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…
Friday, July 30, 2010
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
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Off to Vist Obama's Grandma!
Well, today we are heading off to pay a visit to President Obama's grandmother! It's very exciting, as exuberance over Obama's victory lead to Claire being around. We are going to bring her a little gift of a set of teacups or plates. We'll take photos and post them once we're back. I know I keep saying that we'll post photos, but this time we really will. I wish Claire's little dresses were done so she could wear one to the visit, but that's okay. Next time. Claire is sitting on the couch with Yoshi, it's very cute.
Okay, that's about it for this morning. See you all soon!
Okay, that's about it for this morning. See you all soon!
Friday, July 9, 2010
Trainings and site visits and island property
So, I have some cute pics of Claire at the pool that I'll upload as well as some from site visits.
Yesterday I attended an all day training, which was interesting as I plan to do some trainings myself so I thought I'd check one out and see how things went. They went alright, I think the person presenting had people's attention for most of the time, and that at least some of what she said reached the intended audience. For me though, most of the training were about things that I already knew about, so it wasn't especially useful.
Okay, it's been several days since I started this post, and so I think it's about time I should finish.
The other day I had a great meeting with Yanis and Matt Berg, we have figured out the program for the programming and what will happen for the next bit. It's looking like I will be joined by a programmer from New York who will help Moses and Dickson with the coding and the software should be finished by the second at the latest. I realized however that we don't really need the software to move forward. We can move forward just using the paper forms and most of the people won't need any sort of action for 1 month after the form is filled out. this is great, and the next step for me (other than to continue working on my reports) is to meet with the heath facilitators who are in charge of the different health centers. then we can go over the different forms and get feedback on them.
So, let's see, Kaniko has left for the field this morning, but she is coming back for the weekend. Then she will be out of here for good, which is very sad as we have had a lot of fun hanging out with her these past few weeks. However, this means we are going to head upstairs and get to be in the big room with the balcony and such, this is good. But overall the sad wins, so now we are a little sad. Tonight though we will go to our weekly outing for dinner at Simba Club, so that should be fun.
Claire has discovered how to climb stairs, pictures soon. She also has her first birthday coming up and we're going to throw her a party! And all of us went off to the tailor last weekend and got measured for clothes. Katie got her first dress today and Claire has i think 6 in the works in different sizes. Katie took a photo of hers which I'm sure will be up soon and we'll have pics of Claire as soon as her dresses are done.
Other than that, we are really excited about heading off to Lamu and have decided that we are going to start saving for a down payment on a house there, this is very exciting stuff. The houses there are significantly cheaper than the US, it is a beautiful tropical paradise and we can move there when we retire and people will want to come and visit us there(making this the opposite of Arizona). The goal is to put the down the down payment in about 2 years.
check out awesome Lamu Houses here...
http://www.lamuislandproperty.com/
Okay, time for a guacamole break....
Yesterday I attended an all day training, which was interesting as I plan to do some trainings myself so I thought I'd check one out and see how things went. They went alright, I think the person presenting had people's attention for most of the time, and that at least some of what she said reached the intended audience. For me though, most of the training were about things that I already knew about, so it wasn't especially useful.
Okay, it's been several days since I started this post, and so I think it's about time I should finish.
The other day I had a great meeting with Yanis and Matt Berg, we have figured out the program for the programming and what will happen for the next bit. It's looking like I will be joined by a programmer from New York who will help Moses and Dickson with the coding and the software should be finished by the second at the latest. I realized however that we don't really need the software to move forward. We can move forward just using the paper forms and most of the people won't need any sort of action for 1 month after the form is filled out. this is great, and the next step for me (other than to continue working on my reports) is to meet with the heath facilitators who are in charge of the different health centers. then we can go over the different forms and get feedback on them.
