Hello friends and some people whom I have never met. I wrote a post for the official ChildCount+ Blog and it's now up. It's a more detailed explanation of what I have been up to here, so go and check it out!
http://www.childcount.org/2010/08/17/using-childcount-to-strengthen-maternal-and-childhood-health/
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Ok, so I'm back
So that was my first attempt at Creme Bruleé, it turned out okay, but I think I needed to account for the extra moisture from the passion fruit. Oh well, next time. It was still yummy but the consistency wasn't right.
OK where did we leave off? Oh yeah, we were going to be evac'ed to Nairobi, that went well, more like a vacation, yeah, in case of questions, see Katie's post. Big shout out to my Dad who donated $200 to help the orphans in Masago! That is going to help the feeding programs so much and help keep kids healthy!
Lets see, I keep thinking of things in my day and thinking "Awesome! I'm totally going to write that in the blog!" and then when I actually get home, I have completely forgotten it. So pretend i told you all about awesome things! yay!
Yeah, I'm still tired.
So, the past week or two has been really good for the project. The software is finished and has been moved onto the main server, which means we are up and running there. Komolo and I have trained the first three health centers, and starting Monday we will be taking trips around to see how the ID card distribution is going and if the health staff has any questions about the program as it stands.
I have also been feeling really good about all of the accolades that have been coming my way. I feel really good about the project and have really appreciated all the nice things that people have said about it and me. Of course I haven't done it alone, without Yanis I wouldn't have even had the chance to work on this or the funding that made it all possible, without ChildCount and Matt we would have had to start from scratch which would have made things about 18 billion times harder, Moses, Dickson and Kevin were the ones who actually did the programming, and Komolo and Francis among others have been key during my visits to the field. Andy and Ben made me fight for only those parts of the system that really needed to be there and helped to make the system as streamlined as possible. The CHWs and MVP project in general are the reason we can implement and I wouldn't have wanted to have to try and do all the amazing strengthening of the systems that they have done over the last few years before I started on this project. So yeah, I know most of you have no idea who these people are, but they rock! I have never enjoyed such hard work as I have enjoyed these past few months, if any of you guys are reading, thank you so much!
On that note, we have been talking to people who think that this system would be perfect for a district or nation wide strengthening of PMTCT services, so this is really exciting, as well as talking to the Kenyan Department of health people and UNICEF Kenya, we have also had meetings with UNICEF Uganda about this program. It's exciting to see the work you have done getting people to think about what they could accomplish in their own backyards with the same systems. It's all open source, and the more people using it, the more mothers getting good antenatal care and the more kids born without HIV, so that is awesome. I'm working on a post for the childcount blog and a Powerpoint that really goes through the system and shows how it works, I'll post a link to the CC blog and to the Powerpoint when I'm done with them (which had best be tomorrow!) So, Monday it's looking like I'm going to try and get my phone (or better yet, borrow one on the correct network) to be a fake CHW phone on the test network and make an appointment for my test patient. Make sure that it is all working to plan and meet with the lab here which does dried blood spot testing for early infant diagnosis of HIV and I hope the lab in Yala. I'mgoing to sit down with the coordinator and say "sorry to be a pain in the ass, but I'm going to need to commandeer one of your cars for my last week, I have too much to do and too little time to do it in and I have to be going between meetings in Kisumu and meetings in Yala the next few days. If that doesn't work, than monday in Kisumu, Tuesday in Yala, then Wed, thurs and Fri, we are training 2 Health Centers a day (which sounded good at the time of the planning meeting but now has more than a passing resemblance to logistics hell). We have 10,000 ID cards being printed (I hope soon) and booklets which need to go out to the health centers and I need to talk to the OpenMRS guys to see if the data entry folk can put in the forms in Sauri. Anyway, yeah, it's gonna be busy! Also, my contract should finally come next week, we have a Claire's 1st birthday/going away party on Wed and Claire's actual first birthday on Thurs.! Yeah, were gonna need a little more caffine over here... Okay, we are off tomorrow to hike in the rainforest, somehow between everything else, I took a night off and build them a simple website. So, yay for free rainforest! Enjoy the pics, I may not label them... We'll see. I wish I had Goonies to give the orphans, though I totally hooked them up with Winnie the Pooh and The original Star Wars Trilogy as well as The Princess and the Frog... They are good kiddos,I hope this small thing can help distract them from the difficulties they have already begun to face and feel like a normal kid for a bit.
So, I'll try to write more, but as you can see I'm a bit scattered and have a lot on my plate!
Ok ok ok, I'll finally post a blog!
Hello blog people. This is Casey. I have not disappeared because of a time traveler accidentally screwing up the space time continuum ala Marty McFly, yes, that was a Back to the Future reference. A few weeks ago, our Japanese housemates and I were talking about movies from the 80s, Kaniko and I agreed that the Goonies was awesome and then we moved onto the Never Ending Story and Karate Kid (Which only Yoshi had seen) We had to use google quite a bit to find movie posters as things are called something different depending on what country/language you see them in. I saw "Dreamcatcher" a few years back in Burkina Faso, and that movie sucked even then and in French. In case you missed it, it had Morgan Freeman in it and monsters that came out of your butt. I'm not even sure why I'm writing about movies, I think I might be tired. Anyway, it's time to faire le bruleé sur mon creme bruleé so I'll be back and actually talk about something current. I apologize to those who just read this post. That's my bad....
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
In case you were wondering about the module
So, the software I am working on designing is an addon to Childcount+ I've embedded the overview here in case you wanted to know how text messages are used for health in Africa. I'm making a new bit to add to this slideshow... I'm trying to get caught up on work, (Claire isn't helping with this, but she's a really cute distraction) I'll write a real post later...
