A Leap of Faith: Updates from Tenwek

Time is passing quickly here at Tenwek Hospital. We are almost through our third week already so we will be finishing up our women’s health rotation next week. We will be losing one of our visiting staff buddies, Seth, this weekend. He was the first person we met when arriving in Nairobi and he has been a great help to us along the way since he has been to Tenwek before. We wish him safe travels on his way back to the States! We have received a new set of visitors this week, a cardiac team from Vanderbilt. Some of them are here for just one week while others are here for two weeks and will have new help arriving next week to replace the ones leaving. The house has been very busy with all 20+ of us eating here for lunch and dinner. Unfortunately hot water has been difficult to come by unless you get home early in the evening from the hospital or get up real early in the morning. However, once they leave then Mark will also be leaving and so the only ones left will be Laura, Emily, and myself. I hope we are ready for all that quiet time (but between all three of us being talkers, I don't think we will have a quiet moment).

I believe we have all adjusted to life here in Kenya quite well at this point. We may have the occasional frustration, but honestly that is nothing out of the ordinary of what would happen at home. Everything must be taken in stride. I thoroughly enjoy the roads we travel along now and I think I will be totally bored driving back home. (I may decide to take the Sonata off-roading during the winter for a little adventure.) At home, I complain of the four hour drive to/from Lexington monthly and how boring it is, but here we have to drive a couple of hours to get anywhere on the roughest dirt roads I’ve ever seen and I love every minute of it. The bumps. The bruises. The slamming of my head against the ceiling or window when we hit an unexpected rough patch and I’m not holding on to anything. Not to mention, the scenery! I could look at these mountains of nature forever, absolutely stunning.

One way I was not prepared to rough-it out here in Africa was without my straightner. During our stay at the resort this past weekend, I plugged my straightner into a converter and moments later I heard a very loud POP! I instantly knew what it was and all I could think was “How am I going to live six more weeks in Africa without a straightner?!” Tell me to go without make-up, OK. Not shower daily? I’ll manage. But take away my straightner?? I was not blessed with hair that is tame. Somehow, I have sucked it up though and accepted the fact that my hair will just be a little messy for a few weeks. No one here cares what my hair looks like anyway, they are focused on the fact that I’m a mzungu (white person). Thankfully, Emily has kindly offered her straightner when I get desperate. It pays to travel with good friends :)

Yesterday I got to first assist on a c-section for my second time. For some reason I love c-sections. It is a very cool way to be a part of a baby’s entrance into the world, very different from natural childbirth which really pains me. Emily and I were hoping to deliver babies on our own today, but unfortunately nobody was in labor. The ward has slowed down quite a bit this week. So until there is more to report, here are some sweet pictures of the beautiful baby girl from the c-section yesterday.

Beautiful girl

Emily fell in love with this baby and offered to bring her home if she was put up for adoption (which she wasn't)

Here are a few other pictures from the past couple of days. Some pictures are from the lab where Mark was kind enough to donate blood today to a patient in the OB ward who desperately needs surgery on an abdominal mass but is severely anemic. She is O- which is apparently hard to come by around here. She has had 12 family members and friends come in over the past few days and none of them have been O-, but they have helped us stock up on other blood types thankfully. Mark's blood was given to her today in preparation for her surgery that will hopefully happen tomorrow. The cardiac team had three pints of O- saved up for a patient that had surgery today and as long as that patient is doing well tomorrow, that blood will be released to our patient. Please pray for this patient and her unborn child in that she will get this surgery and be able to live to see her baby born and grow up.