So, let's see, Kaniko has left for the field this morning, but she is coming back for the weekend. Then she will be out of here for good, which is very sad as we have had a lot of fun hanging out with her these past few weeks. However, this means we are going to head upstairs and get to be in the big room with the balcony and such, this is good. But overall the sad wins, so now we are a little sad. Tonight though we will go to our weekly outing for dinner at Simba Club, so that should be fun.
Claire has discovered how to climb stairs, pictures soon. She also has her first birthday coming up and we're going to throw her a party! And all of us went off to the tailor last weekend and got measured for clothes. Katie got her first dress today and Claire has i think 6 in the works in different sizes. Katie took a photo of hers which I'm sure will be up soon and we'll have pics of Claire as soon as her dresses are done.
Other than that, we are really excited about heading off to Lamu and have decided that we are going to start saving for a down payment on a house there, this is very exciting stuff. The houses there are significantly cheaper than the US, it is a beautiful tropical paradise and we can move there when we retire and people will want to come and visit us there(making this the opposite of Arizona). The goal is to put the down the down payment in about 2 years.
check out awesome Lamu Houses here...
http://www.lamuislandproperty.com/
Okay, time for a guacamole break....
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Now, with flavor crystals!
This one’s for you, Chuck! (Lynne, Claire, and the color orange!)
Mellow day today, with the small exception of having a book thrown at me while riding in the tuk tuk. The projectile turned out to be Kenya’s proposed new constitution, and was being given out as part of a voter education intitiative. I left it for Washington to read, as he can actually vote, and it would just be a souvenir for me. Back to mellow, Claire and I went to Michie’s house for a playdate with Shohei. They have a very nice home here in Kisumu, with a big yard and even a swing set. There was a huge shade tree that provided nearly the entire yard with shade. It was adorable watching the two kids play—they are both pretty little for real interactive play, but they were aware of each other. Shohei was so sad we were leaving that he cried when we left, so I think we will have to do it again very soon. In the course of conversation I asked Michie where she was from in Japan. She whispered “Kamamoto.” In my totally American way, I loudly repeated “Kamamoto?” The gasps from her Kenyan helpers were audible. Evidently, it means something incredibly crass in Kiswahili—the translation I gathered was “vagina in heat.”
Today the voice of my friend Tiffany came to mind. When we were in Seattle in May I had mentioned that I had a hard time making connections with friends knowing we would be leaving soon. As a person who had moved around a lot herself, she understood, and told me that you just gotta dive in and get to know people and not worry about the rest. I’m taking that advice, and it feels great!
I’m so surprised by how much I enjoy living in a house with other people, as it was the one thing I was pissed about when we first got here. I love having meals with people, letting others entertain Claire and watch out for her, and just generally being in regular contact with people. Any nudge of depression that I was feeling in New York seems to be gone, and Casey and I have had next to no fights, so Africa seems to be agreeing with us quite nicely.
Tomorrow I’m going to try on my dresses that Lynne’s friend has made this week for me, and I’m quite excited! I may girl it up and buy some shoes to go with one of the dresses to wear out to Simba Club tomorrow night. For 500 shillings (equivalent to $6.25), you get a full buffet dinner with Indian, Chinese and Kenyan food along with some amazing fresh fruit (OMG I fricking love passion fruit!) and ice cream. Tonight though, we have prepared a Mexican feast of char-grilled chicken (kuku choma), chapatti (lovingly made by Janet, and serving as our tortilla substitute), Casey’s “love potion” guacamole, and freshly made pico de gallo.
Did I mention that we are going to take a trip to Lamu at the end of our time in Kenya? Lamu is an amazing place on the North coast of Kenya. It is a chain of islands that are foot and donkey traffic only—no motorized vehicles allowed! It is influenced by many cultures (Arabic, Swahili, Portuguese…the list goes on), that have blended it into a magical place where the infrastructure has remained relatively unchanged for the last 1200 years. The people are conservation-minded and have taken many steps to maintain the local ecosystem and support the local economy. I nearly forgot to mention that the other way people get around is by dhow—specialized sailboats made to carry fruit, spices and other things for trade. We will take one from the airport in Lamu to where we are staying in Shela. Ooh, I can’t wait—arriving by sea will be awesome!!