ChildCount+ Overview from Matt Berg on Vimeo.
Referendum week
Lynn voted!!! You can tell because she has been marked with a type of ink that won't come off for about a month. This is to prevent people from voting more than once.
I’m writing to you with a baby head under one arm and a baby leg on top of the other arm. Claire likes to take her breakfast while I blog. So, we’re back in Kisumu, and I’m back to the land of the living! Last week, we were in Nairobi on a forced holiday, of which I spent most of my time in the guest house room with a nasty strep throat. On the 3rd day, I finally took antibiotics and by that evening, felt like I was finally winning. While in Nairobi, we visited the Village Market (read: rich people mall) on several occasions, and it made me appreciate Kisumu prices, as it was ridiculously expensive and non-negotiably priced. I did get a nice haircut though, and ate some amazing Indian food. Oh, and we ate at The Carnivore, which is exactly what you would expect it to be: lots of meat roasted over a big, indoor pit. It was an admittedly tourist activity, but it was worth the experience and it was Kevin’s last meal in Kenya before flying back to France, so we made it into an event.
We flew back on Saturday, and I was so happy to be back in Kisumu! I’m realizing that we have just 2 weeks left here, and it’s a little hard to imagine life back in NY. It’s looking most likely that we will be headed back to NY for Casey to finish his degree this Fall, then Ghana probably in January. It is all up in the air right now, of course, but I will keep you all posted!
Clinical trial update: I have heard back from 2 of the 3 doctors involved with the Iquilai pilot in Kenya a few years ago, and they have offered to supply the remedy for the trial, which is great! Now, I am looking for funding for the rest of the trial, so if any of you know of any small grants for individual research out there, please let me know.
It’s the final push for Casey’s project, and he is working very long days to get it all finished. I am so proud of him, and I will let him tell you the most recent good news on his next post.
Claire turns 1 in 9 days!! We are going to celebrate on the 17th with all of the SIPA-ites, our Kenyan friends, and hopefully our Japanese friends who are now both in Mbita doing research. Claire will definitely get some of her cake, as she has had wheat flour, dairy, sugar, eggs, and pretty much every potential allergen (except nuts/nut butters and honey), and seems to be doing quite well with it all (fingers crossed!). We made a decision to just let her have what we are having, and you will see by the pictures I posted that she is enjoying trying foods very much!
Pictures from Referendum week
Contemplating...what exactly?
This is us evacuating.
Me gnawing on a sheep bone--my Grama would have been proud!
Oooh, who knew ice cream could be so hot?
Awww, sharing is nice.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Election time and getting evaced to Nairobi!
Blog:
Well, there is quite a lot to update all of you on. So, I assume that you would like to know how things went at Masogo, so, last weekend, that was the destination. Leaving, all we knew was that there was a CBO (which stands for community based organization for those not familiar with development-speak) which was caring for 1,800 HIV+ children. That was all that we knew, and boy were we not prepared for the reception that we got when we arrived. Francis said when we arrived in Masongo, “see those ladies? That is where we get out” and so we did, and they were chanting and dancing, and then they put sparkling garlands around our necks, took our hands and began dancing down the street. Meanwhile, Claire is asleep in her carseat, oblivious to the commotion going on around her as she led the parade down the street in the back of the car. I know that you are likely wondering about that word that I just used: parade. Yes, it was a parade, 60 widows all dressed in black, and We, the visitors, singing and dancing our way through the town, There is a video, if Katie will allow it, I’ll post. After some time we found Komolo, Mary and Charity from the MVP and they joined us. After about 2 kilometers (and I’m not kidding) we arrived at the office, and the widows came inside, and the children and other assorted hangers-on departed. We were introduced to the caregivers for the children and signed the guest book. After that, we were running a bit behind, so we left the caregivers in Komolo’s hands for training and headed off to the nursery school.
I call it a nursery school, but it was a tin building with a dirt floor, James, the head of the CBO said that they had quite a few problems with the place, that the floor was no good and gets infested with bugs. So, we sat under a tent, some really cute kids performed some songs and dances for us, and then Katie gave her speech to the kids. After that, we moved on to another school, a few kilometers down the road. This one was a nursery school, and we sat down to a very nice tea and then moved on to a classroom filled with little itty bitty chairs. There we greeted some parents, and by this point, Katie and I had decided to trade off on the speech, so I gave it this time, modified slightly for adults. When we arrived at this place, a little boy saw Claire and said that she was a doll! It was very funny, we was very confused when she was walking around like a real baby.
After this we headed back to the area of the office, thinking all the time that when we put sunscreen on Claire we should have really applied some ourselves as well. So, we headed back, and after a short stop came to another school. It’s really amazing all the things that we take for granted in the US, even things like permanent structures for our schools, this one had a few buildings with mud walls and on where they were working on finding materials for a roof. So, another speech and we were back off down the road to come back to the first place. We arrived and I delivered the last speech, utilizing President Obama’s “Yes we can!” rally, it was really cool seeing all those widows chanting that, affirming their good work and their power to make changes in their lives.
Okay, so now it’s about 4 days after I began this post and Katie had already filled you in on the other details.
