become one with the van. We start our long trek back to Nairobi. On our way we stop for souvenirs in the city and for some formal Kenyan wear. I only tried some of the Kenyan wear on. As usually we skipped lunch and were super hungry while we shopping and ordered some of the worst attempt at pizza I have every had.

Once we get back to Millie's brothers house the power goes out as usual. We all get dressed for dinner in the dark. Tonight we are going to the Carnivore restaurant as a thank you to us all from Millie. As the name implies there is TONS of meat with the most amazing sauces every. They start with a wonderful vegetable soup and salad. There is a flag in the middle of the table and when it is up the will continue to serve meat, and when we surrender the flag no more meat will be brought. The meal started with very good "normal" meat like chicken, pork, turkey, sausage. Soon they started to bring out ostrich, croc, lamb liver, and ox balls. The ostrich was very good and yes we all tried the ox balls. They weren't that bad but as you are eating them you  continuously think about how they are ox balls and then your stomach turns. After the meat they had desert for us. Deserts are not Kenyans specialty. I ordered cheesecake which turned out to be more of a pudding pie flavored cheesecake. I stuck to my coffee. The drivers ate with us thanks to Greg and Chris who bought them the dinner. At the end of dinner Marcos told us how he really felt a part of this group.

After dinner we went back to the house to pack up,  as our flight leaves tomorrow. :(

Hippos, crocs, and a cheetah oh my!

Today begins our full day game drive. We wake up early and see a cheetah sitting on the side of the road. As we are watching it another van drives up and a person in the van is yelling and scares the cheetah aware and into the grass where we can no longer see him. He was beautiful though.

We then drive around and see some lions. It was a whole lion family. After being patient the baby lions get up and walk to the shade. The female lion follows. Then the male lion gets up and walks over. When he gets there the female lion gets up and gives him a lion kiss. It was so adorable!

We pick up threat of our group and drive to the river. When we get there there are tons of hippos just hanging out outside the water, which is very rare to see in the middle of the day. They grunt as we walk down the trail with our guide. We then see some crocs and zebras. The croc almost fully blends into the mud. I would not have spotted it unless I was told it was there. 

We drive and find a spot to eat our lunch. The drivers warn us about leaving our food out because the monkeys will steal it. Mike gets up and sure enough a monkey dashes over and snatches his piece of bread. We begin to feed them which we probably shouldn't do but they are jut too cute to resist. 

We get back, play pool and rest up for our journey back to Nairobi tomorrow. The hyenas today were just as scared as before but there wasn't as many.

Clinic day 4 Masai Mara & safari

We wake up early for a early morning game drive. We are extremely lucky and see a leopard! He poses. For us then walks through all the safari van slowly enough for us to take pictures. It's amazing how close the animals get to the vans, it almost doesn't phase them. I liked the leopard the best. He was a small leopard probably not fully grown yet. The sunrise was beautiful across the Mara too.

After breakfast we head out to a Masai village to do a clinic. When we get their there is a nurse that regularly works there and a small pharmacy we set up in. The Masai have almost no fly reflex and there flys crawling all over the children. There were not as many people coming to this clinic, probably because it was so remote. There wasn't as much high blood pressure as in the city here again. Chris was very exhausted and rested at the hotel so we adopted Sherri to help run the pharmacy. We did pretty well.

We spend the rest of the day at the pool, entering paper work for our research, and playing pool.Alfred  learns how to swim since he has only ever swam in rivers and not in a pool. We don't go on an evening game drive because tomorrow we are going on a full day game ride which will take up a lot of gas. 

The hotel manager somehow finds out about our clinic and the people at the gate begin to ask for something because we have gotten a deal to come in th park. Corruption is everywhere in Kenya and people will do anything to pad their pocket. We agree to do a small clinic at the hotel because they insist. Turns out almost every has extremely high blood pressure except the one older man who eats outside the hotel. The food here must be loaded with salt. We follow up with blood pressure readings tomorrow before dispensing meds.

Masai Mara

We wake up early to drive to Masai Mara. Millie spoke with the game warden and they agreed to give us 3 days in the Mara for $45 instead of $200 tourist price in return for one more clinic for their people.  We drive for a long time and we get the gate to enter the park. There are tons of Masai women selling bracelets. I bought 10 for 1000 ksh but bought from many different women so after bartering they had to count up which ones I bought to distribute the money. We have so much time at the gate because Millie is n huge office trying to work out the deal that was previously discussed. The people here say they were told of no such deal and the game warden has no power and we need to pay the full amount. Millie says we will come back to pay when the game warden is back.