Okay, Claire is awake now and I need to go help Casey in the kitchen. Kwaheri, tuanane! (Goodbye, see you later!)
Mellow day today, with the small exception of having a book thrown at me while riding in the tuk tuk. The projectile turned out to be Kenya’s proposed new constitution, and was being given out as part of a voter education intitiative. I left it for Washington to read, as he can actually vote, and it would just be a souvenir for me. Back to mellow, Claire and I went to Michie’s house for a playdate with Shohei. They have a very nice home here in Kisumu, with a big yard and even a swing set. There was a huge shade tree that provided nearly the entire yard with shade. It was adorable watching the two kids play—they are both pretty little for real interactive play, but they were aware of each other. Shohei was so sad we were leaving that he cried when we left, so I think we will have to do it again very soon. In the course of conversation I asked Michie where she was from in Japan. She whispered “Kamamoto.” In my totally American way, I loudly repeated “Kamamoto?” The gasps from her Kenyan helpers were audible. Evidently, it means something incredibly crass in Kiswahili—the translation I gathered was “vagina in heat.”
Today the voice of my friend Tiffany came to mind. When we were in Seattle in May I had mentioned that I had a hard time making connections with friends knowing we would be leaving soon. As a person who had moved around a lot herself, she understood, and told me that you just gotta dive in and get to know people and not worry about the rest. I’m taking that advice, and it feels great!
I’m so surprised by how much I enjoy living in a house with other people, as it was the one thing I was pissed about when we first got here. I love having meals with people, letting others entertain Claire and watch out for her, and just generally being in regular contact with people. Any nudge of depression that I was feeling in New York seems to be gone, and Casey and I have had next to no fights, so Africa seems to be agreeing with us quite nicely.
Tomorrow I’m going to try on my dresses that Lynne’s friend has made this week for me, and I’m quite excited! I may girl it up and buy some shoes to go with one of the dresses to wear out to Simba Club tomorrow night. For 500 shillings (equivalent to $6.25), you get a full buffet dinner with Indian, Chinese and Kenyan food along with some amazing fresh fruit (OMG I fricking love passion fruit!) and ice cream. Tonight though, we have prepared a Mexican feast of char-grilled chicken (kuku choma), chapatti (lovingly made by Janet, and serving as our tortilla substitute), Casey’s “love potion” guacamole, and freshly made pico de gallo.
Did I mention that we are going to take a trip to Lamu at the end of our time in Kenya? Lamu is an amazing place on the North coast of Kenya. It is a chain of islands that are foot and donkey traffic only—no motorized vehicles allowed! It is influenced by many cultures (Arabic, Swahili, Portuguese…the list goes on), that have blended it into a magical place where the infrastructure has remained relatively unchanged for the last 1200 years. The people are conservation-minded and have taken many steps to maintain the local ecosystem and support the local economy. I nearly forgot to mention that the other way people get around is by dhow—specialized sailboats made to carry fruit, spices and other things for trade. We will take one from the airport in Lamu to where we are staying in Shela. Ooh, I can’t wait—arriving by sea will be awesome!!
Okay, Claire is awake now and I need to go help Casey in the kitchen. Kwaheri, tuanane! (Goodbye, see you later!)
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
At long last, the NEW post has been released!!!!
Going for a walk with Francis' and Komolo to go look at the dams
I <3 This NGO, I want a t-shirt sooooo badly
Ooh, it's both exciting and shiny!!! And it has that new post smell..which is sort of gross...
