HAPPY FRIDAY!!!!

It's Friday! Today is Mike's last night of call! He is hoping for a light night, but judging from all of his other calls, he won't get much sleep. This was a pretty busy week. We got back on Monday from our safari and weren't quite ready to get back to work. Mike worked in the ICU again this week and has been enjoying it. I got to go up to RVA (rift valley academy) and work with the athletic trainer there! They are having Rugby tryouts this week and it has been fun to watch. Mike and I are going to a scrimmage tomorrow! Last night we had two Kenyan interns over for dinner. We had fajitas! They had never heard of them before! It was a lot of fun except we had some uninvited guests. In the middle of dinner these huge termites flew in under the kitchen door. They told us it was because it has started raining and they saw the kitchen light on. They picked them up by the wings and put them back outside! It was crazy! I have never seen bugs like that. They were huge and had big wings! Yuck! But besides that, dinner went great! Things are going well here. The patient I have been visiting had surgery today for skin grafting for the ulcers on her legs. She was so excited because this means she may be able to go home in a week! The goals we had come up with was that she walk out by the time we leave and hopefully that will be able to happen! We'll keep praying! I'll have Mike blog more about his night on call and his patients in the ICU when he has time. And, we would like to request more comments from everyone. We miss you and love to hear from you so comment please!!!!!!!!!

Pictures from the Masai Mara

Here are a few of the pictures we took. We will post more soon!

The Masai Mara

Sorry for the delay in the post, but we weren't able to sign on yesterday when we got back. We went to the Masai Mara over the weekend for a safari! It was wonderful. When I pictured Africa, this was how I had pictured it. It looks just like the movies! I will give a brief summary of our weekend. We got picked up at 7AM on Saturday morning and driven to the airport in Nairobi. We flew on a 13 passenger plane to the Kichwa Tembo air strip which was made of dirt! The flight was about 45 minutes. We were met by drivers and given tea and coffee while we waited for another plane load of people. Then they drove us about 20 minutes to Kichwa Tembo tented camp. On the way we saw a baboon! When we arrived we were shown to our tent which was not like any tent I have ever stayed in. It had actual beds, a full bathroom, very very nice! After lunch we went on an afternoon game drive. Our driver was names Willy and he was an expert on the over 400 bird species on the Masai Mara as well as all of the other animals. We drove around in an open land cruiser that seated 10. There were two other couples in our vehicle who were in Africa to visit a mission hospital in Tanzania. We drove around for about 3-4 hours and it poured rain on us! Luckily Willy had brought us ponchos because we were not prepared! We had dinner and watched and participated in a Masai warrior dance back at the camp. I got chosen first to dance! It was fun! We were woken up at 6AM the next morning by Titus, with coffee and hot chocolate! We left at 6:30 for our morning drive. We stayed out all morning and we stopped along the Mara river for breakfast. We saw lions, hippos, crocodiles, hiennas, elephants, and lots more! We returned for lunch around 1PM and then left again at 3:30 for a trip to the nearby Masai Village. We got to go inside their village and see what the Masai people live like. It was quite an experience! We even got to go inside one of the houses which was made of cow dung and dirt! Mike got to try to start a fire with a stick! Then we got to purchase some homemade Masai art or jewelry. Sunday night after dinner we had a slide show on the great migration which made us both want to come back someday to see for ourselves. Monday morning we were woken up again at 6AM with coffee and hot chocolate and left at 6:30 for another short game drive. We went on a hippo hunt since it was early and they weren't in the river yet. We only found two in the middle of an open field in a water hole! They did not like us being there and one started to charge us. Willy said we should probably leave! We then found two male lions and their sister along the river. We watched them play! Then, it was time to go back for breakfast, pack up and leave! We were very sad to go. This was an awesome weekend and amazing to see God's creation. The entire time I just kept thinking how amazing God is that he created all of these animals and the beautiful Masai Mara! We took over 1,000 pictures so we will try to post some of these if my connection stays working. We will fill in more details later on!

Vocabulary Lesson!

Since we haven't blogged for a few days, I thought I would update everyone and also give you a vocabulary lesson. Since we are learning some new words, why shouldn't you? Now study hard because there will be a quiz when we get back! Some of the words you should recognize from a certain Disney movie! So here goes!
How are you? - Habari yako?
Fine- Nzuri
Problem- matata ( which is also what the main transportation is called!)
Thank you- Asante
Friend- Rafiki
Bye- Kwaheri
Come- Kuja
Sun- Jua
Wind-Upepo
I think that is probably enough for one day, but these are some of the words one the of patients is trying to teach me and I am actually remembering them! I'll be speaking swahili in no time! We are taking a break from Kijabe this weekend and going to Masai Mara for a safari. Please keep us in your prayers as we are being driven to Nairobi to the airport and the roads are not very good right now due to the increase in violence by the Mungiki tribe. But don't worry mom and dad!