The hotel is beautiful with hot showers and very nice bathrooms. The food is very very good. We eat and head out for the game drive. We drive by the gate and the game warden is there so we get our deal. On our drive we see tons of zebras, gazelles, wildebeests, giraffes and buffalo. The best was the lions. On our first drive we saw lions with is very rare. There were 5 adolescent lions under a tree and then a lioness walking through the grass. We then found 2 male lions sleeping. The sunset was beautiful as well. 

We return from the drive for dinner and hang out until the hyena feeding.  Before the feeding the Masai dance. They make an awesome beat with there voices and have a jumping contest. Alfred decides he cannot be a tourist and joins the dance because he is from the Masai tribe. We all cheer him on. after the dance we walk down to the feeding. Hyenas are babies. There were some cats eating the meat put out and the hyenas were afraid of them! They would slowing walk up, grab meat and run. Before the feeding they were actually laughing in the darkness. There were 4 hyenas that ran up to get the meat. 

Clinic day 3 Nairobi

We all woke up around 10 because we are so tired. After eating breakfast we made our way to a slum outside Nairobi to do a clinic. First stop was to get guards because here there will be many more people on a much poorer situation than in the rural areas. I try to take a picture of the Kenyan flag but I didn't realize we were on government property and they were not happy with pictures being taken. 

After we pay for guards we make our way to the slum. The man in charge charges us to use his church for the clinic. In Kenya every one is out to pad their own pocket. It is a very tiny room with only a door and small window and on the outside there is a sticker that says,"open windows for circulation to prevent the spread to  TB." Great. We are screening sick people in a non ventilated room. But for a few extra shillings we can rent the room next door too and have pharmacy and doctors separate. We decide to do that. 

The pharmacy crew is smart this time and we don't unpack the meds from the suitcases, just organize the suitcase so it will be a quick easy clean up. Today Marcos, one of our drivers is our translator. He is very good. Many of the people also speak English. The population was also very different. There was much more high blood pressure and diabetes than in the rural areas. Many people were aware they had it as well but could not afford their medication. The clinic was extremely busy and we went over the time we had planned. Our van almost got stuck when we were trying to leave. 

Mind you we never had a lunch break and most of us had breakfast at 8 thinking we were leaving at 9. Millie has a special treat for us tonight  though so we quickly freshen up. This entire trip has been a giant game of telephone. Most of us thought we were going to a restaurant to eat but instead we went to her cousins house which was amazing. They had amazing food and an amazing house. 

We Are very tired and are trying to leave after much effort and Alfred saying goodnight we gather everyone. We are about to leave and Hilda realizes she forgot her son! He was left upstairs to watch tv. On the way home we are so tired from the heat and work we pass out. We stumble upstairs to sleep and prepare to travel to Masai Mara tomorrow for safari.

Clinic day 2 Village school

On the second day of clinic we decided to move locations because our first location was so remote it would be very hard for many people to travel to get there. After a 2 hour drive we arrived at a local school in the middle of no where. It is really crazy out here because it feels like you drive in circles but always end up somewhere different. Also, it is extremely dusty and we have the top of the safari van open to see animals and because we are the second van dust practically rains on us. According to the local people though, this is not very dusty as it is the rainy season and just rained recently. It is also "cold" because many of the locals are wearing sweaters and pants. I feel like I am going to melt in the heat. We are very close to the Taniza border as well. 

Anyways we wake up very early because we decide we cannot stay in Shomple another night and after the clinic we will drive directly back to Nairobi since there is no roads that directly connect Masai Mara to Shomple even though we are very close. This clinic is set up so that pharmacy is behind the doctors stations and we dispense the medication through a gated window. Our translator this day is much much better than the last day. We see many more patients than we did in Shomple. There is a huge line of children we give clotrimazole to because most of them have fungal rashes. Almost every patient was dressed in their Masai clothing and spoke Masai which is different from Kiswahili. They also didn't have any concept of age. A mother had 3 children all clearly different ages but stated they were all one. The hard part about today was we had no scale to weigh the children with and had to guess their weight for dosing meds. One baby had one blue eye and one brown eye. She was very pretty. Many of the children would also reach out to touch our skin because we were so white.

I don't even know what time it is and we are all starving. No lunch, small breAkfast at 7:00 am and a 6 hour drive before dinner.  Omg I didn't know if I could make it. Fortunately we had a few cliff bars in our backpack and trail mix to munch on. 