So lets see, I think the last post was last week, so I'll try and remember things which you will all like and think are awesome. Last Sunday we rolled out to my friend Francis' place where his mom cooked us an awesome dinner, my other friend Samuel Komolo joined us too, they are both my colleagues at the Millennium Village Project and have helped me out a bunch. So we were headed to the place where he lives, which is a slum, on the way to the super-huge mall called MegaCity! It doesn't have the exclamation point, but I feel it adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the place, besides it's called MegaCity, it feels like it SHOULD have an exclamation point. Oh yeah, so the place we were going by on the way was called something in Ki-Swahili which I don't remember, but it translates literally into English as "Hide Your Ass", which I think is awesome. I guess the origin was that some Mzungu originally named the place Pinocchio, but then it was converted and that's what they came up with. I love that I get to look at the Hide your Ass Community Center every time I go to MegaCity!. So, we got to his place and he took us around to look at the dams which work to protect much of the land from flooding in the rainy season. Apparently the swampland it has created is home to many Hippos (Kiboko in Ki-Swahili), they come out at night and menace the people and destroy crops and such, and if you meet a Hippo they are very good at charging straight forward but can't corner for crap, so you should run in not a straight line. So we had an awesome dinner and then headed for home.
Monday I headed back out to the field, and did some more interviews. The more I do the better I feel about them and the less I feel like I forget to ask. So far I have visited 7 of the 9 health facilities here and I hope to finish up the last 2 tomorrow. Not too much to report from the visits, though I have some photos I will post.
On Tuesday I had a great meeting with James at MVP, we went over the current plans for the program and he had some really great input. Sometimes it's really nice when you are so close to a project to get a little outside perspective. So we ended up expanding the program quite a bit and ditched the automated schedules for manual ones to begin with and then we can look at the data later to see if there are patterns. This gives the software much more flexibility.
We are also going to have the CHWs go out and do a registration drive and put the Mothers' health IDs for Childcount on a sticker inside the front cover of the maternal health booklet as I had realized on Monday that the patients donot know their health ID at the moment which is a huge problem given that I am using that as the primary piece of ID for the system. We solved that though and tonight I went through and made the three new forms that will be needed for the health centers. There is also a new CD4count machine coming to the subdistrict hospital soon and we figured out a way to manually capture that information until a more automated solution can be put into place. Oh and Katie was a TA in the phlebotomy lab in med school and Komolo asked her to help do some trainings for doing blood draws.
Today katie and Claire went to the field with me,which was awesome and at the second health center the driver was waiting and asked us to be fast so as I did my interview I sent Francis out to take photos of whatever he thought would be interesting for my report. I am a bit shy with taking photos, especially at the health centers, Francis is not, and I think I got much more good stuff by sending him out with the camera. I also think that people are less shy when it's a Kenyan taking the photos. Anyway, I though about it, and sent him home with the camera, and asked him to just take photos of whatever he thought was interesting that night. I'm pretty stoked to get the results and I think i might repeat the experiment with him and also with other people i trust over the course of my time here. I'll post someof the shots soon.
Okay, well tomorrow I am meeting with the programmers and we will set out the specific course of action to be taken beginning Monday, and then it's off to the field to finish up with the health centers.
Oh, and I can't believe I forgot this, Yanis who has led the effort to get this program set up presented a few slides I made last weekend of the work i am doing here at the UNAIDS HQ in Geneva. I am pretty stoked about that and I guess they must have liked it as he said there was good news! I am keeping my fingers crossed that this means we will be continuing this project after I graduate in December. Okay folks, It's late and i have a meeting in the morning as well as a ton of writing for my report I have been putting off to go and visit the Impala sanctuary with Claire (I shook hands with a baboon! I really need to talk about that when I have the pics uploaded) so I'm going to go and leave you to the rest of whatever you were supposed to be doing. Oh and I totally missed the planning meeting yesterday in Yala, butno one told me it was happening!!!! Crap, I need to makeit to thenext one so my project is assigned time, we are still hoping to go live with the alpha in about 2 weeks. Okay, I'm really going now.
No
Really
I'm going to go
Stop reading
I might be really tired and a little loopy
Are you still reading?
s'en allez!
Goodnight
Whew! A lot has happened this week!
