The Battle Against the Bugs!

Happy Monday! Our weekend went well. Friday, as expected, Mike got maybe three hours of sleep. He was at the hospital until about 3 and then went back around 6 I think. I'm not sure. I was sleeping! Saturday we went shopping and went up to RVA to watch the rugby scrimmage. It looks pretty tough! I don't think I want to play. On Sunday, we got to sleep in and go to a later church which was a good things because Mike has not been feeling well. After a good nights sleep and a few naps, he beat his bug and is feeling much better. My bug however, was not so easily defeated. For the past week or two I have been getting these bug bites all over and they really itch! I wake up in the morning and find new ones so we figured they must be coming from our bed. Mike, however, has zero bites. We have changed the sheets and I even started going to bed wearing long pants tucked into socks, and a long sleeved shirt tucked into my pants. I know what you're thinking, I was looking GOOD! Even that didn't work. In fact I think the bugs liked a challenge because I think I got more! I counted my bites and had 38 included the 10 just on my stomach. I had had enough. Yesterday we washed all of the sheets and blankets and mattress pad in hot hot water. Then, Mike took our bug spray with deet in it and sprayed the mattress. Then, our neighbor gave us bug killer spray and we sprayed some of that on the mattress too. Then, I ironed the mattress pad and sheets. ( I am never ironing again!) Then, we had to wait for the mattress to dry before we could go to bed. Mike had soaked it with the spray! We finally got into bed and low and behold, today I woke up, and NO NEW BITES!!!!!!!!!! Yeah!!!!!!!!! I am so happy! That doesn't mean the existing ones don't still itch, but no new bites is a very good thing. I hope it lasts. I just thought you would all get a good laugh out of my misery and our bug killing antics. And just so you know, we never actually saw any bugs in our room or bed so whatever bit me is still a mystery. At least for now, we have won the battle against the bugs. Hopefully our victory will last.

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.