Skipping ahead, I know there were some things I wanted to share, so please everyone just pretend that I shared some amusing anecdotes here, and pretend as though you are all caught up. Short version, we have some new cards printed up with all the ChildCount+ Ids for all the households and have printed up the first 400 CC+ Ids on stickers with barcodes for easy integration into the OpenMRS system! Yay! Ummm, let’s see, met a student from the MPH program at the Mailman school of Public Health at Columbia who is working on a program that I worked on an earlier version of, those hers is much better. They are re-training traditional birth attendants to be doulas and having retired midwives be available for births which can’t make it to the hospitals in time, or which happen after the health centers are closed. I’m working with her to make sure that our programs work well together as a bit was overlapping before, Looks like everything is working together really well now though. I bought a whole bunch of pirated DVDs, just in case we are stuck inside for a while, the president and prime minister were here on Saturday and some other stuff happened, but now I can’t so much remember what it was.
So, it was suggested a while back that we evac to Nairobi for the upcoming elections on Tuesday. We decided not to, because we felt very safe here and it’s looking pretty mellow. No one seems to be expecting violence. But, MVP has decided that it would be better if we were in Nairobi, so it’s now mandatory that we go. So tomorrow morning we are going. Don’t be worried, I’m sure it will all be fine. We’re hoping to be back to Kisumu before Friday. Check out http://uchaguzi.co.ke/ to keep up on everything that is happening here. Take care! Our Kenya mobile phone number is +254-71-315-8513 if you want to get a hold of us, and we should have internet access. Okay, that’s all for now, it’s late and we need to get up early and pack in the morning. Love you all!
Casey!
PS the neighbors are having a hell of a party, it sounds like so much fun! I want to go!
Well, there is quite a lot to update all of you on. So, I assume that you would like to know how things went at Masogo, so, last weekend, that was the destination. Leaving, all we knew was that there was a CBO (which stands for community based organization for those not familiar with development-speak) which was caring for 1,800 HIV+ children. That was all that we knew, and boy were we not prepared for the reception that we got when we arrived. Francis said when we arrived in Masongo, “see those ladies? That is where we get out” and so we did, and they were chanting and dancing, and then they put sparkling garlands around our necks, took our hands and began dancing down the street. Meanwhile, Claire is asleep in her carseat, oblivious to the commotion going on around her as she led the parade down the street in the back of the car. I know that you are likely wondering about that word that I just used: parade. Yes, it was a parade, 60 widows all dressed in black, and We, the visitors, singing and dancing our way through the town, There is a video, if Katie will allow it, I’ll post. After some time we found Komolo, Mary and Charity from the MVP and they joined us. After about 2 kilometers (and I’m not kidding) we arrived at the office, and the widows came inside, and the children and other assorted hangers-on departed. We were introduced to the caregivers for the children and signed the guest book. After that, we were running a bit behind, so we left the caregivers in Komolo’s hands for training and headed off to the nursery school.
I call it a nursery school, but it was a tin building with a dirt floor, James, the head of the CBO said that they had quite a few problems with the place, that the floor was no good and gets infested with bugs. So, we sat under a tent, some really cute kids performed some songs and dances for us, and then Katie gave her speech to the kids. After that, we moved on to another school, a few kilometers down the road. This one was a nursery school, and we sat down to a very nice tea and then moved on to a classroom filled with little itty bitty chairs. There we greeted some parents, and by this point, Katie and I had decided to trade off on the speech, so I gave it this time, modified slightly for adults. When we arrived at this place, a little boy saw Claire and said that she was a doll! It was very funny, we was very confused when she was walking around like a real baby.
After this we headed back to the area of the office, thinking all the time that when we put sunscreen on Claire we should have really applied some ourselves as well. So, we headed back, and after a short stop came to another school. It’s really amazing all the things that we take for granted in the US, even things like permanent structures for our schools, this one had a few buildings with mud walls and on where they were working on finding materials for a roof. So, another speech and we were back off down the road to come back to the first place. We arrived and I delivered the last speech, utilizing President Obama’s “Yes we can!” rally, it was really cool seeing all those widows chanting that, affirming their good work and their power to make changes in their lives.
Okay, so now it’s about 4 days after I began this post and Katie had already filled you in on the other details.
Skipping ahead, I know there were some things I wanted to share, so please everyone just pretend that I shared some amusing anecdotes here, and pretend as though you are all caught up. Short version, we have some new cards printed up with all the ChildCount+ Ids for all the households and have printed up the first 400 CC+ Ids on stickers with barcodes for easy integration into the OpenMRS system! Yay! Ummm, let’s see, met a student from the MPH program at the Mailman school of Public Health at Columbia who is working on a program that I worked on an earlier version of, those hers is much better. They are re-training traditional birth attendants to be doulas and having retired midwives be available for births which can’t make it to the hospitals in time, or which happen after the health centers are closed. I’m working with her to make sure that our programs work well together as a bit was overlapping before, Looks like everything is working together really well now though. I bought a whole bunch of pirated DVDs, just in case we are stuck inside for a while, the president and prime minister were here on Saturday and some other stuff happened, but now I can’t so much remember what it was.
So, it was suggested a while back that we evac to Nairobi for the upcoming elections on Tuesday. We decided not to, because we felt very safe here and it’s looking pretty mellow. No one seems to be expecting violence. But, MVP has decided that it would be better if we were in Nairobi, so it’s now mandatory that we go. So tomorrow morning we are going. Don’t be worried, I’m sure it will all be fine. We’re hoping to be back to Kisumu before Friday. Check out http://uchaguzi.co.ke/ to keep up on everything that is happening here. Take care! Our Kenya mobile phone number is +254-71-315-8513 if you want to get a hold of us, and we should have internet access. Okay, that’s all for now, it’s late and we need to get up early and pack in the morning. Love you all!
Casey!
PS the neighbors are having a hell of a party, it sounds like so much fun! I want to go!
