First impressions at Kijabe

Here are some Kenya beginner lessons that I've learned:

-Always walk on the left side of the path/hallway...otherwise you WILL cause confusion for all patients/medical staff and you WILL cause a traffic jam in the hospital and they WILL all look at you like you are the new white doctor from the US. I only learned this lesson several times today...

-The animals that are running through the trees and fighting with eachother on the roof of your house are not squirrels, they are monkeys and they are NOT nice.

-Don't stop conversation and make "ohh" and "ahh" noises when the electricity goes off because it happens at least every other hour every night so people will just continue on their conversation like normal and pretend like nothing happened. If you say something about it going out they'll just ignore you and keep up the conversation like nothing ever happened.

-When people look at you and say “Karibu” they are not asking you if you want caribou coffee, instead they are saying welcome! When I first came I thought that "Jambo" was the national greeting so I was confused why everyone was saying "Karibu" to us all the time...

-When they offer you chai tea at 10am and 3pm in the middle of your work day don't EVER say no, even if you are in the middle of treating a patient. I am used to never taking breaks at work so when I refused the chai they insisted that I sit down and drink it. Then when I returned to my patient without finishing my entire cup of chai they immediately stopped me mid-sentence so that I could finish my tea. My dad said that at 10am when they were starting there surgery they found 20 of the OR staff in the lounge drinking their chai tea. (And don't be confused with the chai tea...I'm pretty sure it's just whole milk and lots of sugar.)

Okay, now for the real stuff...

First days are always hard.

I forgot what a 3^rd world hospital smells like. It’s really hard to put the smell into words. I haven’t smelled it since St. Lucia and before then the only time I smelled it was in Haiti.  It’s not a pleasant smell. It makes my stomach queasy every time  I walk into the hospital. 

It's hard to do any kind of medical care in a 3rd world country...there are so many things that make it difficult and I'm sure that I'll be writing about a different aspect each blog. The hardest thing about doing PT here will be the language barrier. Although the physios here speak English they have a very thick accent and it is hard for me to understand them. I feel bad asking them to repeat themselves so I find myself nodding my head a lot even though I have no idea what they’re saying…hopefully this doesn’t get me into too much trouble.  In addition to not being able to understand the physios, I cannot understand ANY of the patients. I was under the impression that more of the patients would speak and understand English but they don’t. Their native language is Swahili and they barely know any English. This is difficult for me because as most of you know my favorite thing about working with patients is communicating and getting to know them. My second favorite thing about PT is educating patients. It’s really hard to educate patients when they don’t understand a word of what you're saying. I have already started getting creative with actions and I know that I will continue to do so but I don't know how much they're understanding. 

There are a lot of things they do here in the physio setting that I don’t agree with. For example, we saw 10 patients this morning and we did not change the pillowcase, sheets or towels once. I was thinking that we would change the sheets before the afternoon caseload but that wasn't the case...instead we saw all of our afternoon patients with the same laundry used before. The sheets were covered with red clay (the dirt here), dead skin from patients, and the remainders of casts. that had been sawed off. 

I worked with a lot of interesting patients today but one of them was a 3 year old girl who had an elbow contracture due to a 2nd/3rd degree burn that covered her whole right arm. She was a precious little girl who really did not like me because the last thing she wanted to do was to move her painful arm but unfortunately that was my main and only goal for our treatment session : (

Today I'm overwhelmed and I'm wondering why I’m here and if I really have anything to offer to the physios and the patients with the language barrier. At the same time, though, I am so grateful that I am here because I know that God has me here for a very specific reason...I just don't know what it is yet but that is okay. My plan is to live everyday to the fullest by learning as much as I can and trying to help as much as I can as well.

 

2 Corinthians 5:7 We live by faith, not by sight.