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.

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!

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…

Visit to Masongo!

Where an awesome CBO is taking care of 1,800+ HIV+ kids!

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!

Photos from the forest

i really hope that these upload, I've had the hardest time with that lately.