Friday, July 30, 2010
Long overdue post from Katie!
It has been far too long since you’ve heard from me, so I will hit the high points of the last couple of weeks.
Two weekends ago we visited Kakamega Forest, which was awesome! I learned (and then forgot) a lot about the plant medicine of the forest. I want to compile some sort of “Medicinal Plants of Africa” encyclopedia; details to follow on that project. I think we will hike in the forest again before leaving Kisumu, and I will bring a notebook along to scribble some pearls about the plants and their medicinal properties. We also have a gigantic memory card for the camera now, so we will be better prepared in general.
I really want to talk about last weekend, as I keep thinking about it. We were invited to Masango (may not be the exactly right name, but it is close), and we were to give inspirational speeches to 1800+ HIV+ kids and their parents, teachers, and caregivers. The day started off with us arriving at the town, greeted by a group of ladies who were singing, dancing, and welcoming us to the town. I hate being the center of attention, but “when in Africa,” right? Sooooo, we pranced and sang our way through town with gigantic, shiny leis around our necks.
We were definitely getting the VIP treatment all day. We visited several groups, the first of which was a primary school of mostly AIDS-orphaned children. A group of the kids put on a dancing/singing performance to welcome us, then, after a prayer from the pastor (who, by the way, seemed like a really awesome guy), I gave the first speech. You could hear the crickets chirping. I heard some muttering behind me, and then realized we needed to start over with a translator—the second start was much better! I told the crowd the story of William Kamkwamba, the young man from Malawi who taught himself physics and built a windmill for his village, and encouraged them to take care of themselves with good nutrition and staying on their medicines, and to keep dreaming and to never give up. Well, this was all good, and Casey and I traded off giving this general talk to 4 different groups that day.
As the day was winding down, we came back to the site of speech #1, and some folks were asked to come up and speak to us. One woman, an older mama caring for AIDS orphans, said something that cut right to my heart. She said “I heard you talk about how these kids can live a long, healthy life with HIV if they take their medicine and get appropriate nutrition. Many of these children don’t have enough to eat. Please help us.” Wow. I knew I wasn’t speaking to HIV+ kids in the States, but not having enough to eat is a real serious problem. I told her I would take her words to heart, and now I am formulating some ideas for things I can do for those kids. I am in contact with Jan Scholten, creator of Iquilai (a homeopathic remedy based on a combination of potentised minerals), and am working on a proposal for a trial that would incorporate a sustainable nutrition supplement and Iquilai. After talking for hours in bed last night, Casey, an expert at creating programs in developing countries (so nice to be sleeping with an expert!!), I have some solid ideas of where to start. Here are the basics of what we came up with: 4 arms (Iquilai alone, Iquilai+Plumpynut, Plumpynut alone, and a control group), 60 participants in each, with the interviews, interventions and follow-up carried out by a group of CHWs that I would train. I’m clarifying this vision and working on securing funding that would pay for the trial and, most importantly, funding for the intervention that showed the most improvement in quality of life and CD4 counts.
Whew! Keep those kids in your thoughts/prayers. One other serious need that the nursery school director had was for seeds for their garden. Ever since the sugar cane industry fell on its face, it has been even harder for these people. They live on a flood plain that is dry part of the year and flooded the rest of the time. Rice is grown in paddies nearby, but it’s hard to grow food crops outside of sugar cane for reasons that are beyond my agricultural understanding. Thoughts, anyone? We are definitely putting our thinking caps on!
Let’s see, this week has flown by. Claire and I had a nice visit with our Japanese friends and I think we will be having playdates weekly. A programmer, Kevin, flew in Monday from France to help Casey get his software going, and he is staying in our guest house. We are all getting along very well and enjoying hanging out and eating delicious food.
Yesterday, Claire, Lyn and I visited this organization called “Babies in Crisis,” that we saw while out walking. It is a home for abandoned babies, and as sad as the concept of that is, the work these folks do is truly amazing. The compound is a sprawling facility, kept very clean and orderly, with a very mellow energy all around. We visited during nap time, but saw kids from very tiny babies to developmentally delayed kids up to around age 8. We were told several times that the children were up for adoption, and I’m afraid to bring Casey, as he keeps talking about picking a sister out for Claire! Despite Casey being on the baby train, I think we will go on Saturday morning so we can be around to help with feeding time. There are 5 babies to one caretaker, so the babies have to wait their turn to be fed.
Ok, so the last thing is that we are coming up on a referendum on August 4th. I am not nervous about violence, but I hear mixed predictions. As it is, we are likely to be staying here and have begun stocking up on some essentials in the unlikely event that we have to hole up for a few days. We’re not going all Y2K on it, but it’s not a bad idea to have a back-up plan. It’s hard to believe that our time in Kisumu is coming to an end, Claire is almost 1 years old (!), and we will find out, hopefully today, if we are for sure going to be in Ghana for the next leg of our African adventure. This post was monstrous, so congrats on reading the whole thing! Until next time…
Two weekends ago we visited Kakamega Forest, which was awesome! I learned (and then forgot) a lot about the plant medicine of the forest. I want to compile some sort of “Medicinal Plants of Africa” encyclopedia; details to follow on that project. I think we will hike in the forest again before leaving Kisumu, and I will bring a notebook along to scribble some pearls about the plants and their medicinal properties. We also have a gigantic memory card for the camera now, so we will be better prepared in general.