The clinic ended and we started our journey. Before we climbed into the vans the village wanted to sing for us. Fred started dancing with the and then convinced me to join. Thankfully mike joined me but next thing we knew he was doing to the marriage dance with the locals. He was officially accepted into their tribe. We leave in a rush because we need to leave and get home before the sun sets. 

First stop to see giraffes. We changed not some cooler clothes because it was so so so hot. We chased the giraffes on foot while a team member accidentally peed on themselves while we tried to improve toilet out if a bush.  As we are driving we see a waterfall. Then we are driving along a lake and see so many flamingos! We stope to take pictures then all of a sudden our driver says hold on, and we go at a 90 degree angle upwards a hill. Practically off roading. We finally reach the bottle making factory for some drinks. 

We stop and have a delicious soda because we are all very thirsty and hungry. As we wait we decide to get a beer. Next thing we know it is time to go. We want to bring the beer with us but the bar tender come out looking for the bottles because they are worth money. Because we are genius we pour the remainder into an empty water bottle.  

We finally arrive to Nairobi and it is a tie between food, sleep, and shower. Since our van arrives first I shower and go to eat. We are all craving pizza and order papa johns pizza delivery. Since this is Kenya naturally it takes Kevin longer then expected to pick it up because he drops Fred off at home. It arrives and it is so good. Greg spills Italian water on the floor, Millie almost sits on her baby after using him for leg exercises, and we blow the fuse to the power in the house. It was a good night and we all go to bed in the darkness to get ready for tomorrow.  

Clinic day 1 Shomple

The plan is to leave the hotel by 7am. This was deterred because our van had a flat tire. Thankfully in the middle of no where we have a spare and a able to fix it, finally we make our way and it is about 8. 2 hours on sand roads take us to the village. It is extremely dusty. We drive through villages and people stare and wave. 

All the people here are wearing their tribal clothing. This is usually colorful clothes wrapped around them with beads covering their wrists and legs and necks. Almost all the adults have gaiges in their ears with huge earrings. We were told the ankle beads mean you are married and the child's who have them mean they are not in school and are set to be married. 

We arrive at the village and work in what looks like a clinic. They have a chalk board outside that says how many people are inn the village, how many kids were immunized, how many were in school, how many dropped out, etc... They already have a pharmacy with a few medications. There are a ton of wasp nests inside the pharmacy so we share it with these huge weird looking wasps that are black and orange. They don't bother us if we aren't bothering the, so we decide to share the space. There is a window for patients to pick up their  medications. Our translator is no where near as good as the ones in El Salvador. It was harder than El Salvador because I knew absolutely no naive language. Things were a little chaotic in the beginning but we were able to set everything up and the prepared packages of meds really helped. The bags we used were great and we tried to keep things in number picture version as possible. One of the patients seen was a 13 year old pregnant girl with contractions, she was no where near dilated. In the states she would have gotten a c section right away but we were unable to do that and told her to come back in a couple hours to asses the situation. There was also a baby who was so malnourished he couldn't latch onto the mother to be breast fed. Milli gave the mother some milk the  next day in hopes he could get better. 

Abruptly everyone on our team comes in the pharmacy and tells us we have to pack up and leave. We have to make it back before sunset otherwise we will get lost in the rift valley. This was nuts because not only did we take all the medication out and set it up with the intention of coming back to this place tomorrow, we have a handful of prescriptions to fill. We did it though. Meds were a little mixed up but it was fine and we learned to close triage early to leave time in the pharmacy. Overall we saw about 60 people. Tis place was very remote and in order to serve more people we decided to travel to another remote village.

On our way back to the hotel we stop in the village to purchase bottled water because it is cheaper. While we are waiting lexie notices a man enjoying the day singing down the street. Just as she is about to tell mark, mark turns around and he is right in his face spitting and telling in Kiswahili. Mark walks over to me and puts his arm around me as if this will scare the man/women away (it is always hard to tell with everyone wearing their traditional dress and shaved heads). He says somethinge to mark and the entire town laughs. Mark gets away now he is in my face. He walks away hits a kid with his wrap then goes over to mike. he keeps saying thank you to mike and eventually mike shakes his hand and walks away. Eventually we leave and get in he car and are about to leave and he is talking to lexie almost about to get in the car. We close the door and drive back to the hotel. Alfred tells us he was saying he is. Rich man and is not asking for anything from the white Americans. 

We return to the hotel and they heat water for us to take a bucket Kenyan bath, which is pretty much a sponge bath.  We are all starving because for breakfast we only have mangos and lunch was hard boiled eggs and buttered bread. The mangos were amazing! The hard boiled eggs and butted bread was pretty good but most likely because we were so hunger. Dinner was the same as yesterday. Surprisingly soda never tasted so good in my life, the cold sugar drink was amazing when you are hungry and dehydrated. 

