Saturday, January 24, 2009

We’ve now been in Kenya for a week. It was a long trip but overall it wasn’t bad. Andrew and Norah managed pretty well. We arrive in Nairobi late on Friday. The hotel we ended up in was a dump. We spent the morning in Nairobi and did a little shopping. In the afternoon, we flew to Kisumu. The Imperial Hotel is very comfortable and we’ve been cooking in most nights. Andrew and Norah had difficulty adjusting to the time change but after a few days of no sleep, they seem to have re-set their clocks. Unfortunately, Norah bad a bad cold from the US and now Andrew has it. Other than that everyone is doing well.

I have two students with me, Jen, an OUCOM student who came in 2005 and Katie from Cal State Fullerton who came in 2007. They have adjusted well and have been a great help with the project and the kids. Jen brought tooth brushes and tooth paste for all the children. She has two projects – an OMM research project and a health education project. Katie helped raise money for Kenyan Children’s Fund and is doing a project on caregiving. We’ve all managed to revive our Luo and get back into the rhythm of work here. As usual, Jaja helps us navigate the culture & politics here.

This year’s project is scaled back. We are just working with the elder caregivers. We are collecting just the essential data – blood pressure, body measurements, interview, food recall, activity and physical exam. With a smaller team and limited funds I had to scale back. We have most of the Kenyan field team back. Agness has a two month old son who comes to the field with her (someone takes care of him while she works). Brenda has a 5 monoth old daughter; Fred has a son on the way. We also have Danish, Awili, Tony, Kevin, Felix, Leonora, Lina, Florence, Beryl and Joshua back. Jack and Ken are driving us. I’ve also hired Joylene to help Lina. Overall, all are working well, with the usual issues.

Andrew and Norah are doing fairly well in the field. It is really hot here so we have to work hard to keep them in the shade, hydrated and cool. Andrew is becoming Kenyan, on the way home he complains that it is too cold to keep the window open, when I am sweating! He calls Lina, “my friend” and adores Jack again. He follows Jack around in the field. We set up a mat and a couple of bed/tents for the kids. Andrew brings a bag of toys. He comes to visit me frequently. Other than feeling sick, Norah seems to be happy enough in the field. She’s become attached to Lina and Jen. Yesterday, Andrew helped handout tooth brushes to the orphans. Sometimes he comes in and holds the stethoscope for me. He puts it on and calls himself Dr. Wapner (his pediatrician). We all wear name tags, so he needed one too, Andrew Odhiambo. We bring his DVD player to the field and he invites the kids over to watch with him. They love that. They also seem to enjoy just watching Andrew play with his toys.

We managed to raise enough money to provide 800 children with school uniforms. This does not provide for the entire list of orphans that we receive but it is much better than I expected. We are also giving books to the preschool classes. These books were donated last year by the parents at the Child Development Center (Andrew & Norah’s daycare). The teachers and students have been very excited to receive them.

We worked in three sites this week, working with 71 people so far. The team is overall working well together. The elders seem happy to see us again. Yesterday we saw our oldest participant. He is 103 (and has been for the last three years but…). He actually was still in pretty good shape.

Everyone has Obama fever over here. There are signs & pictures everywhere. Tire covers, t-shirts, posters saying Jatelo (leader). It was amazing to watch the inauguration here. In the park in Kisumu, there was a huge crowd watching on a jumbo screen. When Obama was announced you could hear the crowds cheering from inside the hotel. It was a very moving moment here. We give out Obama campaign stickers to all of the elders – I think they are more excited to get those than their shirts, lesos & corn! Everyone wants to talk about it. It’s been fun.

Well, that’s it for now. Gillian

Friday, January 30, 2009

We are finishing up week 2 here in Kenya. We’ve been hearing about the horrible storms back home. Although I don’t miss the snow and freezing rain, I could use some colder weather. It is really hot here and the buildings in which we work are especially hot as the tin roofs heat up and radiate heat. The heat has a way of draining you.

We had a relatively relaxing weekend and have been hard at work since Monday. Overall, the work has been going well. We have a six day work week this week which is exhausting. The team has been working well and we do manage to finish earlier than usual. The whole team is pitching in with data entry and other tasks.

Monday we went to a site near Agness’ home. When we arrived, I fed Norah and started setting up. Lina came to me and told me that we had to move the kids because there are wizards and the kids could get sick. I kept asking her to repeat herself because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. So the story was that there are many women in the area that are wizards/witches. If they look at you while breastfeeding, your child will have horrible stomach pains all night and your breasts will swell. Several different people confirmed the fact. I asked them how they knew – could they tell if they saw a wizard? No, Agness just knew they were there. Well, I am happy to report that Norah & Andrew was fine as was Agness’ son. I survived without injury as well. Apparently I fed Norah before the witches showed up.

Tuesday we couldn’t make it back to the site because it rained so we set up at a school by the road and waited for everyone to trek through the mud to us. We still managed to work with 25 people and finish in good time. We’ve been giving out books to the “nursery” schools at each site when we can locate a teacher. At this site there were children and the teacher who were very excited to get their books. It has been challenging to hand out the books, uniforms and toothbrushes because the schools have been closed due to a teachers strike. They are supposed be back on Monday.

Yesterday, overall people at this site were undernourished but in reasonable health. We had one lady, who was heartbreaking. She had a blood pressure of 244/132. Amazingly, she has had very high blood pressure since 2006 when we first started working for her. We’ve been trying to get her daughter in law to get her some help but I doubt it will happen. Joshua suggested we could send her to Kisumu to be put on medication but I didn’t see the point. I felt like I was being heartless for taking that stand but what would a few days of medication do for her? She has to get sustained help. It was hard to let her go.

Today’s site wasn’t particularly well organized. I gather the chiefs are lazy and “require motivation”. Lovely. We only had 16 people and only 2 of them were women. I imagine most the men were the chief’s buddies – helps with the sample bias. But, anyway, it was nice to end early because it was really hot.

Everyone is healthy and managing well. The kids swarming around Andrew are less appealing than at first. He’s been helping Jack hand out toothbrushes to the orphans and he enjoys that. He comes home covered in dirt everyday. Norah is healthy now and enjoying herself. She is very close to crawling. I hope she holds off until we return or I’ll have 2 mud covered children to clean every night.

Lunch at Nuni’s on Sunday – always a fabulous Indian meal!

Gillian