I really want to talk about last weekend, as I keep thinking about it. We were invited to Masango (may not be the exactly right name, but it is close), and we were to give inspirational speeches to 1800+ HIV+ kids and their parents, teachers, and caregivers. The day started off with us arriving at the town, greeted by a group of ladies who were singing, dancing, and welcoming us to the town. I hate being the center of attention, but “when in Africa,” right? Sooooo, we pranced and sang our way through town with gigantic, shiny leis around our necks.
We were definitely getting the VIP treatment all day. We visited several groups, the first of which was a primary school of mostly AIDS-orphaned children. A group of the kids put on a dancing/singing performance to welcome us, then, after a prayer from the pastor (who, by the way, seemed like a really awesome guy), I gave the first speech. You could hear the crickets chirping. I heard some muttering behind me, and then realized we needed to start over with a translator—the second start was much better! I told the crowd the story of William Kamkwamba, the young man from Malawi who taught himself physics and built a windmill for his village, and encouraged them to take care of themselves with good nutrition and staying on their medicines, and to keep dreaming and to never give up. Well, this was all good, and Casey and I traded off giving this general talk to 4 different groups that day.
As the day was winding down, we came back to the site of speech #1, and some folks were asked to come up and speak to us. One woman, an older mama caring for AIDS orphans, said something that cut right to my heart. She said “I heard you talk about how these kids can live a long, healthy life with HIV if they take their medicine and get appropriate nutrition. Many of these children don’t have enough to eat. Please help us.” Wow. I knew I wasn’t speaking to HIV+ kids in the States, but not having enough to eat is a real serious problem. I told her I would take her words to heart, and now I am formulating some ideas for things I can do for those kids. I am in contact with Jan Scholten, creator of Iquilai (a homeopathic remedy based on a combination of potentised minerals), and am working on a proposal for a trial that would incorporate a sustainable nutrition supplement and Iquilai. After talking for hours in bed last night, Casey, an expert at creating programs in developing countries (so nice to be sleeping with an expert!!), I have some solid ideas of where to start. Here are the basics of what we came up with: 4 arms (Iquilai alone, Iquilai+Plumpynut, Plumpynut alone, and a control group), 60 participants in each, with the interviews, interventions and follow-up carried out by a group of CHWs that I would train. I’m clarifying this vision and working on securing funding that would pay for the trial and, most importantly, funding for the intervention that showed the most improvement in quality of life and CD4 counts.
Whew! Keep those kids in your thoughts/prayers. One other serious need that the nursery school director had was for seeds for their garden. Ever since the sugar cane industry fell on its face, it has been even harder for these people. They live on a flood plain that is dry part of the year and flooded the rest of the time. Rice is grown in paddies nearby, but it’s hard to grow food crops outside of sugar cane for reasons that are beyond my agricultural understanding. Thoughts, anyone? We are definitely putting our thinking caps on!
Let’s see, this week has flown by. Claire and I had a nice visit with our Japanese friends and I think we will be having playdates weekly. A programmer, Kevin, flew in Monday from France to help Casey get his software going, and he is staying in our guest house. We are all getting along very well and enjoying hanging out and eating delicious food.
Yesterday, Claire, Lyn and I visited this organization called “Babies in Crisis,” that we saw while out walking. It is a home for abandoned babies, and as sad as the concept of that is, the work these folks do is truly amazing. The compound is a sprawling facility, kept very clean and orderly, with a very mellow energy all around. We visited during nap time, but saw kids from very tiny babies to developmentally delayed kids up to around age 8. We were told several times that the children were up for adoption, and I’m afraid to bring Casey, as he keeps talking about picking a sister out for Claire! Despite Casey being on the baby train, I think we will go on Saturday morning so we can be around to help with feeding time. There are 5 babies to one caretaker, so the babies have to wait their turn to be fed.
Ok, so the last thing is that we are coming up on a referendum on August 4th. I am not nervous about violence, but I hear mixed predictions. As it is, we are likely to be staying here and have begun stocking up on some essentials in the unlikely event that we have to hole up for a few days. We’re not going all Y2K on it, but it’s not a bad idea to have a back-up plan. It’s hard to believe that our time in Kisumu is coming to an end, Claire is almost 1 years old (!), and we will find out, hopefully today, if we are for sure going to be in Ghana for the next leg of our African adventure. This post was monstrous, so congrats on reading the whole thing! Until next time…
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
I became an MP today!
So, today was an interesting day, and it was the last of the all day trainings which I've been going to and which have been keeping me out for more than 11 hours for the past few days,though today I got back a bit earlier today... So, a few things... One, never try to swap the Lamborghini of cell phones with the Toyota Carolla of cell phones with your CHWs, it doesn't matter if you have good and rational reasons, and it may be better in all practical ways, but yeah, don't try to swap them... I've seen 3 days of revolts... The first day they were yelling at the dude and the next 2 days not one person agreed to swap the phones.
Unfortunately, today i didn't get to make my request when I wanted to and kept being put off by the lady leading the talk and I got to talk to them when they were nice and pissed off... Yay :( Oh well. I also learned that the CHWs have a nickname for me. They call me The M.P., which stands for member of parliament, if you didn't know. I was told that it was because I'm a big guy, and that MPs are usually big guys. So, yep... I'm an MP...
And I found out that I don't get to have the maternal and childhood health booklets that I was going to have the CHWs hand out. Oh well, we'll just have to let them know to just give the women the stickers then, or maybe make cards to have the IDs written on them? I don't know... though I think that the stickers are still the best idea.
Okay, well Lost is on and it's really odd but I guess it's explaining the origins of Jacob and the other dude...
Okay, pics from the training soon and I'll write more later!
Goodnight!
