Ellana's African Adventures: No surgical gauze?

Steve has promised to do a guest blog sometime soon, but as I stated earlier, his biggest difficulties in operating have all revolved around a lack of equipment. When he arrived at the hospital yesterday morning, he was informed that there was no surgical gauze meaning no operations in the hospital could be started. I asked him if this hadn't been noticed the day before, and he said that OR crew had responded, "well, we had some yesterday." Ultimately someone had to run into Eldoret to buy some which meant that the cases were delayed even more than usual. As I have said multiple times, Steve is really looking forward to getting some more supplies when the Duke team arrives!

Other than his OR day yesterday, Steve, Ellana, and I are enjoying settling into our daily schedules and routines. This six months for us in Kenya will be the longest we've spent in Africa for one trip, and it is nice to know that we can actually feel like we are living here, rather than knowing it will be for a very short time frame. Our longest previous trip was to Tanzania several years ago, and two months there was just long enough to feel settled, and then we had to leave.

My current schedule is normally the following: on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I have been going to Imani. Sylvia arrives about 8:30 and I try to sneak away without being seen. On my walk to Imani, I've discovered an amazing bakery that has the best vegetable pies that I have ever tasted. The bakery also offers a chicken, meat, and cheese option, but the vegetable ones have just the right combination of potato, carrot, bell pepper, and spice, and two of them makes a perfect lunch (although I'm sure not the healthiest). I pick them up normally on my walk through Eldoret to Imani, and I justify the calories because my walk there and back is over 1.5 hours. I'm still working on the operations aspect of Imani, and instead of getting frustrated with the systems, I'm trying to learn as much as possible so that I can make some incremental changes (although I'm finding not getting frustrated to be extremely difficult). On Tuesday and Thursday, I stay home with Ellana, but the days are broken up with my bi-weekly Kiswahili lessons. I'm really glad that I took Kiswahili classes at UNC this past year, as I feel as though I can often at least understand the context of a conversation. Kenyans tend to insert lots of English and slang into their Kiswahili, so actually speaking is still quite intimidating!

We're also enjoying getting to know many of the ex-pats who live and work here on more full-time basis. Last Saturday we had a fantastic meal of shepherd's pie made by one of the ladies who helps place orphaned or abandoned kids in the various orphanages in the area. Elizabeth actually took us to one of the orphanages on Tuesday, and we were amazed at how well the organization is run. At that same dinner, Ellana loved hanging out with one our friend's puppies, Miwa, as they are about exactly the same size.

Ellana and Miwa

This coming weekend, we're going to take a short trip to Kisumu, which is located on Lake Victoria and is about 2 hours from Eldoret. One of our favorite little resorts, called Kiboko Bay (kiboko means hippo in Kiswahili), has about eight "tented" or permanent camp sites, a wonderful restaurant (I can't wait for the fish curry), and a small pool. Kisumu is much warmer than Eldoret, so we are looking forward to some warmer temperatures as I'm a little tried of the cold mornings and evenings. I know I have to be careful saying that with extreme heatwaves happening all over the US! Needless to say, we're really ready to get out of Eldoret for a couple days.