The past couple of days, I have gotten to visit two different families and it has been great! Sunday, all 3 of us met up with Francis, Casey's workmate at MVP, and Samuel (also at MVP), to have dinner at Francis’s mom’s house. When we arrived by tuk tuk down a very bumpy dirt road, we entered a compound on foot and went into his grandma’s home. She did not speak English, and we know only a few words in Kiswahili (and practically none in Luo!), but that didn’t really matter. Years ago, Francis’s grandpa bought the land at a great price, and his family is set up nicely today. After the introductions, we went for a walk to the dams nearby, where kibokos (hippos) live. It was a little crazy to think we might come across one or more of these gigantic beasts, but we never saw more than just where one had stomped the grass down not too long before we arrived. It was a pretty place for a walk, flat, with lots of repetitions of the same types of vegetation (I wish I had a field guide!). I think I identified some sort of Achillea, and I definitely saw water hyacinth, which is an incredibly invasive species from South America that has caused huge problems for the fishing and shipping industries of Lake Victoria. I saw some plants that had yellow, honeysuckle-like flowers, and when you broke the stem there was milky latex. The fruits (non-edible), were like 2 oversized green cherries and evidently, kids use the dried out seeds to play jacks. Francis’s sisters were eager to tell me what they knew about the plants, and even more eager to hold Claire and play with her.
On our walk, I fielded many questions from Samuel about the United States and much more; he and Francis both made me feel at home and at ease by their outgoingness and interest in learning about us. As it turns out, Samuel is going to be training other health workers on phlebotomy, and asked if I would like to come and help teach! I’m looking forward to it, and although it has been a few years since I TA’ed stab lab, it will be good.
Once back, Francis’s guardian (his mother and father have both passed), had laid out quite a supper for us! There was chapatti, white rice (grown in Kenya), and fried rice, meat stew, lentils, bananas with peas, and passion fruit drink. It was delicious.
Monday, Lynne invited me to her sister’s home to meet her mom and brothers and sisters that were in town.
Lynne's sister's home and the next door neighbor. The houses are super tiny and there was no kitchen to speak of, but Lynne managed to make some amazing food despite this! There wasn't even a counter to chop the veg on.
It was a fun day of hanging out and once again, eating delicious food. Lynne prepared fish in a stew with ugali (maize dish used to scoop up the other foods), coleslaw and rice. Claire totally dug the ugali and stew!
Casey calls this picture "Claire in Africa." It was taken outside of Lynne's sister's home in Kisumu.
Tuesday—pretty boring. Laundry, washing and just chilling out at home.
Wednesday Casey, Claire, Lynne and I went to the Impala park that is across the street from our house. It was way more than I expected it to be, and at around $15 US per person, I would hope it was! They have lions, a leopard, impala, bushbok, African rhinos, guinea fowl, various monkeys, baboons, cheetahs, and zebras. The impala, some of the monkeys and the zebra were free roaming. We came at feeding time, which I thought was going to be cool, but turned out to be kinda boring. Lynne repeatedly mentioned how greedy the animals were to eat so much meat, and asked the man-with-meat-wheelbarrow if they ever cut any off to take home? He said no, they would get sacked if they did. Funny thing, Casey asked one of the caretakers at the park if there were too many impala, what they did with them? (As in, did they eat them?). The answer was the same. Casey also thought the guinea fowl looked fat (and tasty, perhaps?). I think both Lynne and Casey were seeing dinner at the impala park!
Today, Thursday, Claire and I went with Casey into the field. Whew, it was a long day, and I can see why Casey is tired at the end of his days. We traveled in a packed truck for around an hour out to Yala where the field office is, over pothole-ridden roads. We met up with Francis and Samuel there and hung out until we had transport to go to the health centers. Packing into yet another vehicle, we went out on bumpy, albeit in beautiful countryside, roads to the health centers. I’m glad I got to see Casey in action—the nurses seem excited about his project and how it will help close some gaps that were problematic for keeping mothers coming in to visits and on track with their meds amongst other features that will be built into the software, hopefully in the near future. When we finally got home (maybe I’m a bit tired tonight!), Kana and Yoshi cooked us Japanese curry, which was lovely, and we sat down for a family dinner with those two and Janet. I’m really enjoying our “family” here, and see a trip to Japan in the future! Janet wants to bring us to her home area as well, which sounds awesome. I think she lives amongst artists that do a lot of pottery, specifically making the little stoves that burn efficiently and don’t put smoke into the house.