Unfortunately, today i didn't get to make my request when I wanted to and kept being put off by the lady leading the talk and I got to talk to them when they were nice and pissed off... Yay :( Oh well. I also learned that the CHWs have a nickname for me. They call me The M.P., which stands for member of parliament, if you didn't know. I was told that it was because I'm a big guy, and that MPs are usually big guys. So, yep... I'm an MP...
And I found out that I don't get to have the maternal and childhood health booklets that I was going to have the CHWs hand out. Oh well, we'll just have to let them know to just give the women the stickers then, or maybe make cards to have the IDs written on them? I don't know... though I think that the stickers are still the best idea.
Okay, well Lost is on and it's really odd but I guess it's explaining the origins of Jacob and the other dude...
Okay, pics from the training soon and I'll write more later!
Goodnight!
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The Photos, Pt. 1
Taking Claire swimming!
She made some new friends there
Friends!
This one is pretty self explanitory
Just before heading into the forest
Gotta love that new post smell.... mmmmmm....posty
Hello Blog,
well now I’m skipping forward to last weekend, because I’m lagging on this whole blog thing, and I have given up on filing the blanks before that point. So last weekend we were going to head to the Kakamega Forest on Saturday morning, we were to leave at 7am sharp, this was confirmed by Francis. We got up and ready and waited, and waited and waited, the guy was supposed to be washing the car when I called at 7:30, at 8 he still wasn’t around, and so on and so on. At 9:00 I finally called Francis and told him that it was getting too late and that all the animals are hiding by noontime, he and the driver finally made it at around 10:30, apparently the driver have loaned out his car to someone who was supposed to bring it back the night before, but didn’t bring it until the morning. I told him that it was too late, he tried to talk us into going anyway, but I told him he could come back the next morning at 7 if he wanted and we could go then. So he decided he would do that and went on his way.
We decided to take Claire swimming, and to take a Kiboko boat tour. Kiboko is kiSwahili for Hippo. So we went off to Kiboko Bay Resort and took Claire swimming. She loved it and she made some nice new friends. Her new friends had floaties too, so they all floated around together, Claire even shared hers with two other kids when she got out of the pool. We decided not to go on the Kiboko tour as the hippos are best to watch in the morning time, and Katie had slipped and was feeling sore.
So, the next day we indeed headed off to the Kakamega Forest. It was great, we paid a modest entrance fee and found a guide and enlisted him on our 3 hour walk. He turned out to be very knowledgeable and gave us a lot of great info about the medicinal properties of plants, which is exactly what Katie wanted. We recorded quite a few of his talks and will post them soon. I found out though that I have a memory card which is too small, back when I got it, this 2 GB card seemed huge, but on the walk I used it up less than halfway through the trip, which was no good and I even had to delete one of the talks about the medicinal plants. We found a black and white Columbus monkey, I got a great shot of him. So, I will get a bigger one at Nakumatt if the price is reasonable. So on the way back, the guide asked me if I knew anyone who knew how to make a website. And so I offer to make one for them in exchange for some free guided tours of the forest in the future. It seemed like the best deal for all, of course I’m very busy so that’s that hard part, but I told them it would just be a simple simple site.
When I got home I was the recipient of some amazing news! UNAIDS had offered me funding to help start a PMTCT program in Ghana in late September! I did a happy dance of joy and then was a bit overwhelmed by what this all means, so I won’t be coming back to the US after Kenya, I’ll be taking a leave of absence and going straight from Nairobi to Accra and then up to the Barong Afo region, (Which I know I misspelled) to start on the next project! Yay for awesome opportunity, sad that I will be missing my friends and family who were going to visit this fall and I might totally miss my J-termers before I come back to SIPA! So Yay and awesome and such for that, though I think the leave of absence has some consequences for financial aid and for the housing. But we will see. If I can keep my place I will just sublet it out to James who was here in Kisumu but is moving with his family to NYC. My friend Beth will be coming to Ghana to work on a two year contract and she agreed to bring me some stuff from my place that I want here. Okay so it’s the external drive with all my movies, the projector and my xbox, yes, I’m a nerd okay?
On the job side of things, exciting things are happening! We are getting a programmer to help with the programming side of things next Monday, his name is Kevin and he will be a big help. Plus he’s staying at the same guest house as me so I can bug him about the software non-stop! On Monday I had a meeting with Andy Kanter and Ben Nemser who are high up in the childcount/mHealth/eHealth bit of things in New York and we made some significant changes to the system. We eliminated a few forms and steps and came out with a much more streamlined version of things. Now the CHWs will not have any additional forms to carry, and the total number of new forms is down to 3. We are still collecting a lot of good data though. I will be working with the Yala Sub-District Hospital to try and get them to begin inputting CD4 results into the system as well and there is the long shot of getting the folks at the CDC lab that process the DBS tests to do input them as well. The conference call ended at 7pm and even that was only because they were going to lock me inside the building if I didn’t come out right then.
