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.