Lake Nakuru

Now that you have all seen our pictures from this weekend, I thought I would write and tell you a little bit about our excursion. We went to Lake Nakuru on Saturday with another doctor who is here for a few weeks. We all got picked up bright and early at 8 AM and were driven to the Lake by our driver Ken. It took about 2 hours to get there but the roads were great! It was like driving in America. NO big bumps or potholes! We got to the park and both Mike and I admit we weren't expecting to see a lot of animals. They advertise Lake Nakuru as a bird watchers paradise as they have a lot of birds on the lake and sometimes if you're luck as many as 2 million flamingoes. Well, I think we saw maybe 50 flamingos, but as you can see, we saw a lot of animals! We saw a lot of different birds, pelicans, secretary birds, and many others you will see when we visit with our pictures. We also saw heinnas, zebras, lots of buffalo, babboons, giraffes, impalas, gazelles, rhinos, waterbacks, warthogs, a rainbow lizard, and a turtle! It was the coolest thing I think I have ever done or seen. All of these animals out in the open and not in cages like at the zoo! There was a large electric fence around the entire park, but we couldn't see it. Our driver said it's to keep the animals in and the people out! There are lions and leopards in the park, but they were hiding from us! We drove around the park for about 4 hours taking tons of pictures. At some points we were feet from the animals. We were about 10-15 feet from a rhinosaurus! It crossed the road right in front of us! We also got to see a lot of baby animals. We saw a baby zebra, rhino, giraffe, warthog, and babboon. They were so cute! The baby babboon was probably only a few days or weeks old. It was so tiny! We had so much fun on our trip and there were very few people there, so it was mostly just us and the animals. We are now really excited about this coming weekend when we are going on safari to Masai Mara. That is supposed to be a real safari with lions and elephants and everything! We will be taking a lot of pictures. Now, don't think that all we are doing is going around and goofing of and seeing animals. Mike is back at the hospital today working hard! We are having a lot of fun though and I think that is making our time here go very quickly. We have less than three weeks left! I hope you are enjoying hearing about our adventures and enjoy the pictures. We will try to keep them coming!

Pictures from our excursion to Lake Nakuru

Mike's life at Kijabe

I figure that it is about time that I update you on what I've been doing for the past 2 weeks, and I actually have a chance to sit down and write tonight, so here it goes. I have been spending a lot of time in the hospital so far. Just some background; Kijabe Hospital is a 250 bed full service hospital with medicine, surgery, orthopedics, pediatrics, ob/gyn services. It is also an academic teaching hospital where 8 Kenyan national interns are trained each year. I have been rotating on one of the internal medicine services for the past two weeks, and will spend one more week there before I spend the final 2 weeks with the anesthetists in the ORs.
My first day at the hospital was last Tuesday. I then took call on Wednesday night, and was also on call all of the past weekend. Today was actually the first day that I was not in the hospital as we drove out to a rural clinic about 2 hours away. It was a great change of scenery. A "typical" day lasts from 7am until 5pm and is spent between morning conference, rounding on patients in the wards, a lunch conference, and taking care of patients in casualty (the British term for the ER). My first night on call last Wednesday was not too bad. As a student I am the first call for anything they need in the wards or that comes into casualty. I was at the hospital until 12am and then was not called back until 630am. The weekend however was very busy. I was able to sleep from about 4am until we got up for church at 730 on Saturday night/Sunday morning, and was in the hospital from 2pm until 2am on Sunday. Fortunately I did get to go to church though!
There is a huge variety in the types of patients and in the problems and disease that we see. From a learning aspect it is phenomenal. From road accidents to poisonings to end-stage AIDS and many many others. The downside to this is that many of these patients are very sick and there is little that we can do for them. I think that I have had at least one patient die who's care I have been directly involved with almost everyday for the past week. That's more than I saw during the rest of medical school. It has certainly taken its emotional and spiritual toll and I was so thankful for the refreshing of God's spirit from the church service on Sunday. I needed it.
From here out my schedule is not as rough as I don't have anymore weekend calls and only have 1 call per week for each of the next 3 weeks. I am quite thankful for that. We covet your prayers and thank you for them, please keep them coming! God bless!

Pictures!!!