I worked late into the night on Monday to try and get the new forms ready for the meeting with the health facilitators on Tuesday. I knew I would have time at the place itself, but that my only access to a printer would be in the morning before we left for Yala. I got it all done and printed and headed off to the training where I would meet the health facilitators later. So, I arrived and while waiting for the training to be over, I realized what they were training on. They were to go around to all the households in their catchment area and do a household health survey. Somehow I was lucky enough to have the one sample pack of stickers that we were getting as part of my program and took about 10 minutes to ask the CHWs that when they were going around to please record the health IDs of the mother, father and all kids under 5 on stickers complete with the name for identifying, and to stick them to the inside front cover of the maternal health booklet. This was the plan from the start, I’m just happy I was there so we could piggyback on this instead of making them go to all the households a second time. Now we just need the stickers, though Dickson is supposed to be on that one, and to procure some maternal and childhood health booklets in case the woman hasn’t gone to her 1st antenatal visit yet to receive one, which Komolo is on. So, wow, we are moving forward, work has begun! And I spoke to 2 health facilitators yesterday and one today (who are the ones in charge of the CHWs at each health center) and they are totally on board too! So, things are going really well, I did another training today and the last one will be tomorrow. Oh, one funny thing, I didn’t have internet in the field and after busting my ass to get the forms changed, when I got back to the office I had an email with more changes! D’oh! But oh well, I’m going to do those either tonight or tomorrow. So, that’s about it for now.
Oh, next weekend we will be staying out in a village and giving a talk to 1,800 HIV+ kids… that will be interesting! OK, till tomorrow or so!
P.S. if you haven’t already, click follow or I will be forced to keep bugging you (You too Mom!) because we love to have followers!
OK, pics up when I get home because they refuse to upload now...
well now I’m skipping forward to last weekend, because I’m lagging on this whole blog thing, and I have given up on filing the blanks before that point. So last weekend we were going to head to the Kakamega Forest on Saturday morning, we were to leave at 7am sharp, this was confirmed by Francis. We got up and ready and waited, and waited and waited, the guy was supposed to be washing the car when I called at 7:30, at 8 he still wasn’t around, and so on and so on. At 9:00 I finally called Francis and told him that it was getting too late and that all the animals are hiding by noontime, he and the driver finally made it at around 10:30, apparently the driver have loaned out his car to someone who was supposed to bring it back the night before, but didn’t bring it until the morning. I told him that it was too late, he tried to talk us into going anyway, but I told him he could come back the next morning at 7 if he wanted and we could go then. So he decided he would do that and went on his way.
We decided to take Claire swimming, and to take a Kiboko boat tour. Kiboko is kiSwahili for Hippo. So we went off to Kiboko Bay Resort and took Claire swimming. She loved it and she made some nice new friends. Her new friends had floaties too, so they all floated around together, Claire even shared hers with two other kids when she got out of the pool. We decided not to go on the Kiboko tour as the hippos are best to watch in the morning time, and Katie had slipped and was feeling sore.
So, the next day we indeed headed off to the Kakamega Forest. It was great, we paid a modest entrance fee and found a guide and enlisted him on our 3 hour walk. He turned out to be very knowledgeable and gave us a lot of great info about the medicinal properties of plants, which is exactly what Katie wanted. We recorded quite a few of his talks and will post them soon. I found out though that I have a memory card which is too small, back when I got it, this 2 GB card seemed huge, but on the walk I used it up less than halfway through the trip, which was no good and I even had to delete one of the talks about the medicinal plants. We found a black and white Columbus monkey, I got a great shot of him. So, I will get a bigger one at Nakumatt if the price is reasonable. So on the way back, the guide asked me if I knew anyone who knew how to make a website. And so I offer to make one for them in exchange for some free guided tours of the forest in the future. It seemed like the best deal for all, of course I’m very busy so that’s that hard part, but I told them it would just be a simple simple site.
When I got home I was the recipient of some amazing news! UNAIDS had offered me funding to help start a PMTCT program in Ghana in late September! I did a happy dance of joy and then was a bit overwhelmed by what this all means, so I won’t be coming back to the US after Kenya, I’ll be taking a leave of absence and going straight from Nairobi to Accra and then up to the Barong Afo region, (Which I know I misspelled) to start on the next project! Yay for awesome opportunity, sad that I will be missing my friends and family who were going to visit this fall and I might totally miss my J-termers before I come back to SIPA! So Yay and awesome and such for that, though I think the leave of absence has some consequences for financial aid and for the housing. But we will see. If I can keep my place I will just sublet it out to James who was here in Kisumu but is moving with his family to NYC. My friend Beth will be coming to Ghana to work on a two year contract and she agreed to bring me some stuff from my place that I want here. Okay so it’s the external drive with all my movies, the projector and my xbox, yes, I’m a nerd okay?
On the job side of things, exciting things are happening! We are getting a programmer to help with the programming side of things next Monday, his name is Kevin and he will be a big help. Plus he’s staying at the same guest house as me so I can bug him about the software non-stop! On Monday I had a meeting with Andy Kanter and Ben Nemser who are high up in the childcount/mHealth/eHealth bit of things in New York and we made some significant changes to the system. We eliminated a few forms and steps and came out with a much more streamlined version of things. Now the CHWs will not have any additional forms to carry, and the total number of new forms is down to 3. We are still collecting a lot of good data though. I will be working with the Yala Sub-District Hospital to try and get them to begin inputting CD4 results into the system as well and there is the long shot of getting the folks at the CDC lab that process the DBS tests to do input them as well. The conference call ended at 7pm and even that was only because they were going to lock me inside the building if I didn’t come out right then.