This is Africa

So last night we arrived in Shomple.

 On our way here we stopped at a rest stop. According to google maps it
was the end of the road. According to Kenyans it was 3 hours to our hotel, which would normally take 1 but because the roads were so bad it will take longer. It is an interesting ride and we see lots of people dressed in their tribal clothing as well as zebras! It is extremely bumpy and we had the pleasure of receiving another African massage. Once we got closer we saw a bunch of baboons monkeys on the trees and once we passed they came to the road to check us out as we left. The locals said they meet there at the same time everyday.

Finally we arrive in a small village where our hotel is. First of all milli booked all 18 rooms for us and when we arrive there are only 14 rooms. Oh and she had to find this new hotel because the last one had "blown away." Anyways apparently there are more rooms "down the road." He kept saying "its just here." Turns out down the road is a 45 minute drive with out luggage. Also I got a luxury room, which means I have a porcelain hole in the ground as a toilet with an ice cold shower and a hole free mosquito net. I lucked out compared to some of my team mates. So eventually the other group comes back and we somehow manage to squeeze everyone into the hotel. After our gourmet meal of goat meat (apparently a rare occurrence in Kenya), cabbage, rice, and lentils we went on walk. The stars were so bright and many of the nurses from la were impressed by them. The night walk was a little nerve racking because no one has been here before. A couple of the drivers and Kevin (Millie's nephew) went with us. They played elephant noises to trick us into thinking there was an elephant out there. This place seem to be the local bar for the locals, or they just came to check out the mazoongas in their town. 

Too some our experience up I'd have to say, "this is Africa," where you have a hole in the ground for. Toilet and see monkeys on the streets. 

Ps. My sneakers turned up, go figure.

Chiggers clinic

7 o clock wake up and during breakfast we had our chiggers training which obviously came with a bunch of appetizing pictures and and video of the procedure being done. Yet again we (more Megan) forgot to take a picture of our meal. First thing we did when leaving to go to the chiggers clinic was stop by the nakumatt and pick up lunch then we took an hour drive to a church where the clinic took place. Turns out it open later because today is the 50th anneversary of Kenyan independence.  It's funny that when you drive, people are staring at you and it seems strange, but give it was few awkward seconds and they happily wave at you, especially children and rural people. It's like if you're a mazoonga (white person) you're like a celebrity. Anyways, at the clinic, it took us a little while to set up and get things rolling but ultimately we worked better than expected as a team.  This was our first real team experience and it went great.  It was like we been doing this for a while.

 How to worked is we had them wait outside and they would come in as spots were available for them at the foot soaking station. About ten at a time were able to soak their feet in an antiseptic foot bath, and they had to do this for at least ten minutes.  As they soaked, we asked them if they have been dewormed within the past month and if they haven't been, we would give them an albenazole.  We were told that they like it so personally im convined they did becaus they were hungry so anything would taste good.  More than we expected were cases with many chiggers and not just a few.  Me and megan we were at this station for most the tome and it was funny when the kids would touch us because they were fascinated by our white skin.  They would also speak in Swahili and laugh at us. We could only imagine what they were saying.

One kid kept making a motion, putting something in his mouth and rubbing his tummy, towards me (michael) asking for food, which was hard to ignore, but we were told and it was stressed that thre be no special treatment because that is grounds for a riot. After soaking, they would sit across from the soaking station and wait to be seen at the final station which of course was the chigger removing station.  Twenty minutes was the average patient here. But some cases were terrible.  For example, mark worked on this one kid for at least an hour. He was tearing the entire time but wasn't squirming because he knew it had to be done. Can you imagine how it must feel to be in constant pain from someone digging into your skin for over an hour? We later got the heart wrenching back story of this kid, which is he is a approximately ten year old boy living on the streets with no family. Some of the older kids found him and brought him to the clinic hoping that someone can bring him home. We ran the clinic for a few hours and treated hundreds of people, mostly kids. Alongside the clinic, they set up an AA tent in effirt to curb the sever alcohol problem in the area. Afterwords we cleaned up and then had a wrap up type speeches from a bunch of people then took a group picture. After the group picture a kid about ten years old came up to me (Michael) to shake my hand and give me a hug because I worked on his feet.  It was really touching and made the whole thing totally worth it. It's always nice to see that one individual who was effected and forever grateful. We took some pictures with the kids there and when we went to take a picture of a baby girl she nodded her head ready for the picture.