Only in Africa----------------------->
Ok, that was a really long post. I’m exhausted, and going to curl up next to the already sleeping Claire. Good night!
On our walk, I fielded many questions from Samuel about the United States and much more; he and Francis both made me feel at home and at ease by their outgoingness and interest in learning about us. As it turns out, Samuel is going to be training other health workers on phlebotomy, and asked if I would like to come and help teach! I’m looking forward to it, and although it has been a few years since I TA’ed stab lab, it will be good.
Once back, Francis’s guardian (his mother and father have both passed), had laid out quite a supper for us! There was chapatti, white rice (grown in Kenya), and fried rice, meat stew, lentils, bananas with peas, and passion fruit drink. It was delicious.
Monday, Lynne invited me to her sister’s home to meet her mom and brothers and sisters that were in town.
Lynne's sister's home and the next door neighbor. The houses are super tiny and there was no kitchen to speak of, but Lynne managed to make some amazing food despite this! There wasn't even a counter to chop the veg on.
It was a fun day of hanging out and once again, eating delicious food. Lynne prepared fish in a stew with ugali (maize dish used to scoop up the other foods), coleslaw and rice. Claire totally dug the ugali and stew!
Casey calls this picture "Claire in Africa." It was taken outside of Lynne's sister's home in Kisumu.
Tuesday—pretty boring. Laundry, washing and just chilling out at home.
Wednesday Casey, Claire, Lynne and I went to the Impala park that is across the street from our house. It was way more than I expected it to be, and at around $15 US per person, I would hope it was! They have lions, a leopard, impala, bushbok, African rhinos, guinea fowl, various monkeys, baboons, cheetahs, and zebras. The impala, some of the monkeys and the zebra were free roaming. We came at feeding time, which I thought was going to be cool, but turned out to be kinda boring. Lynne repeatedly mentioned how greedy the animals were to eat so much meat, and asked the man-with-meat-wheelbarrow if they ever cut any off to take home? He said no, they would get sacked if they did. Funny thing, Casey asked one of the caretakers at the park if there were too many impala, what they did with them? (As in, did they eat them?). The answer was the same. Casey also thought the guinea fowl looked fat (and tasty, perhaps?). I think both Lynne and Casey were seeing dinner at the impala park!
Today, Thursday, Claire and I went with Casey into the field. Whew, it was a long day, and I can see why Casey is tired at the end of his days. We traveled in a packed truck for around an hour out to Yala where the field office is, over pothole-ridden roads. We met up with Francis and Samuel there and hung out until we had transport to go to the health centers. Packing into yet another vehicle, we went out on bumpy, albeit in beautiful countryside, roads to the health centers. I’m glad I got to see Casey in action—the nurses seem excited about his project and how it will help close some gaps that were problematic for keeping mothers coming in to visits and on track with their meds amongst other features that will be built into the software, hopefully in the near future. When we finally got home (maybe I’m a bit tired tonight!), Kana and Yoshi cooked us Japanese curry, which was lovely, and we sat down for a family dinner with those two and Janet. I’m really enjoying our “family” here, and see a trip to Japan in the future! Janet wants to bring us to her home area as well, which sounds awesome. I think she lives amongst artists that do a lot of pottery, specifically making the little stoves that burn efficiently and don’t put smoke into the house.
Only in Africa----------------------->
Ok, that was a really long post. I’m exhausted, and going to curl up next to the already sleeping Claire. Good night!
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