I worked late into the night on Monday to try and get the new forms ready for the meeting with the health facilitators on Tuesday. I knew I would have time at the place itself, but that my only access to a printer would be in the morning before we left for Yala. I got it all done and printed and headed off to the training where I would meet the health facilitators later. So, I arrived and while waiting for the training to be over, I realized what they were training on. They were to go around to all the households in their catchment area and do a household health survey. Somehow I was lucky enough to have the one sample pack of stickers that we were getting as part of my program and took about 10 minutes to ask the CHWs that when they were going around to please record the health IDs of the mother, father and all kids under 5 on stickers complete with the name for identifying, and to stick them to the inside front cover of the maternal health booklet. This was the plan from the start, I’m just happy I was there so we could piggyback on this instead of making them go to all the households a second time. Now we just need the stickers, though Dickson is supposed to be on that one, and to procure some maternal and childhood health booklets in case the woman hasn’t gone to her 1st antenatal visit yet to receive one, which Komolo is on. So, wow, we are moving forward, work has begun! And I spoke to 2 health facilitators yesterday and one today (who are the ones in charge of the CHWs at each health center) and they are totally on board too! So, things are going really well, I did another training today and the last one will be tomorrow. Oh, one funny thing, I didn’t have internet in the field and after busting my ass to get the forms changed, when I got back to the office I had an email with more changes! D’oh! But oh well, I’m going to do those either tonight or tomorrow. So, that’s about it for now.
Oh, next weekend we will be staying out in a village and giving a talk to 1,800 HIV+ kids… that will be interesting! OK, till tomorrow or so!
P.S. if you haven’t already, click follow or I will be forced to keep bugging you (You too Mom!) because we love to have followers!
OK, pics up when I get home because they refuse to upload now...
Saturday, July 17, 2010
A boardroom, a bong, and a bathroom with a view
Owino's political message--YES on the new constitution.
Casey and Claire at work. He has the whole boardroom to himself!
Traditional Luo water pipe as seen at the Kisumu Museum.
First wife, bitches, uhh! (uh, maybe not?)
A potty with a view onto our private patio.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
More Photos!
YES WE CAN! (have some tea)
Claire and her new dolly, Mama Sarah
I think that this one is fairly self-explanatory
Claire giving Mama Sarah her gift (I'd actually already given it to her, but Claire wanted to help her open it... :)
The Family, complete with Francis and Mama Sarah
Quick Break from report writing to tell stories :)
Claire With Mama Sarah Obama
At the house, near her garden
Claire thinks she is Kenyan, these kids don't look so convinced, even though she is hanging out with them
Soda and Chapati Break in the Village, the Chapatis Were Sooooooo Good!
Widows Group Which Was Meeting in the Village, I gave the nice ladies a donation when they came up to me, but some guy who said he was the chairperson of the village tried to make me come and give a speech. I told him I didn't know what to say to them, as I am not a widow, and I have no business giving a speech just because I was a Muzungu, he wouldn't take no for an answer and so we just decided to go to the house. Francis and the guy didn't get along very well, the guy was kind of being a dick about it.
Hello there followers and those that are not followers but merely skulking around in the internet ether...
So here I am in the Kisumu offices, working again on my report. I have decided to do an initial short report in time for Yanis to give it to folks who are wondering how we arrived at the conclusions that we have before he leaves Accra if he wants, so I've been working on a problem analysis and then I'll just move on to the findings from interviews and then on to the process maps (this first report will only contain one generic one) for the As-Is and To Be processes. It seems as though the software is coming along well with Dickson making some good progress. We are going to meet tomorrow to go over what's been done and make sure that I haven't forgotten to tell him about anything, and I met with Maurice who is the head of eHealth for eastern and southern Africa and he thought the program looked good. I need to talk to Komolo and set a meeting with Dickson, Myself and the health coordinators to go over the new forms and get their feedback, but maybe we can make that for this week or early next week, then roll the forms out in the field next week.
Okay, enough about the project, I'm sure that you want to hear about us meeting President Obama's Grandma!
So last Saturday Francis came with the car that he arraigned for us and picked us up at the house. We proceeded out to Kogelo and stopped in the village for some soda and chapati before heading out to Mama Sarah Obama's house. When we arrived in the village, it was great because even the tea room said "Yes we can" underneath and we saw signs for "Senator Obama Primary School" and "Senator Obama High School". Oh, I forgot to mention it, but we wanted to give Mama Sarah a gift so I went to the Nakumatt and picked out a nice set of tea cups for her.
So we arrived at the place and waited a bit for Mama Sarah, she is 87 and has been feeling pretty tired of late, so they don't allow too many visitors these days, but we were lucky and she agreed to see us. While we waited we saw the graves of President Obama's father and grandfather, they are in the background of the photo of Francis and Claire which I will have to post next. So we met her, she was super cool and nice, and Francis translated for us all. She said Claire's name should have been Michelle (or at least her middle name) as she was conceived on the night of the election. So we talked for a bit and then presented our gifts and headed on our way. It's funny, now I wish I had asked a bit more about President Obama when he was younger, that would have been interesting... oops :) But on the way out, someone had a table set up with some stuff for sale on it and I spotted a doll. So we got Claire her first Dolly, whose name is Mama Sarah. I'll post some pics of that too. Anyway, we headed back home and then Katie purchased President Obama's book "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance" which she has since finished and I hope to start soon. You know, of all the things that are amazing for travelers, the Kindle might be the best. It can receive books purchased from amazon (and even buy them right from the kindle) even here in Kenya. It's so hard to find the books you want sometimes, and this makes it easy. There isn't even an extra charge for delivery here. Anyway, just a bit of a positive rant for Kindle.
After we got back, Francis, Yoshi and I headed out for boys night out... but I need to get back to my report. So, stay tuned next time for "The prostitute scratched on the 8 ball" or "The tale of the Octopus" :)
Monday, July 12, 2010
Crazy storm at the MVP field offices
Next up in the media posts, Claire's first frozen yogurt, she loved it!
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Some fun photos! Post to come tonight!
Claire meets a monkey
Claire at the swimming pool
Walking with Francis and his family
Claire's new bed from the market
Claire sleeping through The Mona Lisa
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