I will admit, it was my fault that we haven't been able to post pictures yet, I forgot the right cord to connect the camera to the computer. Luckily, our wonderful neighbors had the right cord and let us borrow it. So here's a few pictures! -Mike

Us!

Kijabe Hospital

The Great Rift Valley

One week down, four to go!

I thought I would update everyone again! No, we don't have pictures yet. But yes, we will work on that. The week has been really busy for Mike. He is at the hospital every day and he was on call this entire weekend. He did get about three hours of sleep last night though. He also got to go to church and eat lunch. After that, he was off to the hospital again. I have not been that busy this week. I took just about the entire week to start feeling normal. I wasn't sleeping thanks to jet lag and the evil Malaria drug Mefloquine, but since I stopped taking that, and started getting over my cold, I am feeling much better. I am going to go to the hospital and talk to them about starting to work there. Though, not as hard or as long hours as Mike is working! I am also going to a tea tomorrow with some of the missionary wives. I don't think I've ever been to a tea before so it should be fun. The weather here has been great. Not too warm, not too cold. And no rain yet. It gets really windy though. I had the windows open and I thought the curtains would blow away! I have been on the lookout for the monkeys that are said to hang out in the trees by our apartment in the evenings. I saw one, but didn't have the camera, and haven't seen any others. I am determined though. It was a good first week here. A little rough at times getting adjusted to everything, but good. Mike wants to write a post so hopefully he will have a little time tomorrow and he can share what has been going on in the hospital. Please pray for us and for the patients and doctors at the hospital. It seems like this has been a very busy week for the hospital.

Greetings From Kijabe!

Yes, we are both still alive! I know some of you thought we fell off the face, of the earth, but we are in fact still here. The small things that become common place and we take for granted, such as American outlets, internet hook up, constant phone and electric service, are not as common here it seems. It took IT a bit to give us a hook up and password to get into the internet, and spotty phone service made things difficult. Also, I have an extension cord running from the transformer next to the refrigerator (the only thing that runs on 120 volt power) across the living room to the phone line. I hope I don't trip over the cord! Everything over here runs on the European power system. It's the weird looking outlet that looks too big to actually plug anything into. Fortunately, many of the short term housing apartments are equipped with 120 volt outlets since many Americans come to stay. Unfortunately, we are not in one of these apartments! We have one outlet which is next to the refrigerator that we can use and when we used it we have to unplug the fridge. Until our great neighbor came by and lent us a power strip! Now I can use the computer and keep my food cold!
I will give a brief outline of our time in Kijabe so far.
First, we were picked up on Monday afternoon by the Kijabe ambulance driver. In the Kijabe ambulance! He took us to the grocery store in Nairobi and then we made to hour drive to Kijabe. On the way we stopped at the lookout over the Rift Valley. We were at 8,000 feet high. We could see for miles. It was so beautiful! It was like in the Lion King movie when it pans across the valley at the beginning or the end and it seems to go on forever and ever. We took some pictures but I doubt it will do it justice. We got to Kijabe at about 5:30 in the evening and got settled into our apartment. It has a kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom. Everything we need. We were invited to the next door neighbors apartment for dinner. They have been here about two years. On Tuesday, Mike started his rotations at the hospital bright and early at 7 AM. I slept until about 11:00 since I had taken and Ambien the night before. God bless sleeping pills! I had not had a nights sleep since we arrived. Once I got up our hostess, and next door neighbor Carolyn showed me around. She took me to the Duka (the small grocery/convenience store) and we went to see the vegetable ladies. Dinner was an interesting experience. We did not have anyone's house to go to so we cooked. Except I am not the best cook and we don't have a whole lot of options since our shopping was rushed and we didn't really know what to expect when we got here. So, we came up with fried potatoes and onions( really good), and a chicken and rice soup stew thing (not so good, although mike seemed to enjoy it). Oh well, I'll get better! Last night was not so fun when we went to bed, as I did not take and Ambien and did not get to sleep until 5 AM.
Today, I cleaned, walked around the hospital and chatted with our neighbor. Mike worked most of the day and is now on call tonight. We went to dinner at the Byrds tonight. A missionary family from Australia! It was really good. I need to practice my cooking!
I will probably start working at the hospital next week once I have been able to adjust and get some sleep as well as get over my cold/allergies. I would love to be able to breath again! We are getting settled and are hoping to get a safari scheduled for a weekend when Mike is not on call. I will keep you posted. Hopefully I will be able to do this daily now that we have Internet, but no promises. Also, I'll work on being able to post pictures, but it doesn't look good. So, in the mean time, use your imaginations! We love and miss you all. And happy late birthday to miss Laney, and happy late anniversary to Mom and Dad.