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!